NPR News

Later this month, Bahareh Shargi will mark an anniversary: It will be three years that her husband has been stuck in Iran.

Iranian authorities first imprisoned Emad Shargi, a U.S. citizen, on April 23, 2018. Though they eventually released him on bail, they did not allow him to leave the country and later returned him to Tehran's Evin prison. Now his family hopes that speaking out may help him.

President Biden's infrastructure train is leaving the station.

In remarks Wednesday pushing for his sweeping $2.3 trillion plan, Biden said he wants to meet with Republicans about it and hopes to negotiate in "good faith" — a political tenet that hasn't been practiced much in Washington, D.C., in recent years.

But Biden is not waiting around.

"We will not be open to doing nothing," the president said. "Inaction, simply, is not an option."

Translation: Get on board or step aside.

It is hard to qualify for Medicaid as an adult in Missouri. Childless adults aren't eligible for coverage through the state's program — dubbed MO HealthNet — at all, and parents can't make more than 21% of the federal poverty level: $5,400 in 2021 for a family of three.

That was all set to change on July 1 because of a constitutional amendment voters approved last summer that made Missouri the 38th state to expand Medicaid coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Childless adults would be covered if they made under around $17,770.

Senior Special Agent James Reyerson of Minnesota's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is testifying in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, in last May's death of George Floyd.

The BCA routinely investigates police use-of-force incidents in Minnesota. Chauvin is facing charges of second- and third-degree murder as well as manslaughter. Video footage from the scene showed Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd's neck area for more than nine minutes.

Virginia's Democratic-controlled Legislature passed a bill legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana on Wednesday, making it the 16th state to take the step.

Under Virginia's new law, adults ages 21 and over can possess an ounce or less of marijuana beginning on July 1, rather than Jan. 1, 2024. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, proposed moving up the date, arguing it would be a mistake to continue to penalize people for possessing a drug that would soon be legal.

Biological fathers will soon be required to pay half of a woman's pregnancy-related medical costs under a new Utah law that advocates believe to be the first of its kind in the United States.

Tiger Woods crashed in February because he was driving at an unsafe speed and was unable to negotiate a curve on the road, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said Wednesday.

The legendary golfer sustained a compound fracture to one leg in addition to other injuries in the single-vehicle crash Feb. 23 in the Los Angeles area.

Saks Fifth Avenue is going fur-free, becoming the latest fashion seller to take animal-fur clothes and accessories off its shelves.

Growing up in East Jerusalem, Palestinian cookbook author Reem Kassis never expected to enter the food industry. For her, the kitchen represented a "life sentence" for women.

Instead, Kassis moved to the U.S. when she was 17, first studying business at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and then at the London School of Economics. It wasn't until she had a child that she began to see the kitchen as a "powerful place" where she could share important stories about food and culture with her daughter.