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A floating retreat, the USS Sequoia was one of the places U.S. presidents found to escape the rigors of office. Richard Nixon took his family there the day he announced his resignation. Now, NPR's Susan Stamberg reports, there's an effort to preserve the former presidential yacht. See historic and current photos of the Sequoia.

NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says that the British-American coalition in Iraq is quickly becoming internationalized, with manpower and troop contributions from a growing list of other countries.

Student Gita Jackson, 13, talks about the type of music she enjoys as part of the ongoing "What Are You Listening To?" series. She says that she and her musical tastes disprove the stereotype of "the Britney Spears-loving, Forever 21-wearing, valley girl-speaking, smiley prepubescent white girl."

Arab television stations air a new tape, allegedly from Saddam Hussein, in which the speaker mourns the killing last week of Saddam's two eldest sons. Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, senators grill Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on the Bush administration's failure to provide clear guidance on the costs of the U.S. mission in Iraq. Hear NPR's Tom Gjelten.

Old World artisans created the tilework that lines the stops of the subway in Buenos Aires, and many of the details on the trains themselves. NPR's Bob Mondello sends us this audio postcard from the Argentine capital.

The largest cemetery in the Arab world is located in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf. The cemetery surrounds the Shrine of Imam Ali. It is a sacred site for all Shiites, and many of them bring relatives to be buried there. Hundreds of thousands of tombstones stretch as far as the eye can see. Locals call the cemetery the "Valley of Peace," but it has been the scene of violence as well. When the Shia uprising of 1991 began to collapse, many of the rebels fled to the cemetery, where they were brutally killed by Saddam Hussein's forces. Thousands of other Shiites died as a result of Saddam's repression, and many of them also lie in the cemetery. And thousands of those who died in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war are buried there as well. The cemetery grew to eight times its previous size during the rule of Saddam Hussein. Kate Seelye reports.

NPR Special Correspondent Susan Stamberg talks to Ashton Smith, one of Hollywood's most popular voice actors. Smith records promos for upcoming movies and television shows, and makes a pretty good living doing it.

In December 1903, the Wright brothers gave wing to the idea that man could fly. Aviation has come along way in the past century, but some pilots still prefer to take to the skies in ultralight planes not much bigger than the one used in the original flight at Kitty Hawk. Hal Cannon of the Western Folklife Center profiles maverick ultralight pilot Arty Trost.

NPR's Anne Garrels in Baghdad reports on the Mukhtar, or mayor, of one district of the Iraqi capital, appointed by Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Mukhtar denies that he acted as Saddam's spy in the neighborhood, and says he was only responsible for humanitarian issues. But many in the neighborhood dispute that assertion.

The concept of "home economics" covers a lot of territory: It encompasses how we cook, eat, clean, make clothing and furniture, raise children -- pretty much everything involved with maintaining a home. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with the co-creator of a huge online archive of more than 1,500 books on the subject.