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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., about the current bill to provide economic relief to small business owners adversely affected by the coronavirus.

With even the youngest of those men and women who were involved in the invasion nearing their 100th birthdays and their ranks dwindling rapidly, they feel a special imperative to tell their stories.

Data from a large, ongoing study of adolescents shows a link between increasing social media use and lower cognition and memory in teens.

Singapore has unveiled a national initiative built entirely around its collapsing birth rate. Some demographers say the plan includes policy ideas that could help American parents.

Bob Mondello looks at the most-produced shows at high schools through seven decades and ponders what the choices made by drama teachers tell us.

Meals for one should not be a sad or boring affair, says Michelin-starred chef Anita Lo. In her new cookbook, Lo goes beyond bitter greens, blue cheese and monkfish to serve up fun meals for one.

The "prediction market" site Intrade's decision to close in the U.S. highlights how the company exists in a regulatory gray area, somewhere between trading and betting. Intrade says it hopes to operate legally in the U.S. eventually. In the meantime, American users must close their accounts by year's end.

In September, 43 students disappeared in Mexico and were assumed dead after an alleged attack by police. NPR's Arun Rath talks to John Gibler about his continued reporting from Iguala, Mexico.

Kentucky is number one on a list of the states with the most toxic air pollution from power plants. The Natural Resources Defense Council analyzed the data self-reported by industries in the Toxic Release Inventory, which is managed by the federal government. The most recent data is from 2010, and that year, Kentucky’s power plants emitted more than 40 million pounds of toxic air pollution. This gives the state the dubious honor of being ranked number one in the nation. “The first thing Kentucky has failed to do, relative to the states that have seem the most dramatic improvement, is adopt any kind of state law or regulation that requires substantial reductions in mercury or toxic pollution from the power sector,” said John Walke, the air director of the NRDC. The 20 states profiled in the NRDC’s report—dubbed the “Toxic Twenty”—account for 92 percent of the nation’s electric sector toxic air pollution. But they also just account for 62 percent of the United States’ electricity generation. In Kentucky, nearly 80 percent of the state’s air pollution comes from power plants that burn coal and oil. The three most polluting plants are the Paradise Fossil Plant in western Kentucky, the Big Sandy plant in eastern Kentucky and the Mill Creek Generating Station in Louisville. Walke says the fact that most of Kentucky’s pollution is caused by power plants is both a problem and a solution “Cleaning up toxic pollution from power plants will benefit Kentucky residents to a greater degree than almost any other state in the union,” he said. There is hope that Kentucky’s air pollution will be greatly reduced in future years. In the face of new federal air pollution regulations, the state’s power plants will be forced to install new pollution controls by 2016. The operators of the Big Sandy plant also recently announced they were reconsidering an earlier decision to burn coal at the site. Here's the NRDC's full list: The states on the "Toxic 20" list (from worst to best) are: Kentucky Ohio Pennsylvania Indiana West Virginia Florida Michigan North Carolina Georgia Texas Tennessee Virginia South Carolina Alabama Missouri Illinois Mississippi Wisconsin Maryland Delaware

A former Massachusetts chemist is now behind bars because of sloppy drug testing that went on for years, compromising up to 190,000 criminal cases and costing the state millions of dollars. The scandal raises questions of accountability in forensic labs around the country.