Rural communities outside America's cities are falling further behind in the race to vaccinate against COVID-19 as President Joe Biden's Fourth of July goal to reach 70% of American adults looms over the horizon. Alaska is the sole state where average rural rates of fully vaccinated people have grown faster than urban rates since April 19, when every state opened shots to anybody 16 and older, according to NPR's latest analysis of county-level vaccination data from the Centers for Disease...

A commercial lobster diver says he escaped relatively unscathed after nearly being swallowed by a humpback whale, in a biblical-sounding encounter that whale experts describe as rare but plausible. Michael Packard, 56, said in local interviews and on social media that he was diving off the coast of Provincetown, Mass., on Friday morning when the whale suddenly scooped him up. "I was in his closed mouth for about 30 to 40 seconds before he rose to the surface and spit me out," Packard later...

College sports are about to change dramatically and Congress needs to act quickly in order to ensure fairness. That was the message Wednesday on Capitol Hill, at a lengthy senate hearing about new state laws that'll allow college athletes to make money off the use of their name, image and likeness. The money would not be from the athlete's school. On July 1, at least five state laws go into effect, allowing college athletes to, among other things, get paid for endorsements, personal...