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US immigration is at its highest level in decades. Many of those are arriving are women and children -- and groups that work with domestic violence shelters say they are increasingly receiving pleas for help from these women. This week, the Senate takes up the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which strengthens previous domestic violence legisation and gives refuge, counseling and legal status to foreign women married to American citizens or residents. Host Jacki Lyden follows one woman's journey from New Delhi to New York, from abused bride and spouse to safety and self-empowerment. This piece was produced by Davar Ardalan. There is more on our special page.

Host Jacki Lyden talks with NPR science reporter David Kestenbaum about whether or not the hottest item of Olympic clothing will really help athletes swim faster or just make them look faster.

NPR reporter Martin Kaste visits the beachs of Copacabana and Ipanema where Brazil's beach volleyball teams practice for the Olympics. The women's team is the favorite going into the games, which will be played for the first time this year on real sand.

Host Jacki Lyden reads leaders from listeners.

Poet and author Kathleen Norris reads an adaptation from her award-winning book, Dakota: A Spiritual Journey, telling of the geographic and social hallmarks that have drawn people to the state, and made it so great a challenge for natives and settlers to make their lives in the Dakota Territory.

Liane stops at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota's biggest tourist attraction, and speaks with a visitor who found inspiration in the mountainside carving of the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

NPR News Correspondent David Welna chronicles the story of the town of Mitchell, first built during the era of the railroad and now struggling to stay alive as farming communities in the surrounding area lose their young people to economic opportunities away from the land.

Liane tells the story of Joe Red Cloud, a sixth-generation descendant of a famed Sioux chief, who is working to build economic opportunity on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, one of the poorest communities in the United States.

Superintendant Bill Supernaugh of the Badlands National Park takes Liane on a tour of the forbidding landscape.

Liane provides an overview of the past week's news, weather and sports in South Dakota.