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NPR's Nina Totenberg has the second of two reports on what to expect when the Senate begins considering President Bush's nominees to the federal bench. There are 100 vacancies to fill, largely because the Republican- controlled Senate refused to even consider many of President Clinton's nominations. Today's report focuses on the main players. White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales heads a team of young conservative lawyers who are compiling a list of nominees. Republican Sen. Orin Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the committee, are trying to work out a set of confirmation rules acceptable to senators from both parties.

Writer and retired New York city firefighter Dennis Smith arrived at the site of the World Trade Center towers on the day of the attacks to volunteer with the rescue effort. His new book Report from Ground Zero (Viking) is composed of first-person testimony of rescuers who were there when the towers were attacked and fell, and who helped in the efforts afterwards. Smith spent 18 years with the fire department. He is the author of nine books, including the bestseller Report from Engine Co. 82 about his years in the city's most dangerous and active firehouse.

NPR's Senior Foreign Correspondent Anne Garrels was one of the few journalists still in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq. Often she reported from her room at the Palestine Hotel as bombs flew overhead. In her new book, Naked in Baghdad, she writes about the war and its aftermath. The book also contains the e-mails that her husband Vint Lawrence sent to friends keeping them informed of her daily life in Baghdad. Garrels has also reported from the former Soviet republics, China, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Israel, and is the recipient of the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University award and the Overseas press Club award.

NPR's Peter Kenyon, reporting from Baghdad, reports a senior United Nations envoy has resumed talks in Baghdad aimed at selecting the members of an interim Iraqi government that would be granted limited authority by U.S. occupation authorities at the end of June. Some members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed governing council have been sharply critical of Lakhdar Brahimi's mission, saying it violates the country's interim constitution. Many, if not most, of the council members are likely to lose their jobs when the new government is formed.

Robert O'Harrow, Jr. is a reporter for The Washington Post and an associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting. His new book is about how the government is creating a national intelligence infrastructure with the help of private companies as part of homeland security. Huge data-mining operations are contracted by the government to gather information on our daily lives. Information technology has enabled retailers, marketers, and financial institutions to gather and store data about us. O'Harrow's new book about this security-industrial complex is No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society.

A new report shows how increased federal funding during the pandemic impacted tribal colleges and universities.

As climate change brings more drought and flooding, food prices are expected to keep spiking. Such spikes affect the poor the most, but especially the poor in Africa and the Middle East, says a new Oxfam report.

On Thursday the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the state community college system had announced a “preferred candidate,” Jay Box, in its search...

Some parts of the program come "close to the line of constitutional reasonableness," so the board is offering some proposals to fix those concerns.

Anybody found to have manipulated Veterans Affairs records "will be held accountable," President Obama said Wednesday. He also defended Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki.