Wynne Davis

Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the U.S. is planning "things that we have not done in the past" if Russia invades Ukraine.

His comments follow days of diplomatic talks and a deadlock on resolving the crisis brewing along the Ukraine-Russia border.

A second winter of COVID is descending upon the United States.

This time there is widespread access to vaccines, but there's also the new omicron variant, a much more infectious form of the coronavirus that's surging.

Health care workers in hospitals are seeing the worst of the pandemic every day. But is anything all that different with this latest variant? To find out, All Things Considered spoke with three nurses from around the country to talk about their experiences.

Before Gloria Steinem became the nationally recognized activist for abortion rights and feminism, she was a 22-year-old living in England and pregnant when she didn't want to be.

Now, like many, Steinem is following the Supreme Court arguments about the Mississippi abortion case. At the center of the case, known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, is a challenge to the Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Virgil Abloh, the artistic director for Louis Vuitton menswear and the founder of the label Off-White, has died after a private battle with cancer. He was 41.

Louis Vuitton parent company LVMH announced Abloh's death in a tweet on Sunday, along with a joint statement with Louis Vuitton and Off-White.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease doctor and the president's chief medical adviser, said on Sunday that it's inevitable that the omicron variant of the coronavirus will be detected in the U.S.

While no cases of the variant have been detected in the U.S. so far, there have been cases detected in Botswana, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Israel, the Netherlands, Australia and Hong Kong.

President Biden's spending bill, often called "Build Back Better," passed in the House on Friday largely on party lines. Now the bill heads to the Senate, where it is expected to be pared down further.

Sleepovers. Birthday parties. Long-awaited family reunions.

Those are among the activities and gatherings that parents told NPR they hope to make possible for their kids following a formal recommendation of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If you're looking for a good Halloween lights display this weekend, you may only need to look up at the sky.

The northern lights, or aurora borealis, could be visible across a large portion of the northern U.S. this weekend, including the far Northeast, Upper Midwest and the state of Washington, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The lights might even be seen as far as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon.

Tom Morey, the inventor of the Boogie Board and a renowned figure in the surfing world, died Thursday at age 86.

Morey grew up in Laguna Beach, Calif., where he started surfing and became one of the area's most notable surfers of the '50s and '60s. Morey attended the University of Southern California, where he studied music before switching to mathematics and graduating in 1957, according to The Washington Post.

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to the 13 American service members killed in a bomb attack in Kabul this summer.

The August attack was one of the deadliest days for American forces in the past decade of the 20-year war in Afghanistan — and took place just days ahead of the U.S.'s planned full withdrawal from the country that had been overtaken days earlier by the Taliban.

Liz Shuler will serve as president of the AFL-CIO, following the death of longtime president Richard Trumka earlier this month.

The AFL-CIO executive council elected her to the position on Friday. Shuler is the federation's first woman president. Following Trumka's death, Shuler was serving as acting president, and had served as secretary-treasurer, the No. 2 office, since 2009.

With less than a week before the opening ceremonies begin at this year's Tokyo games, at least two players on the South African soccer team have tested positive for COVID-19 inside the Olympic Village.

The two players, Thabiso Monyane and Kamohelo Mahlatsi, are the first athletes to test positive for the coronavirus at the site of the Olympic Village in the Japanese capital. A video analyst for the team, Mario Masha, also tested positive.

All three have been isolated, along with those who were in close contact with them.

Vietnam has detected a new coronavirus variant that is highly transmissible and has features of two other strains.

As an 11-year-old, student reporter Damon Weaver landed the interview of his dreams with then-President Obama. In the 10-minute interview, the two discussed education in America, with topics ranging from funding to whether Obama had the power to change school lunches. Weaver's suggestion included French fries and mangoes as staples for all students.

Israel's airstrikes on Gaza continued Sunday as Hamas militants fired more rockets into Israel, marking the seventh day of the fire exchange. Three buildings in Gaza collapsed and at least 42 people were killed in what is now the deadliest single attack since fighting began a week ago, according to the Associated Press.

The search to rescue a missing Indonesian submarine is now a recovery mission after the navy changed the status from "sub miss" to "sub sank" and declared the ship sunk and the crew of 53 dead on Saturday.

The KRI Nanggala 402 went missing early Wednesday morning off the coast of Bali during a training exercise, and Indonesian military officials estimated the sailors would run out of oxygen early Saturday.

Two of the world's largest electric vehicle battery manufacturers reached a settlement on Sunday that President Biden called "a win for American workers and the American auto industry."

Good news from NASA: Earth is safe from the dangerous asteroid 99942 Apophis for the next 100 years. So if you'd put this on your apocalyptic bingo card, you'll need to print new ones.

Apophis was first discovered in 2004, after which NASA says it was put on the list of most hazardous asteroids that could impact Earth.

Two people are dead and at least eight others were wounded after three separate shooting incidents near the oceanfront in Virginia Beach, Va., on Friday night.

A second former aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment that took place last spring as the state was facing a surge in cases and deaths in its fight against the coronavirus. Cuomo says he will now ask New York's attorney general and the state's chief judge to pick an independent investigator to review the accusations against him.

Updated at 8:17 p.m. ET

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was detained upon his arrival in Moscow on Sunday after spending nearly five months in Germany while recovering from being poisoned.

Shortly before his arrest, Navalny made a statement saying the cases against him are all fabricated. He added that the European Court of Human Rights had ruled in his favor in the case where he's been threatened with imprisonment. That is "why I'm not afraid of anything," he said.

Loews Hotels says it will no longer allow a fundraiser for Sen. Josh Hawley scheduled for February to be held at one of its hotels. The move is the latest fallout from the Missouri Republican's widely criticized decision to object to Electoral College results during Congress' certification of President-elect Joe Biden's win.

The grim milestones are piling up as the United States experiences another surge in coronavirus cases. Nearly 300,000 new cases were reported on Saturday. The cumulative death toll crossed more than 350,000 the same day, according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard.

President Trump made his return to the campaign trail Saturday, at a Georgia rally to support Republican incumbent Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in a runoff election on Jan. 5.

The election results will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

The rally was meant to encourage Republicans to vote in January, but the president spent a good deal of his time talking about the November election and repeating false claims that it was "rigged" against him.

Dustin Johnson won his first Masters title on Sunday at Augusta National, and added the famous green jacket to his wardrobe just a year after he finished tied for second in a career best at the 2019 tournament.

He finished the final round of his 10th Masters appearance with a record 20 under par and won the tournament five strokes over Australia's Cameron Smith and South Korea's Sungjae Im, who tied for second place.

Fans of the Kansas City Chiefs and New England Patriots will have to wait a bit longer for the Week 4 match-up between the two teams, after players on both sides of the game tested positive for the coronavirus. The game, originally scheduled for Sunday, is now scheduled for Monday at 7:05 p.m. ET.

The NFL announced the game's new time on Sunday in a statement on Twitter.

Updated at 8:08 p.m. ET

Congressional Democrats are calling the director of national intelligence's cancellation of additional in-person election security briefings "outrageous," after the change was announced on Friday. Election Day is about nine weeks away.