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NASA and the European Space Agency are gearing up to bring home a pristine sample of Martian rock. But given the small chance of life on the red planet, they have to grapple with safety questions.

You probably didn't know it but the Federal Reserve has a resident poet. Robert McTeer, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank and a member of the central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, often puts his thoughts on the economy into rhyme.

"Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure" opened recently in New York City. It features 200 never-before-seen and rare paintings, drawings and artifacts from Basquiat, who died in 1988 at age 27.

Despite gaining national traction in the 1970s, the history of the anti-abortion movement in the U.S. goes back more than a century before the landmark Supreme Court decision.

On this May the 4th, now known as Star Wars Day, we listen back to an original NPR review of the now beloved classic. In 1977, Tom Shales reviewed the new film Star Wars for NPR.

The "echo effect," the "snowball effect" and false assumptions -- these were some of the reasons why intelligence agencies around the world were, to use former chief weapons inspector David Kay's phrase, "all wrong" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. European intelligence is often derivative of U.S. intelligence, and vice versa, creating trans-Atlantic echoes that seem to corroborate each other. Israeli assessments got analyzed by U.S. intelligence, which tended to bolster the assessment as they were passed on to other governments, creating the snowball effect. And governments around the world assumed that because they could not prove that Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must still have them. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports.

Search engines may soon use personal information to return better search results. Google's plan to offer an e-mail service that delivers ads based on e-mail keywords has privacy watchdogs nervous. NPR's Rick Karr reports.

Though much of the attention in Iraq is focused on violence against Americans and the Iraqis who support them, the country is also trying to cope with a wave of sectarian attacks. Over the past month, a series of attacks against Shiite and Sunni Muslims have caused some to fear a civil war is brewing. NPR's Steve Inskeep reports.

Encouraged by a Food and Drug Administration ruling last year banning weight-loss supplements containing ephedra, a consumer advocacy group targets at least a dozen other dietary supplements. The FDA had never before banned a dietary supplement, and it took years to agree on a ban on ephedra. NPR's Snigdha Prakash reports.

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy recommends creating a cabinet-level agency to guide nationwide efforts on protecting oceans. The bi-partisan, congressionally-appointed panel envisions the agency overseeing a range of issues including fisheries management and onshore sources of pollution. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports.