Daniella Cheslow

Five years ago, Pastor Michelle Thomas was looking for a place to build a church in Loudoun County, which borders the Potomac River in northern Virginia.

She had no idea her search would lead her to a neglected burial ground for enslaved people, nor that her 16-year-old son would die and become, as she put it, "the first African American person who was born free to be buried in this cemetery."

At the time, Thomas was just looking to build a church for her congregation, Holy & Whole Life Changing Ministries International, a non-denominational church in Landsdowne, Va.

At a traffic circle in Maryland, Mona Eldadah watched her father plodding in circles.

Hadi Rahnama, 77, was walking around a black cube, a replica of the Kaaba shrine in Mecca, to demonstrate the tawaf, or ritual prayer, that Muslims perform when they visit the shrine on the hajj.

Eldadah corrected her father.

"No, Daddy, the idea is that the car is actually going to do the tawaf," she said. "It's a drive-through."

Dr. William Strudwick was finishing a shift at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University Hospital when his wife, Maria, texted. Their 19-year old son, Cole, wanted to join a protest five days after the killing of George Floyd.

It was 9 p.m. After dark, Strudwick weighed, he couldn't predict how protesters would act — or how police would treat his son. He wrote back one word to his wife: "No."

"When I came home, he was not there, and so I called him," Strudwick said. "And we had the conversation about him returning immediately."

Last October, Ayanda erected a prefabricated shack made of corrugated zinc sheets nailed to a wooden frame on a hillside in South African wine country outside the town of Stellenbosch. The "bungalow," as he calls it, cost him about $335. The 29-year-old father of a 3-year-old son, he had been living with his extended family in the crowded Kayamandi township down the hill. But he wanted his own space.

So he put up his shack just outside the township.

On land that he did not own.

Researchers at Scotland's University of St Andrews have coaxed a seal to "sing" the first notes of the Star Wars theme song and "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star".

In a video released by the university, a gray seal named Zola hears a computer play the first seven notes of the Star Wars theme, and then barks the tune back, stretching the last two notes.

U.S. national security adviser John Bolton on Sunday defended President Trump's move to order, then cancel a strike on Iran.

"Neither Iran nor any other hostile actor should mistake U.S. prudence and discretion for weakness," Bolton said. "No one has granted them a hunting license in the Middle East."

He spoke in Jerusalem alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bolton said he is in the Middle East for previously scheduled meetings with Israeli and Russian security advisers. And he warned Iran that the U.S. remains a formidable adversary.

The advice columnist who says President Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s says she is "very glad" she published her accusation, even as the president denied her story on Saturday and claimed he had "no idea who she is."

E. Jean Carroll spoke to NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro on Weekend Edition. She reiterated that Trump assaulted her in the '90s.

"It hurt. And it was against my will," she said.

Trump on Saturday doubled down on his denial and claimed that women have been paid to accuse him of wrongdoing.

Updated at 8:10 p.m. ET

President Trump says he is imposing new sanctions on Iran.

"We're moving forward with additional sanctions on Iran," the president said, speaking to reporters Saturday outside the White House. "Some of them are in place. As you know, we have about as strong a sanction grouping as you could possibly have on any country, but we're putting additional sanctions on."

He did not offer specifics on those sanctions but suggested sanctions could be lifted in the future.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doubled down Sunday on the claim that Iran was responsible for attacks on two tankers traveling in the Strait of Hormuz, despite furnishing no new evidence beyond a video distributed last week by the Pentagon.

Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg says the company should have been more transparent with regulators and the public when Boeing discovered a safety light was not operating as designed.

Muilenburg made the comments to reporters ahead of the Paris Air Show, Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe told NPR.

"We clearly fell short in the implementation of the AOA disagree alert and we clearly should have communicated better with our regulators and the airlines," Johndroe said in an interview by phone from Paris.

Updated at 4:15 a.m. ET on Monday:

The lights came back on late Sunday for some 44 million people in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay after the sudden collapse of an interconnected South American power grid.

At about 7 a.m., the Edesur electric utility tweeted that "a massive failure" left Argentina and Uruguay without power. Electricity was not fully restored until late in the day.

Hong Kong's top official Carrie Lam issued a rare apology Sunday for her management of an extradition bill, but stopped short of withdrawing the proposal as protests coursed through the city.

A government spokesman said Lam's handling of the bill had caused "substantial controversies and disputes in society, causing disappointment and grief."

Updated at 5:36 p.m. ET

Target's cash registers are functioning again after stores nationwide were hobbled by a computer crash.

"After an initial but thorough review, we can confirm that this was not a data breach or security-related issue, and no guest information was compromised at any time," Target announced. "We appreciate all of our store team members who worked quickly to assist guests and thank everyone involved for their patience."

A Brazilian judge has acquitted a man who stabbed then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro. The judge ruled that Adélio Bispo de Oliveira was mentally ill and ordered him held in a mental facility indefinitely, The Associated Press reports.

Brittany Smith grew up mostly in Detroit, earning a master's degree in public health from the University of Michigan. But when she and her then-boyfriend, Sam, began their careers, they ran into roadblocks. It was 2013, and Detroit was still struggling from the effects of the Great Recession. Sam Smith couldn't find full-time work. His job as a college career counselor wrapped when the campus where he worked shut down.

They began looking for an out.