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France has authorized emergency measures after a dozen nights of rioting. Local officials can now impose curfews if they choose, and police have authority to conduct raids without warning. Severe punishment for rioters was promised, and the first sentences were handed down Monday.

Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan says director Rebecca Miller's life with her famous father, the late playwright Arthur Miller, has given her a deft hand for the story she tells in her latest film. The Ballad of Jack and Rose centers on an enigmatic father, a precocious daughter and an island retreat.

President Bush insists that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will stay in his cabinet despite revelations of Iraqi prisoner abuse at the hands of U.S. troops. Top Democrats are calling for Rumsfeld to resign. The defense secretary is to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee Friday. Hear NPR's Don Gonyea, NPR's Michele Norris and Sen. Jeff Sessions.

They look just like telephone booths, but they are decorated with hands folded in prayer, and there's a place to kneel. The prayer booths are an art installation designed to spark dialogue on prayer in the public sphere. There are prayer booths in Jackson, Tennessee, in Ceder Rapids Iowa — and now on a bustling Manhattan street in New York City.

Saturday's Jefferson-Jackson dinner marks the beginning of the home stretch leading up to the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. With actual voting less than 60 days away, six of the major Democratic candidates were on hand, hoping to rally their supporters for the last eight weeks of the campaign.

The death of a young black man named Jimmy Lee Jackson at the hands of a state trooper sparked a pivotal march 40 years ago in Alabama, though Jackson remains mostly unknown. Recently, our commentator tracked down the trooper who shot Jackson.

Germany unveils a memorial in central Berlin to the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Politicians, Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors were on hand for the solemn ceremony to inaugurate the monument designed by American architect Peter Eisenman. The opening ends 17 years of debate over how Germany should mark the darkest chapter of its past.

A handful of residents in New London, Conn. are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to save their homes. The city wants to level the modest neighborhood and redevelop the area as a way to improve its tax base. Diane Orson from WNPR in New Haven reports on the conflict over eminent domain.

More than 70 people -- the vast majority Iraqis -- have died at the hands of insurgents in Iraq in the past three days. In one incident, gunmen ambushed a bus carrying unarmed Iraqi contractors employed by American forces. Seventeen died. Hear NPR's Mike Shuster.

Two Italian aid workers are released by their captors after being kidnapped and held hostage for three weeks. The women, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both 29, were handed over to the Red Cross along with two Iraqi workers who were held with them. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports.