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Forty years ago, Allan Sherman topped the pop charts by replacing the lyrics of folk songs with satires of Jewish American life. And in doing that, he offered a perfect snapshot of what it meant to assimilate.

The world mourns Betty Friedan, who died Saturday at 85, as the author of The Feminine Mystique and a catalyst for the modern women's movement. Kitty Eisele first knew her as "Aunt Betty." She offers a remembrance of a family friend.

Novelist Kevin Baker has just published the third volume of his City on Fire trilogy. Strivers Row is set in Harlem in 1943. The story focuses on a fictional character — Jonah Dove — and the very real Malcolm Little, later to become Malcolm X.

In December 2005, a team of Indonesian, American and Australian scientists studied the mist-shrouded "lost world" atop the isolated Foja Mountains of New Guinea. What they found was a haven for rare wildlife and a host of new species.

Voters in Haiti head to the polls Tuesday to elect a new president. But street fighting is so intense that Haiti's interim government will not put voting booths in Cite Soleil, a desperately poor slum in the capital of Port-au-Prince. For residents there, avoiding stray bullets is part of the daily struggle to survive.

The New Orleans music legend nearly perished and his home was heavily damaged in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But his latest record looks toward the future with optimism.

In his Nobel Prize speech Wednesday, British playwright Harold Pinter delivered a scathing critique of U.S. and British foreign policy. Some reviews of his speech praised it for its dramatic force, while others derided it as childish and uninformed. We hear two excerpts from that speech.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court oversees surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists. Its power has grown since the passage of the Patriot Act. Critics worry about the secrecy that surrounds the proceedings, but FBI agents say undue concern about civil liberties hinders surveillance.

President Bush gave his third of four planned speeches Tuesday in a campaign to win support for the U.S. effort in Iraq. Responding to a question about the number of Iraqi casualties, President Bush said as many as 30,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion. Steve Inskeep talks to Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Knitting together Iraq's fractious sectarian and religious groups into a cohesive political body is the goal of Iraq's Dec. 15 parliamentary election. It may only reinforce Iraq's sectarian divisions.