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Top level U.S. and European diplomats are visiting Nicaragua urging its president to return to a national dialogue with opposition groups. The pleas come at a time of crackdown on press and protests.

In Turkey, the government is touting its donations of medical supplies abroad even though coronavirus is taking a steep toll in Turkey and the economy is on the brink.

NPR's David Kestenbaum reports on a possible wrinkle in the space-time continuum. Really. Physicists measuring the fundamental characteristics of a subatomic particle, the muon, have come up with some very puzzling results that could punch a hole in the long-standing "standard model" of how matter is put together. And that could help usher in a completely new theory of matter, time and space. Unless, of course, some scientist has made a mistake. (4:30) (It was later revealed this was a mistake: "Well, I would say I'm responsible for the mistake. My collaborator did most of the work, but I am equally guilty of making mistakes." Toichiro Kinoshita, a physicist at Princeton University. Kinoshita's sin was to have a minus sign where he should have had a plus or maybe the other way around. He can't quite remember, though it ended up having gigantic consequences. Kinoshita and his colleague were calculating how a particular subatomic particle behaves when it's stuck in a magnetic field. The particle, it turns out, wobbles like a toy top at a particular frequency. Kinoshita enlisted hundreds of computers and, after a decade of heroic work, had precisely predicted how fast it should wobble according to the laws of physics. Last winter, other physicists who were out measuring the wobble found it differed significantly from Kinoshita's prediction. In the clockwork world of physics, this was potentially a huge finding, signaling something new and mysterious, except that it wasn't. Kinoshita traced his error to a tiny quirk in a computer program he was using. He hadn't checked that bit, in part because other physicists using a different approach had gotten the same answer."

A top Russian figure skater was allowed to compete despite testing positive for a banned substance before the Games. Kamila Valieva, age 15, helped Russia win the team event earlier this week.

People living near the Susquehanna River in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., are returning to their homes as river waters recede. But flooding still threatens other communities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other parts of the Northeast.

Ever since the dawn of digital delivery, we've been hearing about how the single-song download is killing the album. But at the Grammy Awards, which take place Sunday night in Los Angeles, there's still a category for Album of the Year. Tom Moon profiles the nominees.

Pizza makers in New York are remembering Domenico "Dom" Demarco, the founder of the beloved Brooklyn pizzeria Di Fara, who has died at the age of 85.

Research shows that sleep deprivation makes people emotionally volatile and temperamental — a fact that hasn't escaped the notice of some reality TV producers, who deny contestants sleep in an effort to kick up televised drama.

A mastodon tooth washed up on a California beach and then went missing. A local museum tried to track it down.

The Justice Department and the CIA's Inspector General are both investigating the agency's 2005 destruction of videotapes of the interrogations of top al-Qaida operatives. The Justice Department has already started what it calls a "preliminary inquiry" into the matter.