There's a new cop on the money beat: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and it opens its doors Thursday. It was created by the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, signed by the president one year ago.

The bureau will look out for the financial best interests of American consumers. And while it's popular with the public, it remains controversial.

The idea behind the consumer bureau was simple: If there's an agency to protect consumers from buying an exploding toaster, there should be one that protects them from signing up for an exploding mortgage.

For Ana Isela Martinez Amaya, May 26 began like any other school morning.

Martinez got up at 5:45 a.m. and got her 6-year-old daughter ready for school. At 6:30, the two of them left their house in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in a tan 2003 Ford Focus. They headed toward the Stanton Street Bridge crossing into Texas.

Martinez is a teacher at a bilingual charter school in El Paso. She had just been named the Teacher of the Year at her school.

Two independent teams of researchers have come up with the most accurate genetic maps ever made — a feat that should make the search for genes associated with diseases easier.

To understand why an accurate genetic map is useful, imagine you are trying to locate a house in Topeka, Kan., but the only map you have is one of the Interstate Highway System. You could probably find Topeka, but finding the specific house you want would take a lot of trial and error.

Before a student can start school in Kentucky, the child must get a clean bill of health from a dentist.  However, many Kentucky kids, especially the children of Spanish-speaking farm workers have little access to dental care.  In response, free screenings will soon be offered in Lexington

NASA announced today that the Hubble telescope had discovered a fourth moon around Pluto. The moon, tentatively called P4, joins Hyrdra, Nix and Charon.

NPR reporters are traveling the far North to report for an upcoming series on the thawing Arctic and what that's going to mean to nations in the region. Click here to see their dispatches. NPR's Moscow correspondent David Greene sent this curious photograph:

At first glance, the presidential candidates' quarterly financial reports reveal three winners.

President Obama's fundraising operation outperformed all of the Republican campaigns combined. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney raised four times as much as the next closest Republican, Rep. Ron Paul. And Rep. Michele Bachmann, despite not announcing officially until mid-June, swept in enough money to startle rivals who had been in the race much longer.

But look deeper, and the picture gets more complicated, especially among the Republicans.

Shots has often wondered if restaurant menus are, in fact, accurate when it comes to calories. Could that pasta with scallops and shrimp really only be 650 calories? Is a slice of veggie pizza just 208 calories? And is the grilled salmon bowl with brown rice a more healthful choice?

Back when Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss were at Harvard, the twins took their accusations that Zuckerberg had stolen their idea for Facebook to the then president of the school Larry Summers.

The twins have been involved in a years-long legal battle with Facebook and have refused to walkaway with a $65 million settlement.