Jaclyn Diaz

In her time as former President Donald Trump's transportation secretary, Elaine Chao repeatedly used her position and agency staff to help family members who run a shipping business with ties to China, in potential violation of federal ethics laws, according to an Office of Inspector General report.

A judge sentenced former NFL tight end Kellen Winslow II to 14 years in prison Wednesday for rapes and other sexual offenses against several women in Southern California.

San Diego County Superior Court Judge Blaine Bowman, who presided over Winslow's trial, called the former player "a sexual predator," according to news reports.

Dutch police in a town north of Amsterdam are investigating an explosion outside of a coronavirus test center early Wednesday.

Police say the explosion went off at about 6:55 a.m. outside of the center in Bovenkarspel, a town about 40 miles northeast of Amsterdam. There were no injuries from the blast. Investigators told local media that the explosion appeared intentional, as remnants of an exploded metal cylinder were found outside of the building.

There may be light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic, but one piece of the virus will live on.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became the public face of the government's coronavirus response with daily press conferences and media interviews, on Tuesday donated his personal model of the SARS-CoV-2 virion to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The model will be housed within the national medicine and science collections.

Many residents of Jackson, Miss., remain without running water three weeks after a winter storm hit the city.

The water outages in Jackson began Feb. 15 as a winter storm swept across the state. The storm brought devastating, bitter cold to the South and hit the region's critical infrastructure hard--highlighting major vulnerabilities in the area's power grid and water system.

More than 275 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped last Friday have been returned safely, government officials say.

The Nigerian government has denied paying a ransom for the girls, and officials have not said who's responsible. It's unclear whether the captors were arrested.

The government initially said 317 girls were abducted, but today revised the number to 279 without explanation. They were taken from their beds at the Government Girls Science Secondary School in the town of Jangebe.

Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama voting to unionize won the backing of an important executive.

Without naming the massive e-commerce company specifically, President Biden said in a video posted late Sunday that he supports the organizing drive in Bessemer, Ala.

The largest power cooperative in Texas filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, citing a massive bill from the state's electricity grid operator following last month's winter storm that left millions of residents without power for days.

Brazos Electric Power Cooperative filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, according to court documents reviewed by NPR.

North Korea is using forced labor from its network of prison camps to mine coal and other minerals to boost exports and earn foreign currency, using the cash to support its nuclear weapons programs, according to a South Korean human rights group.

A report by the Seoul-based Citizens' Alliance for North Korea Human Rights said an intricate network of government ministries and other entities relies on prison labor and other illicit operations to bring in money to the isolated Asian country.

2020 was a bad year for butterflies, too.

The population of monarch butterflies that migrated to Mexico to ride out the cold winter months in the north fell 26% from a year earlier, according to a new report from the Mexican government and the Word Wildlife Fund.