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Outfielders carry lifelong memories of how their first gloves smelled and felt. Catchers swear by their favorite glove model. On Morning Edition, NPR's Bob Edwards talks to Noah Liberman, the author of Glove Affairs, a book tracing the history and tradition of baseball players' favorite piece of equipment. Read an excerpt, hear interviews and see photos of players and their gloves.

Occupying Iraq is costing the United States nearly $4 billion a month, but nearly one-third of that total is going to private contractors. The largest beneficiary is Halliburton, the company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. The Pentagon has expanded civilian contracts as reconstruction demands escalate in Iraq. NPR's Kathy Schalch reports.

The panel investigating the Columbia disaster releases its final report on what caused the space shuttle to break up Feb. 1. The report confirms the theory that foam debris from the shuttle's fuel tank severely damaged the craft during liftoff. But it lays the ultimate blame on mismanagement at NASA, citing organizational and cultural shortcomings. Hear NPR's David Kestenbaum.

On this Labor Day, we pay tribute to the librarian. Librarians feed our hunger for knowledge, they steer us down the proper research path, they find us sources and dig out obscure facts. And though their efforts often go unheralded, now librarians are represented by an action figure. NPR's Melissa Block talks with the model for the figure, Nancy Pearl.

With the recent attack on the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, it's clear that U.S.-led forces in Iraq face a "growing threat" of terrorism, the chief U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq says. Paul Bremer says it will take two years to train an Iraqi police force, and postwar reconstruction will cost billions more. NPR's Juan Williams speaks with Bremer on Tuesday's Morning Edition.

A powerful explosion rips apart a mosque during Friday prayer services in Najaf, Iraq, killing Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim. The attack on one of the holiest sites for Shia Muslims took a high death toll. Hear NPR's Ivan Watson.

NPR's Scott Horsley reports that despite the West's growing urbanization, agriculture still uses up to 90 percent of the region's water. In some places, farmers are finding that selling water to cities is a lot more profitable than using it for crops.

NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Patrick Schneider, photographer for the Charlotte Observer, about the ethics of using traditional photo-altering techniques in news photography.

U.S. Iraq administrator Paul Bremer says that despite Tuesday's bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, the country is not in chaos. Investigators theorize the attackers were either Saddam loyalists or outside militants who infiltrated Iraq. The FBI says it has found evidence suggesting the attack was a suicide bombing. Hear NPR's Anne Garrels.

U.S. forces capture the former senior Iraqi official known as "Chemical Ali." U.S. officials initially said Ali Hassan al-Majid had died in an April airstrike, but later learned he was still alive. Al-Majid, No. 5 on the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis, received his nickname for his alleged role in 1988 poison gas attacks on Iraqi civilians. Hear Ambassador Peter Galbraith.