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North Dakota and western Canada are producing crude oil faster than rail cars and pipelines can take it to refineries. Now, one company wants to ship it by barge across the Great Lakes. That worries environmentalists, who say a 2010 tar sands oil spill near Lake Michigan has yet to be fully cleaned up.

The government says the former vice president is mobilizing an army of youth to seize key cities in the newly independent nation. The United Nations is not sure it can protect the thousands of people staying at its compound who have been displaced by recent ethnic fighting.

NPR's Jason Beaubien and David Gilkey have covered calamities all over the globe. But the recent aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines was particularly daunting. Jason describes the extreme challenges they faced.

The Conversation Project is encouraging families to discuss their end-of-life preferences before it's too late. Founder Ellen Goodman speaks with NPR's Linda Wertheimer about helping people initiate these conversations, and why they are so important.

Global warming is pushing species like the polar bear to the brink of extinction. It's not a typical conservation problem, so one government biologist discovered the best way he could help save the great white bears was to quit his job.

A senior official in South Sudan said Saturday that government troops will attack the main rebel stronghold if the rebels turn down a proposed cease-fire. The government had offered a truce on Friday to end two weeks of ethnic violence that has killed more than a thousand people.

Children in low-income families hear dramatically fewer words, which often sets them back in school and later life. The gap was officially documented in the 1990s, but has persisted. Now an entire city is trying to close the divide.

Archaeologists are now mapping a wall in eastern China that is as much as 15 feet tall in some places, and predates the more famous barrier by 300 years. Hundreds of miles long, it was likely erected to keep neighboring Chinese dynasties from invading each other, historians say.

Stories that titillate, amuse or arouse flash-in-the-pan outrage may be more widely read and shared than solid information. Celebrity and scandals have always attracted media attention, but in the Internet age, the balance is shifting more toward entertainment.

At least 15 people were killed on Sunday when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device inside a train station in Volgograd, Russia.