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Ford Motor Company CEO Bill Ford says the automaker will cut up to 30,000 North American jobs by 2012. The moves are part of a restructuring plan that will see a number of manufacturing plants close, as well.

Nearly four years after the No Child Left Behind Act took effect, the nation's urban school districts are making only slight progress in raising test scores, and no progress in reducing the achievement gap between white and minority students.

Acclaimed Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is scheduled to go on trial in Istanbul on charges of insulting his country for his comments on the deaths of Armenians and Kurds in an interview with a Swiss newspaper.

A Mars factory in Pennsylvania turns out millions of pieces of Dove dark chocolate using a secret method that preserves a compound found in raw cocoa beans. If Mars can harness that compound, chocolate may turn from a comfort food to a health food.

New documents shed more light on Judge Samuel Alito's views on the landmark 1972 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's constitutional right to obtain an abortion.

Movie music buff Andy Trudeau continues his series on Oscar-nominated film scores. In this edition: Munich, composed by John Williams, and Brokeback Mountain, composed by Gustavo Santaolalla.

Computer entrepreneur Abdelhadi "Hadi" Abushahla faces plenty of challenges to doing business in the Gaza Strip. The roads are cluttered with slow-moving donkey carts, the phones often don't work and permission to enter Israel can be nearly impossible to get.

Forty years ago, Arlo Guthrie dumped a pile of trash. The minor crime made him ineligible for the draft. In 1967, he immortalized the saga in "Alice's Restaurant." Debbie Elliott hears the story behind the song.

Many of the men and women who returned from Iraq with traumatic brain injuries may never fully recover. As part of our Span of War series, we continue our story of one soldier's attempt to grasp his new limitations and ultimately head home to his wife and family in West Virginia.

Don Knotts, the skinny, lovable nerd who kept generations of television audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, dies at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills.

Sectarian violence subsides somewhat in Iraq on the third day of a curfew, but the threat of civil war persists. Twenty-nine people -- including three U.S. soldiers -- die in attacks across the country Sunday. Iraqi leaders are hoping that containment on the ground and political reconciliation will appease Sunnis and Shia.

Six months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is a city of revelry --- and a city of despair. A city where some neighborhoods are up and running, and others are a wasteland. A city where some have found a new calling, and some can no longer cope. Robert Siegel and Michele Norris report from New Orleans.

With the start of hurricane season about three months away, many people are asking whether repairs to New Orleans' flood-protection system will be ready in time. NPR Science Correspondent David Kestenbaum provides an update on efforts to restore the city's levees.

Savannah, Ga., called "the Little Easy" for its charm and hospitality, is grappling with a stubborn poverty rate. The city is determined to confront its problem.

Susan Tedeschi is considered one of the best up-and-coming blues singers and guitarists. Her newest CD is called Hope and Desire. Music journalist Ashley Kahn spoke with Tedeschi about her career and her music.

President Yoweri Museveni prevails in Uganda's first multi-party elections in a quarter-century, winning 60 percent of the vote. EU observers say the elections were problematic; Museveni has been criticized of late as an autocrat.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been distributing checks to families whose homes were destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Cheryl Corley reports on one family's decisions on how to use the money they've received from the federal government.

That holiday tree in your living room seems fresh, but it was probably plucked from the farm earlier this month. Tom Banse has an insider's look at the industrial operation to bring trees to market.

As a chemical spill in the Songhua River heads toward Russia's Far East, the nearly 4 million people of Harbin, China, do without running water for a fourth day. The BBC's Louisa Lim tells Scott Simon that Chinese newspapers are criticizing the central government's slow response to the disaster.

Across the country, homes are beginning to take longer to sell, a sign that the hot real-estate market of the last decades is starting to cool. In the Boston metropolitan area, which has seen a faster appreciation of home values than most of the country, homes prices are not rising as fast they used to. Fred Thys of member station WBUR reports.

With the world's highest number of AIDS cases, South Africa is an example of the disease's devastating hold in some parts of the world. AIDS is not only the leading killer of adults in South Africa, but also of younger children.

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, U.S officials set up two secret agencies to deal with intelligence on Iraq. The now-defunct agencies are suspected of "cherry-picking" data to help build the administration's pro-war case and are at the heart of the scandal surrounding pre-war intelligence.

Ford Motor Co. announces plans to eliminate 25,000 to 30,000 jobs in North America -- more than 20 percent of the workforce. The long-awaited restructuring plan also includes closing 14 plants in the United States, Mexico and Canada over the next six years.

The first nationwide study on day laborers has been completed. Based on 2,660 interviews with workers in 20 states and the District of Columbia, it reveals high levels of abuse towards the workers.

Campaigning for this week's Palestinian parliamentary elections officially ended Monday. Opinion polls show many Palestinians are fed up with the ruling Fatah movement, and the militant Islamist group Hamas is expected to make a strong showing in Wednesday's voting.