NPR News

A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday heard arguments from Roger Stone's lawyers, who are pushing for a new trial arguing that the jury foreperson was politically biased.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson last week sentenced Stone to more than three years in prison after a jury convicted him for obstructing a House investigation and lying to Congress.

Federal aviation regulators issued a new round of safety fixes for Boeing's beleaguered 737 Max jetliners, mandating repairs to sections of the planes that could make them vulnerable to lightning strikes and other activity which might result in engine malfunction.

The proposed fix issued by the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday said certain panels on the planes, including the metallic layer that serves as part of the shielding for aircraft wiring, is susceptible to potential "electromagnetic effects of lightning strikes or high intensity radiated fields."

Stocks fell sharply for a second day in a row. The Dow dropped 879 points on Tuesday, after tumbling more than 1,000 points on Monday.

While the coronavirus outbreak in China appears to have peaked, investors are worried by the growing number of cases in other countries, as well as a warning from U.S. health officials that the virus could hit closer to home.

Just last week, the S&P 500 stock index was hitting record highs. Now it's fallen more than 6% in just the last two days.

Irresponsibility — by carmaker Tesla and by a Tesla driver — contributed to a deadly crash in California in 2018, federal investigators say.

The driver appears to have been playing a game on a smartphone immediately before his semi-autonomous 2017 Model X accelerated into a concrete barrier. Distracted by his phone, he did not intervene to steer his car back toward safety and was killed in the fiery wreck.

But Tesla should have anticipated that drivers would misuse its "autopilot" feature like this and should build in more safeguards to prevent deadly crashes.

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET

Federal health officials issued a blunt message Tuesday: Americans need to start preparing now for the possibility that more aggressive, disruptive measures might be needed to stop the spread of the new coronavirus in the U.S.

The strongly worded warning came in response to outbreaks of the virus outside China, including in Iran, Japan, South Korea and Italy, which officials say have raised the likelihood of outbreaks occurring stateside.

The humanitarian crisis in Syria has reached a "horrifying new level," according to a U.N. official.

That's how Mark Lowcock, the United Nations undersecretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, described conditions in northwest Syria based on eyewitness accounts from U.N. staff in and around Idlib province in northwest Syria.