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Actress Uta Hagen died Wednesday at her home in Manhattan at age 84. Hagen gained her biggest Broadway success in the early 1960s with her portrayal of Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. She also taught dozens of actors how to ply their trade. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports.

A genre of fiction known variously as "street lit," "ghetto lit," "urban lit" or "hip-hop lit" has begun registering impressive sales, catching the attention of the publishing industry. Previously sold as typewritten photocopies on street corners, these pulp-fiction books now appear in slick paperbacks available in bookstores and online. Karen Michel reports.

Come up with a list of the dream writing jobs in comedy and at least three of them are likely to come up on one man's resume: Ben Karlin is executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and co-executive producer of The Colbert Report, both on the cable channel Comedy Central. Before that, Karlin was editor of the satirical weekly newspaper The Onion.

Last week David Letterman's writers went back to work. Now film company United Artists is expected to announce an interim deal with the Writers Guild of America. Entertainment Weekly reporter Lynette Rice discusses recent contract developments.

John Leguizamo, who got his start as a stand-up comedian, stars in the new Spanish-language film Cronicas. He plays a tabloid reporter from Miami who travels to Ecuador to track down a serial killer.

A witness reported a tiger was resting in someone's yard and pawing at the grass. A thorough investigation determined that the tiger was a giant stuffed animal.

As part of NPR's Changing Face of America series, a report on how the practice of adoption is changing. Traditionally, adoptions have kept the identities of both biological and adoptive parents secret from each other. But increasingly families are entering into so-called "open adoptions" where they remain in some degree of contact with the birthmother as the child grows up. NPR's Neva Grant profiles a family in Portland, Oregon, that has two openly adopted children.

American speed skating has traditionally been dominated by athletes from the upper Midwest, skaters with hair and skin as pale as the frozen lakes and rinks they raced on as kids. But that has all changed due to the popularity of in-line skating in warmer climates, NPR's Elizabeth Arnold reports for Morning Edition.

In 1933, Midwestern artist Thomas Hart Benton painted one of his famous murals for Indiana University. Today, black students are protesting a scene that depicts a Ku Klux Klan rally. The students say it's a painful image and should be removed. Defenders say it honestly reflects a regrettable part of the Hoosier State's history. Will Murphy of member station WFIU reports.

NPR's Mike Shuster reports on the latest events in the Middle East. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been unable to arrange a ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians. Powell met with Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat for the first time on Sunday. He also had a second meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He now flies to Lebanon and Syria to try to resolve tensions on Israel's northern border.