The U.S. Supreme Court punted Monday on its biggest decision of its term so far. The justices had been expected to rule on the limits of partisan gerrymandering.

Instead, the court sidestepped the major issues on technical grounds, sending the issue back to the lower courts for further examination.

Updated at 1:50 p.m. ET

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong took ownership of the Los Angeles Times in style with a full-page note to his readers and his new employees on Sunday.

Soon-Shiong bought the newspaper from its former corporate owners, the Chicago-based Tronc newspaper company. NPR spoke to Soon-Shiong about his ambitions for the newspaper.

German police arrested the CEO of Audi, Rupert Stadler, on Monday in connection with the ongoing investigation into Volkswagen's diesel emissions scandal.

Munich prosecutors ordered a search of Stadler's home last week, and officials told the BBC that "they had acted because of a risk that Mr Stadler might seek to suppress evidence."

Updated at 12:35 p.m. ET

"We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says, as top Trump administration officials call out critics of its "zero tolerance" policy that calls for separating families who cross the border illegally.

When Congress approved giving $380 million to states to bolster the security of their elections, state officials were caught off guard but extremely grateful. Elections are notoriously underfunded and haven't seen a windfall like this from the federal government in more than a decade.

But getting that money out to all the states, and then into the hands of localities that run the elections, with enough time to have a meaningful effect on the 2018 midterm elections is a difficult proposition.

In 1841, small-town parish clerk William Hinton got his first look at an English locomotive in action. Writer Julian Young recorded Hinton's breathless reaction: "Well Sir, that was a sight to have seen; but one I never care to see again! How awful! I tremble to think of it! I don't know what to compare it to, unless it be to a messenger ... with a commission to spread desolation and destruction over this fair land! How much longer shall knowledge be allowed to go on increasing?"