NPR News & Stories From WUNC

Democratic presidential hopefuls are on stage in South Carolina ahead of that state’s primary. The candidates’ battle follows Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wins in the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucuses. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is leading the pack in the Democratic presidential primary race as he and six other candidates debate in South Carolina on Tuesday.

The South Carolina primary is on Saturday, with 54 delegates up for grabs. Currently, Sanders has the most delegates, with former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg in second, and former Vice President Joe Biden in third.

There's no dispute on whether Jesus Mesa Jr. killed 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca.

He did. And there's a video of it.

In 2010 Mesa, an on-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent who was at the border in El Paso, Texas, shot Hernández at least twice — once in the face. At the time, the boy, a Mexican national, was on the southern side of the border in Ciudad Juarez.

Updated at 8:01 p.m. ET

A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday heard arguments from Roger Stone's lawyers and federal prosecutors on the longtime Republican operative's bid for a new trial based on his allegations or juror misconduct.

Federal aviation regulators issued a new round of safety fixes for Boeing's beleaguered 737 Max jetliners, mandating repairs to sections of the planes that could make them vulnerable to lightning strikes and other activity which might result in engine malfunction.

The proposed fix issued by the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday said certain panels on the planes, including the metallic layer that serves as part of the shielding for aircraft wiring, is susceptible to potential "electromagnetic effects of lightning strikes or high intensity radiated fields."

Stocks fell sharply for a second day in a row. The Dow dropped 879 points on Tuesday, after tumbling more than 1,000 points on Monday.

While the coronavirus outbreak in China appears to have peaked, investors are worried by the growing number of cases in other countries, as well as a warning from U.S. health officials that the virus could hit closer to home.

Just last week, the S&P 500 stock index was hitting record highs. Now it's fallen more than 6% in just the last two days.

Irresponsibility — by carmaker Tesla and by a Tesla driver — contributed to a deadly crash in California in 2018, federal investigators say.

The driver appears to have been playing a game on a smartphone immediately before his semi-autonomous 2017 Model X accelerated into a concrete barrier. Distracted by his phone, he did not intervene to steer his car back toward safety and was killed in the fiery wreck.

But Tesla should have anticipated that drivers would misuse its "autopilot" feature like this and should build in more safeguards to prevent deadly crashes.

Updated at 8:25 p.m. ET

Federal health officials issued a blunt message Tuesday: Americans need to start preparing now for the possibility that more aggressive, disruptive measures might be needed to stop the spread of the new coronavirus in the U.S.

The strongly worded warning came in response to outbreaks of the virus outside China, including in Iran, Japan, South Korea and Italy, which officials say have raised the likelihood of outbreaks occurring stateside.

The humanitarian crisis in Syria has reached a "horrifying new level," according to a U.N. official.

That's how Mark Lowcock, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, described conditions in northwest Syria, based on eyewitness accounts from U.N. staff in and around Idlib province.

The town of Beaufort is the first community in the state to endorse the N.C. Marine Debris Action Plan.  

Deep in the third quarter against Stanford, Oregon guard Sabrina Ionescu picked up a defensive rebound.

It was a big one: With that play, Ionescu became the first NCAA basketball player, male or female, to reach the milestone of 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists in a career.

To say there is a lot of hype around 5G is probably an understatement. Verizon and T-Mobile spent an estimated $22 million on Super Bowl ads to tell us all about it.

In one commercial, Verizon said it would allow firefighters to see through smoke and doctors to communicate with ambulances in real time. Actor Anthony Anderson touted the supremacy of T-Mobile's 5G network to his mother, who ground-truths the matter by going from the pie shop to the park to ultimately the club.

Everyone who lived through Black Saturday remembers the heat and the wind that day in February 2009. The temperature soared to 115 degrees Fahrenheit — so hot it sucked the breath out of you, made your vision swim and your fingers swell. The wind blew in from the northwest, from the vast, arid Australian interior. Flags flew stiff. Fire danger was extreme.

Victor Yu is not one of the more than 2,500 people who the Chinese government says were killed by the coronavirus. The 47-year-old resident of Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak, died Feb. 19 from complications related to renal carcinoma, a common type of kidney cancer. But his family believes that his untimely death is likely related to the coronavirus outbreak.

This year marks the 250th birthday of one of the most revered composers who ever lived: Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770. Beethoven wrote hundreds of piano sonatas, overtures and chamber pieces, but truly made his mark with his nine symphonies.

President Trump criticized remarks by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg as "inappropriate" and said the Supreme Court justices should recuse themselves from cases involving the president.

"I just don't know how they cannot recuse themselves for anything Trump or Trump related," Trump said Tuesday in a wide-ranging news conference in New Delhi.

"What Justice Sotomayor said yesterday was highly inappropriate," Trump added. "She's trying to shame people with perhaps a different view into voting her way."

Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET

A well-known Hong Kong bookseller who published critical and sometimes titillating volumes about Chinese leaders and who disappeared in China more than two years ago has been quietly sentenced to a decade in prison for passing on intelligence to people overseas.