NPR News

About 300 demonstrators are trying to halt construction on the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope, developers of which are supposed to break ground on Hawaii's Big Island this week.

Before the sun came up on the summit of Mauna Kea, the island's tallest mountain, a group of about half a dozen protesters chained themselves to a grate in the road at the base of the dormant volcano in an attempt to block workers from accessing the only paved road onto the what they say is a sacred site.

Imagine throngs of people who have never met each other assembling in mid-September before dawn in a Nevada desert town to rush the entrance of Area 51 in search of aliens.

It is a fantastical idea conceived of as a joke on social media, but its popularity has spread fast. On Monday, the number of people who signed up for the tongue-in-cheek Facebook call to "Storm Area 51" exceeded 1 million.

And now, U.S. military officials say they are monitoring the situation.

Updated at 8:30 p.m. ET

With American Airlines joining United in pulling 737 Max planes from their schedules and cancelling flights into early November, many travel industry observers are bracing for the next shoe to drop: higher priced fares and cancelled flights for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays season.

American Airlines announced Monday it is pulling the 737 Max from its schedule through Nov. 2, canceling about 115 flights per day. American reported last week that the Max grounding has already cost the airline $185 million in lost revenue.

Most snowshoes in the United States are probably in storage right now, gathering dust and waiting for temperatures to drop. In the town of Lake Tomahawk in the Northwoods of Wisconsin though, they're getting a lot of use this summer.

Snowshoe baseball is exactly what it sounds like. It's a game of baseball played on snowshoes, though it more closely resembles a bizarre game of softball.

Avowed neo-Nazi James Fields Jr. was given a second sentence of life in prison for killing a woman and injuring dozens when he rammed his car into a group of people protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

On Monday, Charlottesville Circuit Judge Richard Moore sentenced Fields to the life term plus 419 years and $480,000 in fines, in keeping with a jury's recommendation.

When TV critic Emily Nussbaum was growing up in the '70s, she says television wasn't something to be analyzed, criticized and picked apart.

"Even people who loved to watch TV would put it down," she recalls. "It was considered, at best, a kind of delicious-but-bad-for-you treat, and, at worst, more like chain-smoking, like something you did by yourself that messed up your brain."

Maersk — the world's largest container shipping company — has an astonishing goal. By 2050, the company vows to send goods — everything from electronics to soybeans to sneakers — around the world with zero carbon emissions.

The environmental logic behind such a promise is straightforward: Shipping contributes substantially to global climate change.

But the business case is not as obvious.

At a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso, Texas, an agent told a Honduran family that one parent would be sent to Mexico while the other parent and their three children could stay in the United States, according to the family. The agent turned to the couple's youngest daughter — 3-year-old Sofia, whom they call Sofi — and asked her to make a choice.

The number of cases of children entering the foster care system due to parental drug use has more than doubled since 2000, according to research published this week in JAMA Pediatrics.

Updated at 7 p.m. ET

A group of four women lawmakers responded to attacks by President Trump with a news conference of their own on Monday evening.

Earlier in the day, Trump said the members of Congress are "free to leave" the country if they are unhappy with the U.S. and accused them of hating America.

Updated at 11:50 a.m. ET

China's economy grew at the slowest pace in 27 years, as the trade war with the United States takes a toll.

The second-largest economy in the world grew 6.2% in the second quarter of 2019, a drop from 6.4% in the first quarter, according to data released by the Chinese government.

The pace of growth in the second quarter was at its slowest since 1992.

Updated at 3:35 p.m. ET

The Trump administration is moving forward with a tough new asylum rule in its campaign to slow the flow of Central American migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Asylum-seeking immigrants who pass through a third country en route to the U.S. must first apply for refugee status in that country rather than at the U.S. border.

The restriction will likely face court challenges, opening a new front in the battle over U.S. immigration policies.

Multimillionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein will receive a bail decision on Thursday over allegations that he sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls. Over a decade ago, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz represented Epstein when he was fighting similar charges in Palm Beach County, Fla.

Dershowitz helped negotiate the sweetheart plea deal that allowed him a work release provision throughout his 13 months in Palm Beach County Jail.