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Dolly Parton was brilliant, melodic, and trailblazing. Her lifetime art was to be both spangly and utterly genuine. When Dolly died this week, I thought I could see her bright, wide smile shining down from the sky, with the clouds billowing into her signature blond curls. Dolly Parton was lauded and loved. Tributes poured in as they would for a head of state—more, I daresay, than many heads of state.

MUKUNGA RIVER VALLEY, Rwanda — For Naomi Nibishaka, there's life before the bridge, and life after the bridge. On a sunny summer day, the 76-year-old crosses the rushing waters of the Mukungwa river on a pedestrian suspension bridge. Made of concrete and cable, it's only 230 feet long — roughly the length of a city block. But it's a game changer. The bridge connects two settlements in a valley in northwest Rwanda that are separated by the river. People cross for all sorts of reasons.

Ahmed Hrustanovic reflects on Ratko Mladic's death with NPR's Scott Simon. All of Hrustanovic's adult male relatives died in the Srebrenica Massacre engineered by Mladic.

Six months into the war, NPR's Scott Simon speaks to PBS News special correspondent Reza Sayah about life inside Iran, just as President Trump promised even tougher sanctions this week.

Maine's lobster fishing industry is closely integrated with processors across the border in Canada. People who depend on it are feeling whiplash from on-again, off-again tariff threats.

People have been avoiding lettuce this summer. NPR's Scott Simon talks with Washington Post columnist Tamar Haspel, who says we really should just skip the lettuce, permanently.

Stay up to date with our Up First newsletter, sent every weekday morning. The social media company Meta has agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion in a settlement in a federal lawsuit alleging the company's social media platforms have harmed children and teens. The company denies the allegations, but has agreed to make a suite of changes to its social platforms — Facebook and Instagram — to make them less compelling and potentially dangerous to minors.

Netia McCray recalls how excited she was to join the federal advisory committee on long COVID in 2025. She had been diagnosed in the early days of the pandemic — and symptoms such as fatigue, heart palpitations and shortness of breath had become a frustrating but inescapable part of life.

Nepal officials say the death toll continues to rise in Wednesday's floods that washed away communities in Nepal and Tibet, which is held by China. Thousands are missing in both areas. Around 90 Americans are among the people unaccounted for, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. Geological Survey says a glacial collapse triggered the floods. The State Department said it would provide the region with $500,000 in aid for the rescue efforts.

When Nadia Rawlinson came to be a co-owner of the Chicago Sky, Chicago's WNBA franchise, in 2023, she said her corporate career made her empathetic to the experiences of many players on the team. "I'm an African-American woman who has been an executive in the private sector for my entire career [and] recently came into sports ownership about four or five years ago," said Rawlinson, who is also chairman of the team.