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Shirin Ebadi becomes the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Known for her work protecting the rights of women and children, Ebadi was Iran's first female judge. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Ebadi.

For the latest installment of the continuing series "What Are You Listening To?" NPR's Steve Inskeep hears from Shannon Bentz, a biology lab coordinator in Tempe, Ariz. Bentz suggests a sampler of jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, homemade electronica and a little bit of Tiki kitsch with Arthur Lyman.

Singer and composer Randy Newman's wry and sometimes raw musical commentary has become a big part of the American cultural landscape. In his new solo CD, The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 1, Newman revisits some of his biggest hits.

Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews the new double album by the band Outkast. Each album is separately titled: Speakerboxx and The Love Below.

NPR's Deborah Amos reports on reconstruction and pacification efforts by U.S. forces in and around the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The regional commander, Gen. David Petreaus, is a former economics professor with a doctorate in international relations who has taken an innovative approach to nation-building.

Members of Iraq's American-appointed governing council are unhappy about the way the United States is awarding contracts for reconstruction. They say the process excludes potential Iraqi contractors, who would charge much less for the work, and favors huge American companies and their foreign sub-contractors. And council members say the process is riddled with bribery and kickbacks. NPR's Guy Raz reports.

NPR's Deborah Amos has the second in a two-part series of reports about postwar developments in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Unlike central Iraq, Mosul is relatively calm, and U.S. forces in the city have made a successful start of reconstruction in the region.

The latest book by NPR's Noah Adams follows the quest by the Wright brothers to be the first to build a heavier-than-air craft that could fly on its own power. He talks about the book with NPR's Melissa Block at the site of the first-ever plane crash death in 1908. Read an excerpt from The Flyers describing that fateful day.

The 24-year-old Polley has acted professionally since the age of 6. She starred in the Atom Egoyan films Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. She's currently starring in the film My Life Without Me, based on a story by Nanci Kincaid called Pretending the Bed is a Raft. It's about a young, working single mother who learns she's going to die but keeps it a secret. The changes she makes to her life give her a new sense of liberation. Polley also will appear in the upcoming film The I Inside and a remake of the cult horror film Dawn of the Dead.

He's written five novels featuring the working-class Boston private detective team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. They include A Drink Before the War, Darkness, Take My Hand, Sacred, Gone Baby Gone and Prayers for Rain. Lehane abandoned the duo for his book about the effect of an abduction on a group of boys. It's a thriller, Mystic River, and it's been made into a new film directed by Clint Eastwood.