NPR News

Many new cars sold today can take preemptive action to help prevent crashes — hitting the brakes before a collision, steering around obstacles or alerting drivers to hazards in their blind spots.

Those safety features — collectively known as advanced driver-assistance systems, or ADAS — reduce the risk of crashes. It might seem logical to assume that as a result, they'd reduce the cost of car insurance.

Humans have made an indelible mark on the planet. Since the mid-20th century, we've accelerated the digging of mines, construction of dams, expansion of cities and clearing of forests for agriculture — activity that will be visible in the geological record for eons to come.

Some scientists are calling it the Anthropocene era, or the age of the humans ("anthropos" is Greek for human).

When students pose a threat to themselves or others, educators sometimes need to restrain them or remove them to a separate space. That's supposed to be a last resort, and it's a controversial practice. As we've reported recently, school districts don't always follow state laws or federal reporting requirements.

Hong Kong's government has said it will indefinitely shelve a bill which would allow criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China.

The bill triggered widespread anxiety in Hong Kong about the erosion of civil liberties in the territory, and triggered protests of, by some estimates, up to a million people last Sunday, followed by violent clashes which left around 80 police and protesters injured.

People have been smoking pot to get high for at least 2,500 years. Chinese archaeologists found signs of that when they studied the char on a set of wooden bowls from an ancient cemetery in western China.

The findings are some of the earliest evidence of cannabis used as a drug.

Updated at 1:10 p.m. ET

A high-ranking Census Bureau official privately discussed the citizenship question issue with GOP redistricting strategist Thomas Hofeller in 2015, according to emails cited in a new court filing in the legal battle over the potential census question.

In the first seven days of the Women's World Cup, there have already been stunning goals, crushing defeats and no shortage of controversy. We've been following the action from France — oui, un croissant, s'il-vous plaît — and here are some of the key stories we've seen in a week of great soccer.

A very big win

The president of Mexico's National Migration Institute, the government agency that controls and supervises migration, resigned Friday.

In a brief statement, the institute announced that Tonatiuh Guillén Lopez presented his resignation to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Guillén Lopez, who thanked the Mexican president for the opportunity to serve the country, had been commissioner of the migration agency since December.

The statement did not give a reason for the resignation.