LATEST FROM NPR

Asif Mehmood moved to his neighborhood in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen back in 1994, shortly after emigrating to Denmark from Pakistan. At the time, few ethnic Danes wanted to live there.

Mike Rudulph was 20 years old when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps. He served during the era of Don't Ask Don't Tell, deploying to Iraq in 2003. Soon after he returned home from his first deployment, he logged onto the internet and met Neil Rafferty.

"By the end of the week, we were saying 'I love you' over the phone," Rudulph, 40, said to his now-husband, Rafferty, 35, at StoryCorps in Birmingham, Ala.

In a recent campaign ad, Joe Biden is behind the wheel of a 1967 Corvette Stingray, in his trademark aviator sunglasses.

"I love this car, nothing but incredible memories. Every time I get in, I think of my dad and Beau," Biden says, referring to his late son. "God, could my dad drive a car."

It's pure nostalgia. But then Biden pivots to his pitch to restore American manufacturing.

Twenty-four hours after entertaining and amplifying a false and racist birther conspiracy aimed at Sen. Kamala Harris, President Trump had an opportunity to correct the record. He didn't. Neither did his son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner.

For Trump, this is a return to familiar territory.

"Unfortunately, this might have been inevitable," said Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee communications director.

When the pandemic hit the state of Washington, it took Patricia Lopez's job as a medical assistant with it. Not having a college degree made it especially hard to find a new job, as so many employers were making cuts and tightening budgets.

Lopez applied for unemployment benefits — she'd need money to support her two kids and her mother, who lives with her — and signed up for classes at the local community college.

As students return to the campus of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this month, they will be tested for COVID-19. And, then they'll be tested, again.

"We are requiring testing two times per week for access to campus facilities. This is for students, faculty, and staff," explains Rebecca Lee Smith, an associate professor of epidemiology.

The next phase of the presidential election starts Monday with the launch of the Democratic National Convention. While the quadrennial event usually attracts tens of thousands of people to the host city, which this year is Milwaukee, Wis., the coronavirus has erased the possibility of a traditional series of events.

"Memories of my childhood live/between the rings of sand around my ankles/ and the desert heat in my lungs.

I still believe that nothing washes/worry from tired skin better than the Nile/and my grandma's hands.

Every day I go to school/with the weight of dead neighbors/on my shoulders."

In the dog days of August, air conditioning is everywhere.

Is that a problem when it comes to the spread of the coronavirus?

The answer to that question rests on the way the virus is transmitted — a topic that is still being researched.

California electrical providers instituted rolling blackouts Friday night – the first since 2001–as an intense and prolonged heat wave settled over much of the Western U.S.

Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have experienced brief power outages through the evening, after the body that manages most of the state's electrical utilities declared a Stage 3 emergency to help reduce stress on the larger grid.

When she found out that former Vice President Joe Biden had selected Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate, LaTosha Brown was in her bathroom trying on makeup.

President Trump on Friday ordered TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. assets in 90 days, stating American authorities have "credible evidence" that the Chinese tech giant could take action to imperil national security.

The White House announced a deal Thursday for the United Arab Emirates and Israel to work toward normal diplomatic relations.

Most Arab countries do not have normal diplomatic relations with Israel. If the pact can be fulfilled, the UAE would join Egypt and Jordan as only the third Arab nation in the region with normalized ties.

As part of the agreement, Israel has agreed to suspend its controversial plans to annex territory in the occupied West Bank — territory Palestinians have long hoped to be a part of a future state.

After more than three months without any known community spread of the coronavirus in New Zealand, a new outbreak in Auckland has upset the fragile normalcy that had returned in the nation.

It was just Tuesday that the government said it had its first cases from an unknown source in 102 days, all within one family. By Friday, the outbreak had grown to 30 cases, including in other cities where members of the household had traveled.

As terrible as last week's explosion at Beirut's port was, killing 172 people and injuring some 6,000 others, it has prompted new hopes for political change in Lebanon.

On Monday, Prime Minister Hassan Diab and his cabinet resigned, as it emerged that the blast was likely the result of government negligence. Now Lebanese are calling for major reforms.

In a blow to gun control activists, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that California's ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines is unconstitutional, violating the Second Amendment.

In a 2-1 decision, the panel of judges found that such firearm magazines are protected arms under the Second Amendment and are not "unusual arms" that would fall outside its scope.

Belarus' scattered and improvised opposition is regaining its footing after five-term President Alexander Lukashenko unleashed his security forces on protesters during four nights of unprecedented violence.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the main opposition candidate in Sunday's election, resurfaced on social media Friday after the authorities pressured her to leave for neighboring Lithuania earlier this week. Tikhanovskaya, a political novice, ran against Lukashenko after her husband was denied registration as a candidate and jailed.

The government agency responsible for policing Wall Street brought the fewest number of insider trading cases in decades, according to the most recent available data.

That decline came just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The Securities and Exchange Commission now warns that the pandemic has created wild swings in the market and more opportunities for insider trading.

NPR reviewed data from the 1980s through last year and found that under the Trump administration, the SEC brought just 32 insider trading enforcement actions in 2019, the lowest number since 1996.

Millions of Americans are refinancing their mortgages to save money as superlow interest rates create a rare financial bright spot amid the pandemic.

But homeowners are about to get hit with a big new fee. Starting next month, all home mortgages that are refinanced will have to pay half of 1% of the loan. In other words, $1,500 for a $300,000 mortgage.

The eagle has landed, but EGLE — Michigan's Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy — was not so lucky.

Last month, Hunter King, one of the department's drone pilots, was using a quadcopter to photograph the Lake Michigan coast to track shore erosion.

Suddenly, he started getting warnings on his screen — lots of them — including one indicating that a propeller had come off the drone.

"I was looking through the camera on the drone with my iPad, and it just went into a spiral," King tells NPR.

Newly released officer-worn body camera video is giving a fuller view of the tense scene in which George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. In it, bystanders clamor for officers to check Floyd's vital signs as Officer Derek Chauvin holds his knee on the man's neck.

The video, from former Officer Tou Thao, shows another vantage of Floyd's arrest as well as Thao's interactions with a crowd of bystanders. The recording was released by a judge's order in Hennepin County, Minn.

Updated at 12:26 p.m. ET

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith has agreed to plead guilty to a single false statement charge, marking the first criminal action in an investigation centered on how intelligence agencies gathered information involving the Trump campaign and Russia four years ago in the waning months of the Obama administration.

Clinesmith had been identified in an earlier report by the Justice Department inspector general.

On Friday, federal prosecutors charged former R. Kelly manager Donnell Russell with calling in a gun threat to a New York advance screening of the Lifetime television docuseries Surviving R. Kelly in December 2018.

Amboseli National Park in Kenya is experiencing something of an elephant baby boom.

Two back-to-back blazes broke out around Los Angeles this week, marking a dramatic start to the wildfire season.

A wildfire that started Thursday continues to burn near the San Gabriel Canyon east of Los Angeles. Activity at what's called the Ranch2 Fire is expected to increase today due to extreme heat — with highs near 108.

Spanish authorities — facing a new wave of COVID-19 after tamping down the disease months ago — have ordered the closing of nightclubs, banned the consumption of alcohol and even prohibited smoking outdoors in cases where social distancing cannot be guaranteed.

Health Minister Salvador Illa announced the new measures, which also include the closing of bars and restaurants by 1 a.m. He advised against gatherings of more than 10 people and singled out for concern a popular pastime known as "botellones," in which young people gather outside to drink alcohol.