Bill Monroe, known as the "Father of Bluegrass Music," was born 100 years ago this week in rural Kentucky. He influenced early country music and rock 'n' roll, as well as the hard-driving, high-lonesome genre he created — bluegrass.

William Smith Monroe was a man of few words, but he opened up to fellow bluegrass musician Alice Gerrard, who recorded him in 1969.

The United States Tennis Association announced today that Serena Williams would be fined $2,000, after she verbally abused chair umpire Eva Asderaki during a U.S. Open match yesterday.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan is visiting the three Arab countries that this year ousted long-time authoritarian leaders — Libya, Egypt and Tunisia. Turkey is playing an increasingly prominent role in the region and is looking to start on good terms with the new leaders in these countries.

Sort of like Washington, D.C., in the summer:

"It would feel like a steam bath — hot, sticky and beyond uncomfortable."

That's how The Associated Press describes the way scientists are describing "HD 85512 b ... a newly discovered planet about 35 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vela."

They are all retirees, and they have all volunteered for a single, dangerous mission: to replace younger workers at the badly damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

The Skilled Veterans Corps for Fukushima consists of more than 500 seniors who have signed up for a job that has been called courageous — and suicidal.

Kazuko Sasaki, a 72-year-old grandmother, is one of those ready to serve.

"My generation built these nuclear plants. So we have to take responsibility for them. We can't dump this on the next generation," she says.

The fall of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi has brought about a dramatic change on the radio dial in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

In the past, Libyans could only tune in to the government stations. Foreign broadcast signals were blocked. And what the state-run stations offered was tightly controlled and laden with pro-Gadhafi propaganda.

Now, the airwaves that used to only carry four state-run stations — broadcasting only in Libyan Arabic as a mouthpiece for the Gadhafi regime — are filled with broadcasts from across the Mediterranean and neighboring Tunisia.

One of the nation's largest jails has quit holding inmates extra time when requested by immigration officials.

Disregarding those federal requests is the new policy of Cook County, Ill. The county enacted the measure even though the jail holds sometimes help officials deport dangerous illegal immigrants.

And some other counties may soon follow suit.

Ordinance Prevents Jails From Complying

The Republican presidential candidates meet for a debate Monday night. For more, Michele Norris talks to NPR's Don Gonyea.

An explosion at a nuclear waste processing plant in France has left one person dead and four others injured — one seriously. The French nuclear authority says the blast was contained within a furnace, and there no leak of radioactive material. The plant, which lies about 25 miles north of Avignon, is not involved in electricity production and has no nuclear reactors.

We stumbled upon a tiny report in this week's New Scientist, that is so exquisitely gross, we can't help but pass it on.

In a new study published in the journal Acta Zoologica, Johan Billen of the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), Belgium and his team report on a kind of ant that's especially evolved to kill itself in order to save the nest.