Wynne Davis

Election Day is finally here, but in a year like 2020, it's more of an election season. As of early Tuesday morning, nearly 100 million people had already cast their ballots.

According to the U.S. Elections Project, 99.7 million votes had been counted, with 35,720,830 of those being in person and 63,936,249 from returned mail-in ballots. The total marks more than 70% of the total votes in the 2016 presidential election.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, NPR wants to make sure we are answering your questions about what's happening across the country. To do that, we are launching The National Conversation with NPR's All Things Considered where we're going to have experts answer the questions you ask. Whether it's related to school closures and what that means for students' education, what we know about the current number of cases and testing, or anything else, we want to know what questions you have about the pandemic.

As the coronavirus outbreak continues across the U.S., the White House has told federal agencies and executive departments to suspend all work travel unless it is absolutely necessary.

The White House Office of Management and Budget issued new guidance on Saturday telling federal workers that "only mission-critical travel is recommended at this time."

The White House is also encouraging agencies to hold meetings by phone or video-conference whenever they can.

Dinner parties often come with expectations and stress, but author Alison Roman wants you to know it doesn't have to be that way.

In her new cookbook, Nothing Fancy, Roman stresses that preparing dinner for others doesn't have to be a piece of performance art. It's dinner and doesn't have to be perfection.

"I feel like taking the word entertaining out of something just immediately alleviates anxiety, because what I realized is also when you rebrand it as having people over, it not only makes you feel less anxious, but your guests, [too]," Roman says.

Updated at 7:45 a.m. ET Monday

Police in Kansas City, Kan., have arrested one of two men suspected of killing four people in a shooting at a bar early Sunday morning. Five others were injured during the gunfire.

Officers took Javier Alatorre into custody late Sunday afternoon, the Kansas City Police Department says. His suspected accomplice, Hugo Villanueva-Morales, remains at large and "should be considered armed and dangerous, according to the department.

When a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election was released to the public and Congress on Thursday, the effects of Russian influence efforts through social media became clearer.

Part of the information in the report included examples of material that Russian trolls used, and one particular image stood out to Ronnie Hipshire, a retired coal miner in West Virginia.

Updated at 6:30 a.m.

Law enforcement officials have identified the gunman who was shot and killed by police after a shooting that left one dead and 22 people injured during an all-night art event in Trenton, N.J. on Sunday morning.

The finance ministers from the six non-U.S. members of the G-7 issued a statement Saturday criticizing the trade actions taken by the Trump administration.

The U.S. announced Thursday that it would extend tariffs — 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum — to Canada, Mexico and the European Union, citing national security concerns as the main reason for implementation.

Updated 9:57 p.m. ET

Big black and white letters that spelled out "Preservation Hall New Orleans" made the jazz band's sousaphone hard to miss. That was, at least, until it went missing.

"If you're trying to identify the sound of the tuba in one of our recordings or when you hear us live, you listen to the low end," tuba player Ben Jaffe says. "You listen for the bass, you listen for the bottom, the thing that carries the band. It's the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of the band."

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says he would support raising the age limit to 21 for those wanting to purchase AR-15-style rifles.

"If you are 18 years of age, you should not be able to buy a rifle," Rubio said at a CNN town hall meeting Wednesday night. "I will support a law that takes that right away."

Rubio, who has an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association, said he does not support arming teachers, but does support background check regulation reform.

During her walk home from church one evening in 1944 in Abbeville, Ala., Recy Taylor was forcefully taken into the woods by six white men and then raped multiple times.

Afterward the men took her back to town, but threatened to kill her if she told anyone what happened.

But Taylor's story was shared, and when people at the NAACP heard about it they sent out an activist, Rosa Parks, to investigate.

Despite the rapists being identified, and at least one man's confession to the crimes, none were ever punished.

The Empire State building, pizza and Broadway are just a few things synonymous with New York City — and then there's the rats.

Like many other major metropolitan areas, New York City has a rat problem. But that doesn't mean that all the rats are the same.