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Some reports suggest Iraqi police now control the shrine of the Imam Ali in Najaf, but others say it's still in the hands of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia. Dozens have died in fighting around the mosque in the last 24 hours. Hear NPR's Ivan Watson.

A Las Vegas television station reports a voter-registration firm has been tossing out Democrats' registrations and keeping those of Republicans. The Republican National Committee admitted Wednesday that it has had a contractual agreement with the firm. Hear NPR's Michele Norris and George Knapp of KLAS TV.

A report by an independent law firm and a bankruptcy court review by former U.S. attorney general Richard Thornburgh tie ex-WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers, other executives and auditors to the firm's accounting scandal and a stock collapse that cost investors an estimated $180 billion. Hear NPR's Jack Speer.

A National Academies of Science committee finds that the Hubble Space Telescope, if repaired, is still a valuable scientific resource, and says NASA should not let it fall into disrepair and ultimately die in orbit. But NASA and the committee are at odds over what steps should be taken to save Hubble. NPR's Richard Harris reports.

Next week, the Sept. 11 commission will release a report that portrays a government and country ill-prepared for a terrorist attack. Sources say the findings fault the CIA, FBI and Bush and Clinton administrations for ignoring signs of threat, failing to share information, miscalculation and inaction. Hear NPR's Pam Fessler.

2: Health care reporter LAURIE KAYE ABRAHAM. For her new book, "Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: the Failure of Health Care in Urban America" (U of Chigago), ABRAHAM spent three years with a poor African American family studying the problem of lack of access to medical care. ABRAHAM reveals how difficult it is for a poor family to make sense of Medicaid and Medicare, and the discrimination that blacks face in trying to find health care.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker magazine, says he often finds himself in the "loser's locker room." He discusses how those kinds of moments are important to an effective profile, differences of opinion on Iraq and his latest book, Reporting.

A U.N. report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri implicates Syria in his death and raises more dark questions about Syrian involvement in Lebanon.

A draft law being reviewed by China's legislature would impose fines on the Chinese media if they report on "sudden events" without official approval from local governments. Wall Street Journal reporter Geoffrey Fowler says those "sudden events" could include things such as mining disasters, health scares and riots.

A boy in Oklahoma reeled in an alarmingly weird catch this past weekend: a pacu, the South American fish that's a cousin of the piranha — and whose humanlike teeth have long struck fear in swimmers.