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President Bush formally announces the selection of former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik to succeed Tom Ridge as head of the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik would be the second person to head the two-year-old agency. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.

Amid new and often confusing revelations about painkillers currently on the market, the Food and Drug Administration issues an interim advisory while it compares data on pain relievers. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.

Actor Jerry Orbach died Tuesday at age 69 of prostate cancer. Orbach spent years on the New York stage as a song man in hit musicals, but he was perhaps best known for his role as acerbic New York homicide detective Lennie Briscoe in the long-running hit series Law and Order.

Author Susan Sontag died Tuesday in Manhattan, after a long struggle with cancer. Sontag was the author of many essays and 17 widely translated books. She wrote about photography and AIDS, film and choreography, Vietnam and the Sept. 11 attacks. Her novel In America won the National Book Award for fiction. Sontag was 71. Hear NPR's Kim Masters.

A suicide driver detonates a car bomb outside Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party headquarters in Baghdad. At least 10 people were wounded. The al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq claimed reponsibility for the attack just a day after its leader declared an all out war on the upcoming election. This is the second attack on Allawi's party in a week.

The Senate Judiciary committee votes 10-8 along party lines to send Alberto Gonzales's nomination as attorney general to the full Senate. The Senate is expected to confirm the Gonzales.

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Comic and journalist Stephen Colbert is the fake senior correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We talk with Colbert about his reports, from "Rathergate" to "This Week in God."

Hatoon al Fassi, a professor of women's history at King Saud University, discusses Thursday's municipal elections in Saudia Arabia. Women aren't allowed to be candidates or participate in the vote, and much of the population is cautious about the effect elections will have on one of the world's staunchest absolute monarchies.

A newly released memo from former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke warned then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that al Qaeda was an "active, major force" that needed immediate attention. The communiqué was written five days after President Bush took office in 2001.