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The northern city of Mosul, Iraq, falls peacefully after being abandoned by Iraqi forces early today. Kurdish militiamen and small numbers of U.S. troops entered Mosul following the Iraqi withdrawal. But the city, like others in the country, has been overtaken by a wave of looting and near-anarchy. NPR's Ivan Watson reports.

Shiite militias in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra have been patrolling the streets and cracking down on the sale of music, pornography and alcohol. Many residents now fear criticizing the city's Islamic parties, and British forces occupying the area worry the militias are undermining their activities. NPR's Ivan Watson reports.

The Mexican government launched a crackdown on organized crime in northern border cities earlier this month. KPBS reporter Amy Isackson reports from Tijuana that this is President Vicente Fox's latest response to the drug-cartel violence on the streets of Mexico's border cities.

NPR's Kathy Schalch reports the White House today unveiled a $3.9 billion five-year federal aid plan for Washington D.C. Officials said they want to end the $3.56 billion federal payment to the city it would have made over that period. Under the proposal the federal goverment would assume the city's pension liabilities for police, firefighters, judges and teachers.

15 years ago, San Francisco's Sunset district was overwhelmingly Irish-Catholic. Now it's 60 percent Asian. Recently, swastikas have been painted on Asian-owned businesses and racial tensions have been rising. NPR's Richard Gonzales reports that despite the city's reputation for tolerance, San Francisco has not been immune to the problems experienced in other cities when neighborhoods are transformed.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden explores how Zairean rebels are running Kisangani, their biggest prize in the war so far. The guerrillas captured Kisangani, Zaire's third-largest city, earlier this month. Despite their leader's Marxist past, the rebels are promoting the private sector and have held rudimentary elections for local offices. While many of the city's residents fled before the rebels' arrived, life in many ways has returned to normal.

Veta Christy reports that Hartford, Connecticut has approved an ordinance that severely restricts the number of shelters, soup kitchens and other such services within the city...arguing they attract the poor. That claim is disputed by welfare workers. About 30 cities have similar laws, but none is as far-reaching as Hartford's.

about efforts to curb juvenile crime in the Crescent City. It's a hot topic in this election year. Teenagers in New Orleans have been under a curfew since last year, and Morial says the city's "tough love" approach is working.

- The 17-year-long Lebanese civil war is now a memory in the capital of Beirut, where workmen are trying to reconstruct the war-damaged capital. All the digging there has created a bonanza for Lebanese archeologists, who are excited about what they're uncovering. But NPR's Eric Weiner reports that the archeologists are also worried that the city's builders might bury or destroy some of the city's most valuable ancient treasures.

NPR's Ina Jaffe reports that civil rights groups and people who've sued the Los Angeles police department over racial profiling want to become monitors of the city's consent decree, which is designed to reform the L.A.P.D. With President-elect Bush on the record opposing such decrees, they are concerned that an appointed federal monitor won't effectively enforce the city's agreement.