NPR News

The National Inventors Hall of Fame has been around for nearly five decades, but hasn't included any Black women in its ranks — until now.

Engineer Marian Croak and the late ophthalmologist Dr. Patricia Bath will make history as part of the next cohort of inductees, the nonprofit announced this past week. They are the first Black female inventors to receive this honor, which has been bestowed on some 600 other innovators both living and dead.

BERLIN – On the day after Germany's election, whichever party has won the most votes typically takes charge of enticing other parties with smaller shares of the vote to form a new government. But Sunday's election results were far from typical.

History is being made tonight at New York's Metropolitan Opera: For the first time in 138 years, the eminent company will present an opera by a Black composer. After 18 months of pandemic-canceled performances, the nation's premier opera house will open its new season with Fire Shut Up in My Bones, composed by Terence Blanchard.

People lick their fingers, touch money and hand it to you. They take money out of bras or hand you bills soaking wet with lake water. When you become a grocery cashier, says Rachel Baker, you quickly learn that retail is really filthy.

The green metal roof on Mary Bradshaw's house gleams amid scorched earth and dead, blackened trees. All of the surrounding homes burned in last year's Beachie Creek Fire in Oregon's Santiam Canyon, but hers was untouched.

"We were shocked," Bradshaw said. "Having seen what the fire did, we really didn't expect it to be standing."

NEW DELHI — Thousands of Indian farmers blocked traffic on major roads and railway tracks outside of the nation's capital on Monday, marking one year of demonstrations against government-backed laws that they say will shatter their livelihoods.

The farmers have renewed their protests with calls for a nationwide strike on the anniversary of the legislation's passage. The drawn-out demonstrations have posed one of the biggest political challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swept the polls for the second time in 2019.

When Britney Spears went before a judge in June, she bristled as she told of being forced into psychiatric care that cost her $60,000 a month. Though the pop star's circumstances in a financial conservatorship are unusual, every year hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients receive involuntary care, and many are stuck with the bill.

Top Congressional Democrats worked through the weekend to untangle a snarl of competing demands from members of their own party on fiscal issues while continuing to battle Republicans over the nation's debt.