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The FBI says it has video footage of Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-LA) accepting $100,000 from an FBI informant. Jefferson, who has not been charged with anything, insists that he has committed no crime. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.

The Dixie Chicks are back after a three-year break with a new album, Taking the Long Way. It's the band's first release after it experienced a furious backlash in 2003 after an anti-Bush comment by lead singer Natalie Maines.

Oil shale is an idea that was tested a generation ago, then abandoned when the price of crude oil plunged. Now, a self-taught inventor is once again eyeing the vast shale deposits of the Rocky Mountains.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair visits Iraq's new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, in Baghdad. British officials say the leaders spoke about the eventual departure of foreign forces from Iraq. Maliki has said his top priority is halting insurgent attacks and stemming sectarian violence that has wracked the country.

The U.S., EU, Russia and the U.N. have agreed on a deal to create a trust fund for the Palestinian Authority. The authority is in the midst of a deepening financial crisis created when Hamas was voted into power, prompting Western donors to end their support for the government. The four powers now hope to get aid directly to the Palestinian people.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick is in Nigeria, hoping to mediate a peace deal between rebels and government leaders in Sudan's Darfor region. The African Union has extended a deadline for talks to midnight Tuesday. The three-year conflict has led to nearly 200,000 deaths and 2 million refugees.

The leaders of Hamas will be forced to take more moderate positions if the Palestinian Authority's financial crisis continues to worsen, says the head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority. Employees of the new Hamas-led Palestinian Authority haven't been paid in more than two months.

The United Nations Security Council is delaying its formal response to North Korea's July 5 missile tests, as diplomats give China time to persuade its longtime ally to cooperate. The tests are challenging China's credibility as an effective diplomatic broker.

Margaret Sartor offers an account of growing up in 1970s Louisiana in Miss American Pie, a memoir of adolescence told through diary entries written during Sartor's girlhood.

Israeli forces block Lebanon's ports and put its international airport out of commission, while extending a search for two captured Israeli soldiers near the border. The conflict has sparked two days of heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon.