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After Katrina, sections of wall holding back water in New Orleans canals failed when they should have held. In a letter released Friday, an independent panel says engineers who designed the canal walls should have included a larger safety margin.

Ayesha Rascoe talks with Kinley Salmon, Africa correspondent for The Economist, about the widespread fuel shortages affecting the continent.

Sometimes authors' best works are their first. The tale of an imaginary universe where elevators are really important and the story of the first giraffe in Europe are among librarian Nancy Pearl's selections of must-read literary debuts.

The documentary Our Brand is Crisis looks at the work of American consulting firm Greenberg Carville Shrum. The firm helped Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, aka Goni, win the presidency in Bolivia. The director of the film, Rachel Boynton, talks with Robert Siegel.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a plan that would give the nearly 12 million undocumented workers now living in the United States a path to citizenship. The debate now moves to the full Senate. NPR's Jennifer Ludden helps explain the politics and policies involved.

The person in charge of improving the U.S. image abroad is not expecting it to get much better soon. Karen Hughes says her efforts are part of a "long-term program."

Oil and natural gas dominate the economy of Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish, but fishing is its heart and soul. During an October visit, Motivatit Seafoods was silent in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Now the clank and clatter of seafood processing has resumed.

Business and labor groups are weighing in on proposed immigration legislation. The Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO are both against certain provisions in the bill. But agri-business interests are backing the proposals.

Colin Freeman, a reporter for the Sunday Telegraph in London, says Jill Carroll had harbored dreams of being a foreign correspondent, which is why she went to Iraq to report on the war as a freelancer. Freeman knew Carroll in Iraq and says she was able to blend in better than many other Western reporters.

In his new book, Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, Yale professor and literary critic Harold Bloom wrestles with the meaning of God's covenant with the Hebrew people. Bloom discusses his own troubled feelings about the Hebrew God Yahweh with Debbie Elliott.