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An estimated 11 million immigrants live and work in the United States illegally. Their fate is one of the big policy questions facing the country. The story of how that population grew so large is a long one that's mostly about Mexico, and full of unintended consequences.

Prior to the 1920s, the U.S. had few restrictions on immigration, save for a few notable exclusions.

"Basically, people could show up," says Jeffrey Passel, of the Pew Research Center.

For workers in Mexico, crossing into the U.S. made a lot of economic sense, then and now.

Brazil's recession was already of historic proportions. Today, government figures confirm that it has grown even worse.

The economy last year actually dipped more sharply than expected. The national gross domestic product contracted by 3.6 percent in 2016, statistics agency IBGE said Tuesday.

Women won't be coming to work. That's what Americans may think that International Women's Day means this year.

The event, which has been celebrated for 106 years, has no single organizer or agenda. That's what makes it so effective, says Terry McGovern, professor and chair of population and family health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "There's not an imposed agenda. It allows women to define what the day means for them, and what needs to happen for them to achieve equality."

In his address to Congress last week, President Trump said this about the kinds of people his immigration agents are singling out for deportation:

"We are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our very innocent citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak."

Then why, some Houstonians are asking, did immigration agents target Piro Garcia, the owner of two popular taco trucks on the city's Southside?

A federal judge has denied a request by the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River tribes to halt construction of the final piece of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Israel has passed a new law that allows it to bar entry to foreign activists who support a boycott of the country.

The law takes aim at the BDS movement, which emerged more than a decade ago and is an acronym for "boycott, divest and sanction." The BDS movement aims to put economic pressure on Israel in support of Palestinian independence.

Would-be visitors "who support a boycott of Israel or who represent an organization that publicly calls for a boycott" may be banned, as NPR's Daniel Estrin reports from Jerusalem. Here's more from Daniel:

A record number of people, at least 166, were exonerated last year after being wrongly convicted of crimes, according to the most recent annual report from the National Registry of Exonerations.

In 1944, World War II was dragging on and the Nazi forces seemed to be faltering. Yet, in military briefings, Adolf Hitler's optimism did not wane. His generals wondered if he had a secret weapon up his sleeve, something that would change the war around in the last second.

Poachers forced their way into a French zoo and killed a southern white rhinoceros named Vince, sawing off one of his horns before fleeing into the night.

The Thoiry Zoo said police are investigating the killing of the 4-year-old animal. The poachers remain at large.

Women with breast cancer sometimes get confusing messages about soy-based foods, including soy milk, edamame and tofu.

On one hand, studies have suggested that the estrogen-like compounds in soy — called isoflavones — may inhibit the development or recurrence of breast cancer.

On the other hand, there's been concern that consuming soy-based foods can interfere with the effectiveness of breast cancer drugs such as tamoxifen.

President Trump is offering some Twitter support for the Obamacare replacement plan put forward by House Republicans.

In a tweet Tuesday morning, Trump described the GOP blueprint as "Our wonderful new Healthcare Bill." He suggested it would be a welcome change from the Affordable Care Act, which he called "a complete and total disaster."

"I'm proud to support the replacement plan released by the House of Representatives," the president said Tuesday afternoon during a White House meeting with GOP lawmakers.

Updated 5:15 p.m. ET

WikiLeaks has released thousands of files that it identifies as CIA documents related to the agency's cyber-espionage tools and programs.

The documents published on Tuesday include instruction manuals, support documents, notes and conversations about, among other things, efforts to exploit vulnerabilities in smartphones and turn smart TVs into listening devices. The tools appear to be designed for use against individual targets, as part of the CIA's mandate to gather foreign intelligence.

When you step outside after a big rainstorm and take a deep whiff of that fresh, earthy smell, you're mostly smelling a chemical called geosmin.

It's a byproduct of bacteria and fungi. And something about rain lofts the chemical — and sometimes the organisms themselves — into the air, a process that not only helps release that earthy smell but may, in very rare conditions, spread diseases.

Somehow raindrops launch tiny living things off the ground.

It took a lot to get to this point, but Republicans have released their long-awaited health care bill. (For more on the policy, check out the NPR health team's reporting over at Shots.)

The version that was released is likely to change as the bill goes through committees, but now that it's released, here are four potential challenges President Trump and Republicans face:

1. Health care is complicated

Having lived outside my native Britain for nearly 16 years, I recently lost my right to vote there. But I was still entitled to do so last June in the U.K.'s referendum on European Union membership.

When I awoke on June 24 to hear that my country had voted in favor of a Brexit, I felt bereft. So, like many other British citizens living in Germany, I decided to apply for German citizenship. I was determined to remain a member of the EU, even if the narrow majority of British voters were not.

An influential advisory panel says there's not enough evidence to determine whether annual pelvic exams should be routine for women who aren't pregnant and have no symptoms of disease.

North Korea announced Tuesday that Malaysian citizens in the country would not be allowed to leave, and Malaysia retaliated by broadening a previous travel ban on North Korean Embassy officials to cover all North Korean citizens in the country.

So, more than three weeks after the half-brother of North Korea's leader was murdered in a Kuala Lumpur airport terminal, the two countries are in a full-blown diplomatic standoff.

According to two new World Health Organization reports, about 1.7 million children under the age of 5 die each year because of environmental hazards. It's the first such estimate of the child death toll from environmental causes.

With two House committees set to take up the Republican replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, party leaders have begun trying to sell the proposal to the American public.

Leading the effort is President Trump, who met with Republican House leaders at the White House, saying he is "proud to support the replacement plan released by the House of Representatives."

Statues of Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are targeted for removal in New Orleans, after a federal appeals court approved the city's plan to change how it treats symbols of its history. Opponents of the move vow to keep fighting it in court.

Building on weeks of mounting pressure to address high prescription drug prices, three influential U.S. senators have asked the government's accountability arm to investigate potential abuses of the Orphan Drug Act.

Citing the threat posed by North Korean missiles, the U.S. military has sent the first elements of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to South Korea. China has opposed the move, which has also drawn mixed reactions in South Korea.

The shipment landed Monday night, with a C-17 cargo aircraft unloading two large mobile launchers on the tarmac at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul. The plan to install a THAAD system on the Korean peninsula was laid out by the U.S. and South Korea last summer.

President Trump has indicated several times now that his education agenda may feature a school choice program known as tax credit scholarships.

A new company is doing more than just monitoring electricity use.

It's making tracking your electrical data fun.

Steve Reed of San Diego says he signed up for free with OhmConnect. He was eager to see how much his family could cut back on electricity at times when there is a high demand for it in the area.

Soon, he got a text prompting him to lower use for an hour — from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. the next day.

Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner opened their first Waffle House in Avondale Estates, Ga., on Labor Day in 1955.

Rogers died on Friday at the age of 97. Forkner is 98 years old.

When the two met, Rogers worked for the Toddle House restaurant chain and Forkner worked in real estate.

Forkner was the businessman in the partnership that produced the all-night diner chain, and Rogers was the people person — a champion for customers and employees.

The yellow Waffle House sign has become a familiar landmark along roadways in the Southeast.

Over the weekend, President Trump accused his predecessor of "wire tapping" communications from Trump Tower in New York, where then-candidate and President-elect Trump lived and worked during the campaign and in the lead-up to the inauguration.

Former President Obama has denied the allegations, as has the former director of national intelligence. A spokesperson for Trump called on Congress to investigate the claim.

Back in the olden days – maybe five years ago in Moscow time – the Russian word for barbershop was rather quaint: parikmakherskaya, or literally, "wig shop."

While women could tend to their coiffures in ubiquitous salony krasoty, beauty salons, men had to content themselves with surly babushkas delivering awkward, cookie-cutter haircuts in spartan halls.

Bonuses paid to executives and administrators in the University of Missouri System "may violate the Missouri Constitution," the state auditor says in a new report that details hidden bonuses, "excessive" luxury vehicle allowances — and $100,000 in retention payments to a chancellor who resigned amid a furor, only to be rehired in a new post months later.

After Germany canceled a political rally featuring a Turkish minister, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan likened the German government to the Nazis.

The comments mark a "new low in German-Turkish relations," NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Berlin. German officials condemned the inflammatory remarks but "stopped short of punitive actions against Ankara over the matter," Soraya says. "That's because Germany desperately needs Turkey's help to keep asylum seekers from flooding into Europe."