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A day after the White House released a briefing document on the al Qaeda threat that President George Bush received a month before the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush says the brief lacked "actionable intelligence." Security experts say the paper leads them to question the Bush administration's judgment of the information. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports.

Cole is an authority on modern Islamic movements. He is professor of modern Middle East and South Asia history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam. The book collects some of his work on the history of the Shiite branch of Islam in modern Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf region.

U.S. and allied forces clash with supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The worst violence was near the southern city of Najaf, where 20 Iraqis were killed when al-Sadr's supporters opened fire on a Spanish garrison near the city. There was a similar demonstration in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. The violence flared after U.S. forces detained an associate of Sadr. NPR's Philip Reeves reports.

Barry's new book is The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. In 1918, the influenza virus emerged, and in the next year killed millions of people. He writes "before that worldwide pandemic faded away in 1920, it would kill more people than any other outbreak of disease in human history." Scientists are still trying to figure out why the virus spread so rapidly and killed so efficiently. The story has relevance today as scientists believe we are due for another flu pandemic. Barry is the author of four other books including Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.

An increasing number of federal agencies are following the lead of the Department of Homeland Security in hiring privacy officers to oversee the use of personal information collected from citizens. NPR's Larry Abramson reports.

NPR's Bob Edwards speaks with Peter Douglas, executive director of the California Coastal Commission, about the current poor health of oceans and how a proposed Oceans Policy Office might manage ocean health while balancing economic and environmental interests.

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.

"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.

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.

Watch the legendary jazz bassist and members of his trio perform from The Blue Note's prestigious stage.