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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court oversees surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists. Its power has grown since the passage of the Patriot Act. Critics worry about the secrecy that surrounds the proceedings, but FBI agents say undue concern about civil liberties hinders surveillance.

President Bush gave his third of four planned speeches Tuesday in a campaign to win support for the U.S. effort in Iraq. Responding to a question about the number of Iraqi casualties, President Bush said as many as 30,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion. Steve Inskeep talks to Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The White House Conference on Aging is meeting in Washington this week. But President Bush is skipping the conference -- the first president not to address delegates in the event's 50-year history. Instead, he took his message on Medicare to a select, private group of senior citizens.

In his Nobel Prize speech Wednesday, British playwright Harold Pinter delivered a scathing critique of U.S. and British foreign policy. Some reviews of his speech praised it for its dramatic force, while others derided it as childish and uninformed. We hear two excerpts from that speech.

Peasants relocated to make room for a reservoir in northern China's Hebei province claim local leaders pocketed more than $7 million in compensation funds owed to them. Those who tried to organize a recall vote were bribed, beaten or jailed into submission. The case typifies recent rural protests.

In a land where the ground is always frozen, one creature has nourished man both physically and spiritually. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky discusses The Reindeer People, his book about the Eveny herders of Siberia.

We've all had these moments in movie theaters or in meetings when we hear the annoying ring of a phone and suddenly realize, to our horror, that it's our own phone. Engineers are trying to solve this problem. They're developing polite cell phones that can tell when to keep quiet, and when it's OK to interrupt.

The Soviet Union's dominance of world figure skating collapsed along with communism. But since the last Winter Olympics, the Russian government has increased funding for the sport by a factor of 10.

The Catholic mass Beethoven called Missa Solemnis is rarely performed. But considered in partnership with the much more famous Ninth Symphony, it sheds light on the composer's spiritual view.

Renee Montagne talks to Scott Silliman, executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, at Duke University, to learn more about how the McCain amendment will affect U.S. policy on interrogation.