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Pub-goers in London cheer Queen Elizabeth II's announcement that Parliament will soon consider allowing pubs to stay open 24 hours. Currently, pubs must close at 11 p.m. NPR's Robert Siegel talks with London pub manager Charlotte Renick. (This story was corrected on air on Nov. 14, 2002: "It's Thursday, the day we read from your letters, and we start with a correction to yesterday's program. I said that Britain's pubs have closed early, ever since World War II. Our thanks to Charles Day in Bozeman, Montana, Marc James Small in Roanoke, Virginia and Peg Willingham in Arlington, Virginia. All pointed out that closing the pubs early was a World War I innovation, part of the Defence of the Realm Act. Mr. Day notes that the law was "affectionately known to the British' by its acronym 'DORA.' The logic of the pub closings was, he writes, 'to keep factory production levels high. Factory workers, particularly the ammunition factory workers, would be home from the pubs at a reasonable hour so that they would show up well rested on the factory floor the next morning.'"

Delegates to a United Nations wildlife conference have agreed to ease a 13-year-old global ban on ivory trading. The decision is a victory for southern African nations, but conservationists see it as a defeat for elephants. NPR's John Nielsen reports.

This week PBS will present Benjamin Franklin, an unblinking look at the remarkable founding father whose industriousness furthered the cause of science and whose diplomatic skills helped win American independence. NPR's Steve Inskeep talks with documentary writer Ron Blumer and Ellen Hovde.

With his new album It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, Rod Stewart is following in the footsteps of Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Willie Nelson and others who have reached back to music from earlier times and moved it into today -- their way.

We hear more communications from the plane carrying newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson and the White House Situation Room as the plane returns to Washington, D.C., from Dallas.

A man, a woman, a house and a pitchfork. Those four elements make Grant Wood's depression-era painting, American Gothic, instantly recognizable and easily mimicked. As part of the Present at the Creation series, NPR's Melissa Gray reports on the painting that launched a thousand parodies. Image at left courtesy Art Institute of Chicago.

A truly global economy and the ever-expanding reach of the Internet are compelling us all to "think globally." Yet the results of a new National Geographic-Roper study reveals young people aged 18 to 24 remain woefully ignorant about geography and world affairs. In fact, 83 percent of Americans quizzed couldn't find Afghanistan on a map. All Things Considered guest host Lynn Neary talks with National Geographic Society President John Fahey about the quiz results -- test your knowledge, and take the quiz online.

Private relief organizations are increasingly alarmed by their inability to plan for the consequences of war in Iraq.

In his special year-end installment of Director's Cuts, Ned Wharton, music director of Weekend Edition Sunday, offers musical gift suggestions, including albums by Tim Sparks, Joni Mitchell and Rachel Z.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says he's "confident" in international inspectors who have begun looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In an interview with NPR's Michele Kelemen, Powell says the Bush administration hopes for a peaceful resolution to the Iraq issue but warns that if war does come, the United States and other nations will be ready to "accomplish the mission of disarmament." NPR Online has the complete interview.