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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings have ended, and the Senate Judiciary Committee has delayed the vote on her nomination until next week. Former U.S. Atty. General Alberto Gonzales talks about the hearings, shares thoughts on the confirmation process, and what it would mean to have the first Latino judge on the Supreme Court.

In Afghanistan today, the American chairman of the commission investigating complaints about Thursday's presidential election says some of the charges his team is reviewing are serious enough to sway the final election result.

Richard Russo turns a satiric eye toward matrimony and middle age in his new novel, That Old Cape Magic. Book critic Maureen Corrigan calls the book a "glistening ... chambered nautilus of a novel."

In Afghanistan, the first results of last week's presidential and provincial council elections are due to be announced Tuesday. But millions of ballots are still making their way to the capital, Kabul. That leaves some questions as to when the election commission will be able to give preliminary results.

The trial is now under way in Iran of more than 100 opposition figures who challenged the results of the country's presidential election. But the trials have been carried out in such a clumsy fashion, that many in Iran say it could be doing more harm than good to the government.

Sweden says it found the largest deposit in Europe of rare earths — ingredients in a host of technologies from e-vehicles to wind turbines. Mining and processing them is another story.

President Obama's political adviser is attributing the Republican victory in the race for the Massachusetts Senate seat to public anger about the state of the economy. But David Axelrod acknowledges that as the party in power, Democrats bear some of the responsibility for the loss.

“Florida is always in the political spotlight ... so, I think we also see some political experiments being tried here, in terms of what campaigns are catching fire, and what words are really buzzworthy and that voters are responding to," said Alissa Schafer with the Energy and Policy Institute.

The man at the center of a major terrorism investigation appears in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, Tuesday. Najibullah Zazi has been accused of conspiring to build and detonate explosives inside the United States. More arrests could come by the end of the week. Meanwhile, investigators are looking into terrorism plots in Texas and Illinois.

Karen Pollitz, a research professor at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute, says as long as those people who obtain health insurance through their workplace remain employed they should feel comfortable about their plan. She adds that there is no requirement that anyone has to change their coverage.

President Obama challenged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to find a way forward on peace in the region. In New York Tuesday, Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held their first three-way meeting.

Writing in the journal Science, researchers unveiled several studies of a 4.4-million-year-old fossil named Ardipithecus ramidus. Ian Tattersall, an anthropologist and curator at the American Museum Of Natural History, explains the significance of the finding.

This semester, Sacramento State University launched a new textbook rental program. There are limited titles available, but the program is helping some students save serious cash.

Novelist and playwright Dan Fante writes about alcoholism, drug addiction and failed attempts at literary success — all of which he has experienced himself. He discusses the process of reliving his past on paper.

Author Attica Locke's novel Black Water Rising is a murder mystery set in a racially divided Houston in 1981. As part of NPR's look at the Houston of 2009, NPR's Steve Inskeep and Locke take a boat ride down the Buffalo Bayou — the scene of an eerie episode in her youth.

Everyone from President Obama on down seems to agree that a good teacher can make a huge difference in a child's life. American schools have been trying for decades to improve teacher quality. The results are mixed. Over the next year, NPR will explore those efforts and take a look at the latest crop of teachers entering the profession.

The Senate Judiciary Committee opens confirmation hearings Monday on the nomination of judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Republicans privately acknowledge that her nomination could probably only be derailed by a major blunder at this point.

The federal government has started testing vaccines against the swine flu. About 2,800 volunteers at eight sites across the country will be rolling up their sleeves in the next week to receive experimental flu shots. U.S. Health officials are preparing for a possible fall outbreak.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke faced tough questions from the Senate Banking Committee about the Fed's failures leading up to the financial crisis and the role it played in the bailout of Wall Street firms. While Bernanke is ultimately expected to be reconfirmed, the hearing may influence the Fed's future role in an overhauled financial system.

In a sweeping decision, the Supreme Court struck down Thursday the ban on corporate spending on federal and state elections. The much-anticipated opinion opens the way potentially for hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on this year's midterm elections.

More than a week after last week's deadly earthquake in Haiti, more than 1 million people lack shelter. Niurka Pineiro, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration, which is heading efforts to set up temporary shelters, says it's difficult to set up tent camps because the government doesn't want some locations to become permanent settlements.

Inspired by Morgan Spurlock's fast-food gluttony in Super Size Me, two environmental activists from Canada devised their own experiment. Instead of fast food, Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie absorbed themselves in everyday products like shampoos, soaps and cleaners to find out what kind of damage might be done to their health.

President Obama hosted Thursday a bipartisan health care summit, in a bid to bridge deep divisions between the two parties on health care.

About a hundred Toyota dealers and 40 Toyota plant workers are in Washington, D.C., this week to show support for the automaker. They are meeting with lawmakers to get across their message: that Toyota is a good company that takes care of its customers.

Hollywood actors and screenwriters are on strike simultaneously for the first time since 1960. When — and how — might things resolve this time? Experts tell NPR what recent history can teach us.