>We see you, hard-core NPR readers — just because it's summer doesn't mean it's all fiction, all the time. So we asked around the newsroom to find our staffers' favorite nonfiction from the first half of 2024. We've got biography and memoir, health and science, history, sports and more.

>LOS ANGELES – President Biden on Saturday night said he expects the winner of this year’s presidential election will likely have the chance to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court – a decision he warned would be “one of the scariest parts” if his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is successful in his bid for a second term.

A group of financial firms and investors is planning to launch a Texas-based private market stock exchange and offer traders an alternative to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

The group, which includes BlackRock, Citadel Securities and about two dozen investors, raised approximately $120 million of capital to create the Texas Stock Exchange, which would be headquartered in Dallas. They are now seeking registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to operate as a national securities exchange later this year.

“Texas and the other states in the southeast quadrant have become economic powerhouses. Combined with the demand we are seeing from investors and corporations for expanded alternatives to trade and list equities, this is an opportune time to build a major, national stock exchange in Texas,” said James Lee, founder and CEO of TXSE Group.

After a monthslong review, Texas A&M University decided not to bring back the student bonfire tradition it discontinued 25 years ago after a deadly accident, President Mark Welsh III said Tuesday.

For decades, students built a 60-foot bonfire every year ahead of football matches between A&M and the University of Texas at Austin. The tradition was suspended after tragedy struck in 1999, when a stack of logs collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 12 people and injuring dozens, some severely.

Welsh said reviving the tradition would not be in the best interest of the university.

“After careful consideration, I decided that Bonfire, both a wonderful and tragic part of Aggie history, should remain in our treasured past,” Welsh said.

>ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.

>Missouri could soon join them.

>If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.

>ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.

>Missouri could soon join them.

>If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.

>Andy Kim couldn’t rest one evening last September.

>“I didn't get a single minute of sleep that night,” he recalled in an interview with NPR, “I really felt like I had to do something and really show people that, you know, when there's these problems in our politics, that there are people who want to step up and try to fix it.”

>The problem was his fellow New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez. Last fall, Menendez was indicted for the second time on corruption charges. The news might not have rocked most voters in New Jersey — where as many as 80% of its residents said they viewed the state’s politicians as at least “a little” corrupt, according to a May 2023 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll.

>MUMBAI, India — Two days before police finally came to arrest him, the Rev. Stan Swamy recorded a video of himself speaking directly into the camera.

>"They want to put me out of the way," the ailing 83-year-old Jesuit priest said.

>His voice sounded frail. But what he was saying was explosive.

>The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, was targeting him in retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Indigenous people in Indian jails. A sociologist as well as a Roman Catholic clergyman, Swamy had recently published a study of 3,000 people jailed for being members of banned Maoist groups. He found that 97% of them had no such affiliation and that many of their trials were held without lawyers, in a language they didn't understand. He'd filed a case on their behalf in the state court of Jharkhand, where he lived. All of this had embarrassed the government, he said.

>Lawmakers are struggling to balance demands for medicinal cannabis products with a wildly growing market that is outpacing meaningful regulation.

>When Texas state Sen. Charles Perry sat down this week in a packed room at the state Capitol to hear testimony on whether to ban some psychoactive hemp products from being sold in the state, he already knew what was coming.

>The Lubbock Republican’s 2019 agricultural hemp legislation — a bipartisan, farmer-friendly bill — had opened up the state’s hemp industry and, in doing so, touched off a massive new consumable hemp market in Texas as well.

>JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its outright majority for the first time in a devastating blow for the party once led by Nelson Mandela. The ANC has dominated South African politics since winning in the first post-apartheid elections 30 years ago.

>The ANC was braced for a disappointing outcome, predicted by polls before Wednesday’s elections, but the final results are even more sobering. It won 40 percent of the vote, falling from 57% in 2019.

WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - Republican Jay Furman will face Democratic U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar in the November general election, after defeating Texas rancher Lazaro Garza on Tuesday in a party primary run-off election. Furman, a military veteran, won the Republican nomination for Texas' 28th congressional district, according to the Associated Press. He led Garza by an overwhelming 64% to 36% with 45% of votes counted.

Cuellar and his wife were indicted on federal charges accusing them of accepting bribes meant to benefit an Azerbaijani state-owned energy company and a bank based in Mexico. They have denied wrongdoing.

The University of Texas at Austin has laid off dozens employees who used to work in diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The university fired about 60 people and some the offices where they worked are expected to close by May 31, according to a joint letter from the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors and the Texas chapter of the NAACP. The firings were first reported by the Austin American-Statesman, citing people familiar with the decision.

UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell said in an email Tuesday that the school was also disbanding the Division of Campus and Community Engagement, which provided support and resources for “those who may face the most significant challenges in accessing” education, according to the department’s website. The AAUP and NAACP said about 40 of the people who were fired used to work in this department

For the first 25 minutes, the Arizona Senate's floor session on March 18th was unremarkable.

Then, state Sen. Eva Burch stood up and announced to her colleagues that she was pregnant, and planned to get an abortion.

Detailing a deeply personal medical history of past miscarriages, Burch told her fellow lawmakers that she made the decision to seek an abortion after discovering that her fetus is not viable.

"I don't think people should have to justify their abortions," Burch, a Democrat, told the chamber.