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A most unlikely CD has been close to the top of the Billboard charts recently. The Mars Volta, from Texas, somehow missed the news that progressive rock was nearly extinct. Their new CD, Frances the Mute, is a saga based on the diary of a child in search of a birth mother.

The Bush administration has made Social Security reform a top priority in its second term. In arguing for partial privatization of the system, the president and his supporters warn of dire consequences unless something is done. Bush's critics say he is arguing for overly drastic measures. NPR Don Gonyea reports.

Before his own rise up the music charts, Kanye West spent his time producing hits for other top rappers, including Jay-Z. Convinced of the need to display his own unique skills, he released the hugely successful disc College Dropout in 2004.

Novelist Tim LaHaye is the co-author of the popular Left Behind series. The books are apocalyptic Christian thrillers. The tenth and latest book is The Remnant, which debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. LaHaye is also the former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, was on the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and was an organizer of the Council for National Policy which has been called "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of."

Insurgents fire grenades at an Iraqi civil defense facility as Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, visits. Abizaid was not hurt in the attack, which caused no American casualties. The attackers escaped. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and NPR's Eric Westervelt.

Testifying before a judicial inquiry, top British intelligence official John Scarlett denies that his office was pressured by Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff to exaggerate evidence showing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to Britain. New polls suggest 67 percent of Britons believe Blair misled the public about the Iraqi threat. Hear NPR's Guy Raz.

A soon-to-be released book by journalist Bob Woodward -- of Watergate fame -- says President Bush asked top military leaders to plan for war in Iraq even as U.S. soldiers were attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan. The allegations were largely confirmed by the White House press secretary. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.

Top officials from the Bush and Clinton administrations tell the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that they had no specific intelligence before the attacks suggesting terrorists might hijack airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center. But last year, Congress published a report saying a number of warnings detailing the attacks were ignored. Hear NPR's Danny Zwerdling.

USA Today editor Karen Jurgensen steps down four months after the revelation that former foreign correspondent Jack Kelley fabricated stories under her watch. Jurgensen had held the paper's top editorial post since 1999. NPR's Bob Edwards speaks with Marvin Kalb, senior fellow at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

An artist in Cologne, Germany, is working to memorialize individual victims of the Nazis. He's embedding thousands of small concrete blocks, each topped by a brass plate, in sidewalks across the country. Each of these so-called "stumbling blocks" bears the name, and fate, of one person killed by Adolph Hitler's regime. Kyle James reports.