NPR News

The Department of Homeland Security has announced new guidelines to track child marriages among immigrants in the United States.

While debates on immigration have focused on national security, and President Trump's determination to build a wall along the southern border has resulted in a national emergency declaration, the new rules address a far lesser known immigration issue.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, there is no minimum age requirement for a person to request or benefit from visa applications in which spouses or fiancées are minors.

The Senate Finance Committee is launching a bipartisan investigation into how a conservative think tank aided Maria Butina, the admitted Russian agent who sought political influence through her ties with the National Rifle Association.

Butina pleaded guilty to acting as a foreign agent in the United States in December, and her alleged Russian government handler, Alexander Torshin, was sanctioned by the U.S. in April 2018.

A federal judge imposed a gag order on Friday in the case of Republican political consultant Roger Stone.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered that lawyers and others in the case must not talk about it publicly in ways that "pose a substantial likelihood of material prejudice" and specifically they must not use the area outside court in Washington, D.C., as a venue for those kinds of statements.

Updated at 11:53 p.m. ET

A gunman who entered the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, Ill., on Friday afternoon, armed with a handgun, killed five civilians, officials announced at a news conference. Five police officers were also wounded.

In declaring a national emergency Friday, President Trump tried to underscore the urgency of what he calls a national security crisis along the U.S. border with Mexico, while at the same time downplaying the gravity of his response.

Kansas U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran is one of several Republicans who expressed concern about President Donald Trump’s declaration Friday of a national emergency to fund construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In a desolate stretch of desert outside Yuma, Ariz., there's a spot where more than 350 migrants, including children, burrowed under the steel border fence a few weeks ago.

"This only goes down just about probably another foot, this steel," said Anthony Porvaznik, chief patrol agent for the Yuma sector of the Border Patrol. He says smugglers tried digging in more than a dozen spots, looking for places where the ground was soft enough.

"This is very sandy," Porvaznik said. "It's like that all the way down, and so it was easy to dig."

Flanked by sheriffs and gun safety advocates, Democratic lawmakers unveiled an extreme risk protection order bill — a measure aimed at reducing gun violence — at a press conference at the state Capitol on Wednesday.

"We're on the clock right now folks," Rep. Tom Sullivan (D), whose son was killed in the Aurora theater shooting, said. "... If we keep talking about it, people are going to keep dying and this is a simple thing to do to save lives."

A mayor from another city that tried to land big tech companies might be starting to look pretty smart after Amazon canceled its plans for a New York City headquarters. Activists and local politicians said New York had given up too much for too little.

But it doesn't have to be that way, says San Jose, Calif., Mayor Sam Liccardo, who refused to offer Amazon and another tech giant, Google, any incentives to locate in his city.

After more than 20 years, an early tool of genetic engineering in crops is doing more than just killing pests. It’s providing environmental benefits, too, according to a new study in the journal Biological Control.

Before Laura Kelly took over as governor, the Kansas Department for Children and Families overhauled which private companies would manage its child welfare system, and how the department would oversee their work.

Kelly put the brakes on that whole plan in December.

On Thursday, she announced she’d be rolling back major parts of the changes. She canceled grants with two companies and said the state would renegotiate grants with three companies.

Rape and sexual violence in Sierra Leone are now a national emergency.

Last week President Julius Maada Bio declared it so, and outlined ambitious plans — like free hospital care to rape victims, creating special police and court divisions devoted to sexual violence and a national phone hotline — to address the problem.

Updated at 4:28 p.m. ET

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the NFL have reached an agreement to settle his allegations that league teams colluded to deny him a contract after his controversial protests in which he took a knee during the national anthem.

The league has also reached a deal with Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid over similar collusion allegations.

Two women who were detained and asked to show identification after speaking Spanish in a convenience store in Montana are suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection, saying the CBP agent violated their constitutional rights when he detained them and asked to see their identification.

Updated at 5:50 p.m. ET

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The decision grants the administration's request for an immediate review of a lower court's ruling that stopped plans for the question. A hearing is expected to be held in April.

Updated at 9:55 p.m. ET

Nigerians who were due to cast ballots Saturday to choose a new leader from a field of some 70 candidates will now have to wait until Feb. 23. Election officials blame the delay simply on "challenges."

The Associated Press cites reports that "voting materials had not been delivered to all parts of the country."

Two men have emerged as the clear front-runners. Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari is trying to hold on to his position, and opposition leader Atiku Abubakar is his fiercest challenger.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised a "befitting reply" for perpetrators and their supporters in the wake of a bombing in Kashmir described as the deadliest in three decades that killed at least 40 Indian police troops and wounded nearly 20 more.

In the attack on Thursday on the outskirts of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle with explosives into caravan carrying paramilitary troopers.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld said Friday he is thinking about challenging President Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.

Weld, a moderate Republican, was twice elected governor. He supports abortion rights and was an early proponent of gay rights.

He resigned his post as governor after being offered the ambassadorship to Mexico, but the nomination stalled in the Senate after opposition from other Republicans.

Weld then ran as the Libertarian Party's vice presidential nominee in 2016 on a ticket with former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

In 2016, the World Health Organization triumphantly declared the Americas to be the first region on the globe to eradicate measles. One year later, a measles outbreak erupted in Venezuela.

"And consequently, since June of 2017 we've seen upwards of almost 6,500 cases [in Venezuela]," says Robert Linkins from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Linkins is the branch chief of Accelerated Disease Control and Vaccine Preventable Disease Surveillance at the CDC, and in that role he's the CDC's top person on measles globally.

On this week's Colorado Edition, we hear from the man who killed a mountain lion in self-defense, explore uncertainty over the U.S. military's transgender policy and recap the Denver teachers strike. Plus, did you know there's a matchmaker... for zoo animals?

From the campaign trail to election night victory speeches to promises in the halls of the Texas Capitol, property taxes are the top priority for lawmakers. Depending on which metric you use, the state generally ranks in the top 5 nationally for having the highest property taxes. Lawmakers say they have to do something to lower those bills.

But what is that something?