NPR

Google says it will not publish political ads after polls close on Election Day, citing the high possibility that final results will be delayed because of the shift to mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.

Each week we answer some of your pressing questions about the coronavirus and how to stay safe. Email us your questions at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions."

What is up CDC? First you say airborne transmission is a thing. Then you rolled it back. So ... is this something I should be worried about?

The justice system failed Breonna Taylor, says Tamika Palmer, the mother of the emergency room technician whom police shot and killed in her own apartment in March. She says Kentucky's attorney general was not up to the job of achieving justice for Taylor.

Police in France are investigating whether terrorism was the motive for an attack that seriously wounded two people near the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo's former Paris offices, where a dozen people were gunned down by Islamist extremists in 2015.

Authorities say they have arrested two people in connection with the assault, which reportedly involved a sharp object that one witness described as a hatchet.

The civil rights groups behind this summer's Facebook advertiser boycott are joining other critics to pressure the social network to do more to counter hate speech, falsehoods about the election and efforts to delegitimize mail-in voting.

Updated at 1:47 p.m. ET

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state Friday at the U.S. Capitol, the first woman and the first Jewish person to be given that honor in the nation's history.

Among the many things that have been radically changed by the coronavirus pandemic is the airline industry. Air travel demand is down a whopping 70% from last year, according to the industry group Airlines for America, and now the clock is ticking for tens of thousands of pilots, flight attendants, reservation agents and other airline employees, who will likely lose their jobs on Oct. 1, if Congress doesn't extend federal aid for the airlines.

Think "climate change activist" and a young, liberal student may come to mind.

A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll showed climate change is the top issue for Democratic voters. For Republicans, it barely registers overall, but there is a growing generational divide.

Some of the most memorable moments of Kamala Harris' political career have come in the Senate committee hearing rooms.

The list of witnesses and nominees the California senator has flustered or put on the defensive is long, and it includes many top conservatives whom progressives villainize: Attorney General William Barr, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former White House chief of staff John Kelly and, perhaps atop that list, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is still recovering from nerve agent poisoning widely seen as the work of Kremlin agents, has had his bank accounts frozen and his apartment "seized" in a civil case, according to his spokesperson.

Navalny was released from Berlin's Charité hospital on Wednesday after undergoing more than a month of treatment. He had his assets seized on Aug. 27 as he lie in a coma, said the opposition leader's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh.

The seizure came in connection with a long-running libel case filed.

In the age of social distancing, car and truck caravans of MAGA flag-waving supporters of President Trump have hit the road from New York to California.

"We stretched for a very long distance; I mean miles back," said Shawn Farash, who organized a caravan of hundreds of motorcycles, cars and trucks that drove through the streets of Long Island last weekend.

Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron, announced on Wednesday that none of the three police officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor would be charged directly over her death. One of the men was indicted for shooting into neighboring homes.

In response, protests emerged nationwide, demanding charges against the officers. Here's a selection of pictures from around the country, as demonstrators called for justice for Taylor and respect for Black life.

Updated at 2:13 p.m. ET

President Trump was met by shouts of "vote him out" and "honor her wish" as he paid his respects on Thursday to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her body is lying in repose for a second day at the Supreme Court.

Trump, wearing a black mask, was silent as he stood next to the flag-draped coffin at the top of the Supreme Court's steps.

Updated at 9:23 p.m. ET

President Trump resumed questioning the integrity of this year's election on Thursday after the White House sought to walk back his earlier comments suggesting he might not accept the results if he were to lose.

The back-and-forth started on Wednesday evening at a press conference.

Nearly 500 national security experts – both civilians and former senior uniformed officers — have endorsed Joe Biden for president, saying the "current president" is not up to "the enormous responsibilities of his office."

Addressed to "Our Fellow Citizens," the 489 national security experts include 22 four-star officers. The letter never mentions President Trump by name.

In 1999, Christopher Vialva hitched a ride with a married couple visiting West Texas for a church revival meeting.

Authorities later found the bodies of Todd and Stacie Bagley in the trunk of their car. Todd Bagley died of a gunshot wound. Stacie Bagley died of smoke inhalation after the car was set on fire.

On Thursday, 20 years after he was convicted of that brutal crime, Vialva is scheduled to face lethal injection. His case stands out only because he's like most inmates on federal death row: a Black man who murdered white people, when he was very young.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Jesus Gonzalez was about a year into starting a Cuban food catering and "pop-up" business in Lexington, Ky. It's like "a food truck, but without a truck," he says.

His steadiest gig was setting up tables with a spread of Cuban food at local breweries so people could eat while quaffing pints. But then all that shut down. And he says things aren't back to normal enough yet for the breweries to bring him back.

Updated Friday 2:15 p.m. ET to include a comment from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The federal government is preparing to crack down aggressively on hospitals for not reporting complete COVID-19 data daily into a federal data system, according to internal documents obtained by NPR.

Updated at 2:35 p.m. ET

At least 380 pilot whales have died off the coast of Tasmania in what experts are calling Australia's largest recorded mass-stranding event.

Nearly 500 whales have been stranded on a beach and two sandbars along the western coast of the island state.

Updated at 4:56 p.m. ET

President Trump warned tech companies he is "watching them very closely during this election cycle" as his administration proposed stripping online platforms of long-held legal protections.

"We see so many things that are unfair," Trump said during at a White House discussion with Republican state attorneys general about social media. "It's very serious. Very bad. Very serious."

Wildfires near cities have become commonplace in the Western United States, but this year the reach and intensity of the dangerous air pollution they produce has been the worst on record.

Many Americans in populous, urban areas endured smoke for longer than previous years. Some places experienced very unhealthy or hazardous air from wildfires for the first time ever recorded.

Americans will get their first chance to see Joe Biden and Donald Trump onstage together during next week's presidential debate.

If you're just starting to pay attention to the race, or if you've been feeling ambivalent about your choices this election, what questions or concerns do you have about the two major party candidates? What's keeping you from being enthusiastic about either one?

Fill out the form below and an NPR producer may reach out to include your perspective in an upcoming on-air segment.

In a secret ceremony, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was sworn in for a sixth term Wednesday in the capital amid nationwide protests and international outrage over his August reelection in a vote widely viewed as fraudulent.

State media announced that Lukashenko, who has held on to power for more than a quarter-century, took the oath of office during a ceremony at Independence Palace in Minsk that was attended by several hundred government officials.

The United States is home to the world's best-known technology companies, but so far the use of smartphones to fight the coronavirus has been tepid at best.

Smartphones have the potential to be a powerful tool in tracking the spread of COVID-19. They can tell you exactly how close you've been to other people, for how long and keep a detailed log of everyone you've been around for the last 14 days. Linked to testing systems, they can rapidly alert you if someone you've been in contact with tests positive.

As of now, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization say the primary way the coronavirus spreads is by hitching a ride on respiratory droplets when people are in close contact.

Respiratory droplets form when someone sneezes, coughs, talks or sings, for example. They don't travel far and fall to the ground quickly.

Critics of Facebook and Twitter — and even some people inside the companies — say dramatic action is needed to counter the way the platforms supercharge false, and sometimes dangerous, claims.

Facebook says it has taken down a network of China-based fake accounts whose posts included content about the U.S. presidential election.

Most of the activity by the more than 180 fake accounts, groups and pages was focused on Southeast Asia, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, said in a blog post Tuesday.

In a year that's been plenty scary, this much is clear: Pandemic Halloween will be different than regular Halloween. Many traditional ways of celebrating are now considerably more frightful than usual, because now they bring the risk of spreading the coronavirus.

Updated at 12:50 p.m. ET

In a speech Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump once again sought to blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic and called on Beijing to be punished for its handling of the disease, which has killed nearly 1 million people worldwide – a fifth of them in the United States.

It's still unknown when a COVID-19 vaccine might be available in the United States. But when one is first approved, there may only be 10 million to 15 million doses available, which may be enough to cover around 3% to 5% of the U.S. population.