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New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd step down in the wake of a scandal involving former reporter Jayson Blair. Raines and Boyd faced intense criticism after Blair was accused of various ethical transgressions during his four years at The Times. Hear Jack Schaffer of Slate magazine.

A cache of Baath Party records discovered in a party office in Baghdad shows how Saddam Hussein used his political base to maintain an iron grip on power. Some of the memos also provide a glimpse into how Iraqi society was suppressed for so long. NPR's Scott Simon reports.

The U.S. military signs a truce with an Iranian opposition group the State Department had previously labeled a terrorist organization. The Mujahedeen Khalq, some 10,000 armed fighters, operates just inside Iraq with the intent of overturning the religious government of neighboring Iran. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.

An important Iraqi intelligence official is in U.S. custody. Farouk Hijazi was accused of planning a plot to assassinate the first President Bush in the early 1990s. A Pentagon official says Hijazi met with Osama bin Laden in 1996. Defense officials hope his capture will produce valuable new information. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.

A new study finds the overall death rate among people hospitalized for SARS in Hong Kong may be as high as 20 percent, nearly triple the previous estimates. The findings, published in the British medical journal Lancet, suggest death rates for patients age 60 and over are as high as 55 percent. NPR's Richard Knox reports.

NPR's Scott Horsley reports that despite the West's growing urbanization, agriculture still uses up to 90 percent of the region's water. In some places, farmers are finding that selling water to cities is a lot more profitable than using it for crops.

NPR's Elizabeth Arnold reports on the hardest-working river in the West: the Colorado. Seven states draw from the river to water crops and quench the thirst of rapidly growing cities. As more users step up to tap the river, the conflicts increase between individual states, competing industries and nature itself.

In Fallujah, Iraq, crowds angry over a U.S. "friendly fire" incident that killed at least nine people stage angry protests. Meanwhile, in Najaf, the U.S. military seeks to rein in militia force loyal to the slain Shiite cleric Ayatollah Hakim. NPR's Emily Harris reports.

The world's nerve center for disease detection is located in Geneva, Switzerland, at the World Health Organization. They've found a new way of combating disease, trying to spot it at its earliest stages and nip it in bud. WHO looks at what's going on everyday everywhere, assisted heavily by the Web. No longer can countries hide and obfuscate outbreaks, or even minimize them. NPR's Richard Knox reports.

A massive truck bomb rips through a Baghdad hotel that served as the headquarters of the U.N. mission to Iraq. At least 20 people are killed, including U.N. special representative to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello. More than 100 people are wounded. NPR's Ivan Watson reports.