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NPR's Don Gonyea reports on President-elect George W. Bush, who today resigned from the only political office he has ever held -- governor of Texas. The emotional speech by Bush ended 6 years at the helm in Austin and comes less than a month before he is to move to his new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Meanwhile, jockeying continues to go on behind the scenes for filling the remaining Cabinet slots.

While overall U.S. unemployment has climbed to 6 percent, the jobless rate for blacks is nearly twice as high. Economists say the nation's economy may be improving, but times are still tough for many. NPR's David Molpus reports.

NPR's Peter Overby reports on today's budget surplus forecast by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO is projecting a surplus of more than three-trillion dollars over the next decade -- or 5.6-trillion if you count the Social Security surplus. Republicans say that means there's plenty of room for a big tax cut. Democrats argue that the projections of a huge surplus may be overly optimistic in the long term. They are supporting smaller tax cuts.

Germany unveils a memorial in central Berlin to the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Politicians, Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors were on hand for the solemn ceremony to inaugurate the monument designed by American architect Peter Eisenman. The opening ends 17 years of debate over how Germany should mark the darkest chapter of its past.

New trade rules lifting quotas on garment exports are having an impact for many countries. One such country is the tiny African nation of Lesotho, where six factories have closed and some 6,000 workers have lost their jobs.

Melissa Block talks with John Reeves, self-described freeform industrial ice artist. Reeves is the artistic genius behind a 160-foot tall ice sculpture outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. Using strategically placed sprinklers, Reeves estimates that he flows about 6,000 gallons of water onto the sculpture every hour.

President Bush is in Dallas to address the Knights of Columbus in Dallas, a conservative Catholic group with 1.6 million members. The visit is part of an aggressive Bush campaign effort to win Catholic voters, who make up one-quarter of the electorate. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and Tom Roberts of the National Catholic Reporter.

By a 6-3 vote along ideological lines, the Supreme Court has struck down President Biden's plan to forgive some or all federal student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that a whopping 2.6 million jobs disappeared in 2008 and that an estimated 11 million Americans are looking for work. Three recent college graduates — Mimi Wong, Sarah Ahmad and Kelsey Schwenk — describe the frustrations and fears of finding themselves unemployed.