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Thomas Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, discusses this week's long-awaited progress report from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, the top two American officials in Iraq.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi talks about Sunday's elections. He has spent the past week urging Iraqis to vote, while campaigning at the top of the Iraqi List slate. He discusses his legacy as interim leader and his determination to keep the polls open, regardless of security concerns.

A most unlikely CD has been close to the top of the Billboard charts recently. The Mars Volta, from Texas, somehow missed the news that progressive rock was nearly extinct. Their new CD, Frances the Mute, is a saga based on the diary of a child in search of a birth mother.

Producer Ben Shapiro brings us another installment in the New York Works series, about jobs that are slowly disappearing from the city of New York. Today we meet Charlie Zimmerman, who works for Rosenwach Wood Tanks. Rosewach is one of the few companies left that maintains water tanks on top of many New York buildings.

Novelist Tim LaHaye is the co-author of the popular Left Behind series. The books are apocalyptic Christian thrillers. The tenth and latest book is The Remnant, which debuted at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. LaHaye is also the former co-chairman of Jack Kemp's presidential campaign, was on the original board of directors of the Moral Majority and was an organizer of the Council for National Policy which has been called "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of."

Insurgents fire grenades at an Iraqi civil defense facility as Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, visits. Abizaid was not hurt in the attack, which caused no American casualties. The attackers escaped. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and NPR's Eric Westervelt.

Testifying before a judicial inquiry, top British intelligence official John Scarlett denies that his office was pressured by Prime Minister Tony Blair's staff to exaggerate evidence showing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to Britain. New polls suggest 67 percent of Britons believe Blair misled the public about the Iraqi threat. Hear NPR's Guy Raz.

A soon-to-be released book by journalist Bob Woodward -- of Watergate fame -- says President Bush asked top military leaders to plan for war in Iraq even as U.S. soldiers were attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan. The allegations were largely confirmed by the White House press secretary. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.

College baseball players and fans head to Omaha, Neb., for the NCAA 2003 Men's College World Series. Organizers expect to sell more than 250,000 tickets as the country's top eight college baseball teams compete for the national championship. Hear Deborah Van Fleet.

USA Today editor Karen Jurgensen steps down four months after the revelation that former foreign correspondent Jack Kelley fabricated stories under her watch. Jurgensen had held the paper's top editorial post since 1999. NPR's Bob Edwards speaks with Marvin Kalb, senior fellow at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.