Ian Stewart

Toni Morrison, Nipsey Hussle, John Paul Stevens – a number of notable people died in 2019. NPR's Weekend Edition wants to highlight the lives of people whose deaths didn't make the headlines, but who lived exceptional lives. Was there a relative, friend, or coworker you lost this year who you think others should know about?

Click here to tell us their story and we might share it on-air and online.

Over the past few years, Miami native Trenise Bryant has seen her neighborhood, the African-American enclave of Liberty City, start to change. Bryant grew up in one of the area's oldest public housing projects, Liberty Square. Lately, rents have gone up, and Bryant has seen people priced out and forced to move away.

One factor driving this, Bryant says, is climate change.

Every week, Jorge needs to earn $364.08. His handwritten budget is taped to the wall of the windowless shed where he lives in Miami. Inside the tiny space, there's barely enough room for a twin bed and a battered dresser; his kitchen consists of a blender and a microwave. There's no running water, and mosquitoes fly in through the open door.

The little that he earns needs to cover more than just his living expenses — Jorge has diabetes and cancer to manage, and he needs to support his five children back home in Ecuador.

Updated Jan. 25 at 1:22 p.m. ET

A 21-year-old man has been charged with five counts of first-degree murder after police say he opened fire inside a Sebring, Fla., bank on Wednesday afternoon and killed five women.

Updated at 10:10 p.m. ET

At least five people were killed when a man opened fire Wednesday afternoon in a bank in Sebring, Fla., according to officials.

At a brief news conference, Sebring Police Chief Karl Hoglund named 21-year-old Zephen Xaver, of Sebring, as the suspect. Xaver is in police custody.

Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET

Police in Phoenix say they have arrested a man suspected of assaulting and impregnating an incapacitated woman who gave birth at a long-term care facility.

Nathan Sutherland, 36, a licensed practical nurse has been charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of vulnerable adult abuse, according to officials who made the announcement at a news conference Wednesday.

In 2018, Americans watched as California towns were incinerated by fires, hurricanes devastated coastal communities and a government report sounded the alarm about the impacts of a changing climate.

All those factors contributed to significant changes in perceptions of global warming in the U.S., according to the authors of a new public opinion survey.

The proportion of Americans who said global warming is "personally important" to them jumped from 63 percent to 72 percent from March to December of last year.

Updated 5:17 p.m. ET

President Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base on Saturday as the remains of four Americans killed earlier this week by a suicide bomber in Syria were returned to the U.S.

Trump, who met privately with family members of the four Americans, was joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan.

Updated Jan. 21 at 9:55 a.m. ET

For weeks, a crackdown on fuel theft by the Mexican government has led to widespread gas shortages and miles-long lines at gas stations.

So when a pipeline in the state of Hidalgo burst open Friday, sending a spray of fuel into the air, area residents rushed to collect it in buckets and barrels.

Two hours later, the gushing pipeline exploded, turning what had been an excited gathering into a hellish inferno.

Officials in Columbia, S.C., have evacuated more than 400 people from a public housing complex after finding multiple gas leaks that constituted an "imminent danger to life."

Two men were discovered dead in separate units on Thursday morning. Police haven't confirmed the deaths are tied to the gas leaks, but say they don't suspect foul play.

Updated at 9:50 p.m. ET

A special celestial event is on the calendar for this Sunday night and experts are already raving:

"A full 62 luxurious minutes of totality," says Sky and Telescope Magazine.

"The Only Total Lunar Eclipse of 2019," promises NASA.

"UNPRESIDENTED," reads the giant headline. "TRUMP HASTILY DEPARTS WHITE HOUSE, ENDING CRISIS."

That shocking story was delivered on crisp newsprint to commuters around Washington, D.C., on Wednesday under what appeared to be the signature banner of The Washington Post.

Online, a website bearing an eerie similarity to the Post's described a secretive resignation, global celebrations and the swearing in of Mike Pence as president.

For more than a century, a 52-foot obelisk has stood in the center of Birmingham, Ala., a monument to Confederate soldiers and sailors who fought in the Civil War.

In 2017, amid a national reckoning on racial violence and Confederate symbolism, the city's mayor decided the monument should be covered up. Tall plywood walls were installed around its base, obscuring inscriptions on the pedestal.

For the first time in U.S. history, a leading cause of deaths — vehicle crashes — has been surpassed in likelihood by opioid overdoses, according to a new report on preventable deaths from the National Safety Council.

Americans now have a 1 in 96 chance of dying from an opioid overdose, according to the council's analysis of 2017 data on accidental death. The probability of dying in a motor vehicle crash is 1 in 103.

Early Saturday morning, nearly 200 people stood in the freezing cold outside a Maryland supermarket waiting to collect a small allotment of free food.

They were federal employees, there to pick up fresh produce and canned goods from the Capital Area Food Bank, which organized five pop-up food distribution centers for government workers.