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Whenever there's a disaster, people want to give, and Hurricane Sandy is no exception. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, U.S. charities collected more than $174 million in donations as of Nov. 9 to help respond to the storm.

But it's not only money that has been pouring in. Relief programs have also received mountains of clothes, food and other supplies, not all of which are needed.

The Associated Press has an update on a story we told you about this past summer:

"A senior agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the government have agreed to settle a discrimination lawsuit, according a court record filed Thursday.

"In a two-sentence notice, a lawyer for ICE Agent James T. Hayes Jr. said the 'parties have come to an agreement in principal' to settle the case for $175,000.

The death of an Indian woman is prompting Ireland to examine the conditions under which abortions can be permitted in the country.

Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist, died last month after she began to miscarry her 17-week-old fetus. Doctors denied her an abortion, a procedure that is illegal in the predominantly Catholic country, because the fetus had a heartbeat. The story gained traction this week after Halappanavar's husband took her body back to India for cremation and went public with the events that led to her death.

In an interview with All Things Considered's Melissa Block, Israel's Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren said that Israel's calling of 30,000 reservists "signals a preparation for possible land action, which we may need to defend our citizens."

Some Democrats complain that Republicans in recent decades have had the edge in House races because GOP state legislatures have been better at the gerrymandering game. Except that may not be true.

Some political experts believe there's an easier explanation, and perhaps a tougher one for Democrats to overcome: Voters supporting Republican House candidates, they say, are spread over more congressional districts than those who support Democrats. It's that simple. It's merely a matter of geography.

There's nothing quite like a deadline to focus the mind. Even a deadline that's not quite real.

Friday was originally the day that states were supposed to not only tell the federal government whether they planned to run their own health exchanges but also how they planned to do it.

Voters were frustrated by a 2012 presidential race they called more negative than usual and more devoid of substantive discussion of issues, according to a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

And voters are pessimistic about the prospect of a more productive Congress, Pew found.

Two-thirds of registered voters surveyed after Election Day said they believe relations between Democrats and Republicans will stay the same or worsen over the coming year.

By the time Father Lawrence Murphy died in 1998, it's alleged, he had sexually abused more than 200 children. Many of them must have seemed ideal victims: Students at St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee between 1950 and 1974, they possessed limited ability to communicate with others. Commonly in that period, the boarding school's pupils had hearing parents who didn't know American Sign Language.

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I'm joined now here in the studio by Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S. Ambassador Oren, welcome to the program.

MICHAEL OREN: Good to be with you, Melissa.

BLOCK: I want to ask you about that call-up of 30,000 army reservists. That does signal an escalation. What can you tell us about that?

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

We turn now to Ireland and a controversy over a young Indian woman there, who died after being refused an abortion in a hospital.

As NPR's Philip Reeves reports, her case is reigniting debate over the near total ban on abortions in Ireland.

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We're going to follow those Palestinian rockets that Anthony was talking about from Gaza into the fields, streets and homes of Israel. Israeli police have confirmed that rockets hit central Israel today, close to Tel Aviv, for the first time. Sheera Frenkel reports from one southern city where three civilians were killed today in their apartment.

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

I'm Melissa Block. And we begin this hour with new fighting in an old conflict. Israeli war planes struck targets across the Gaza Strip today, while Hamas militants and their allies fired rockets at several Israeli towns. One rocket landed on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv. Three Israeli civilians were killed in one attack and at least 19 Palestinians are known to have been killed in Gaza, with many more injured.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block.

Fault lines are forming in the Republican Party over comments from Mitt Romney about why he lost last week's election. In a conference call yesterday, with some of his biggest donors and fundraisers, Romney said President Obama won by bestowing gifts on targeted groups, including young people and minorities.

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We're going to dig into some of those policy differences now between Republicans and Democrats. When it comes to reducing the deficit, both sides insist it's time for compromise. But President Obama says tax cuts for the richest Americans must end.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When it comes to the top two percent, what I'm not going to do is to extend further a tax cut for folks who don't need it.

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I will never be a Hall of Famer and will never lead the league in strikeouts. So begins the memoir published earlier this year by R.A. Dickey, starting pitcher for the New York Mets. How wrong he was. Dickey had a remarkable season this year. Not only did he lead the National League in strikeouts, he also led in innings pitched, complete games and shutouts. And yesterday, the perfect ending to a season not even Dickey could have imagined. He received the highest honor for a pitcher: the Cy Young Award.

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President Obama visited New York today, touring sections of Queens and Staten Island that were devastated by Hurricane Sandy. He promised the federal government will help people rebuild and, more immediately, help restore necessities that many have done without for more than two weeks now.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There's still a lot of cleanup to do. People still need emergency help. They still need heat. They still need power. They still need food. They still need shelter.

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That resignation of David Petraeus, a retired four-star general, has raised a fundamental question: Is something wrong with the top leadership of the military? For months now, one high-ranking officer after another has gotten into trouble on charges ranging from sexual misconduct to the misuse of government funds. So today, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called for an ethics review of the senior officer corps. NPR's Tom Bowman has that story.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block.

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. Three congressional hearings, two of them closed to the public, focused today on the September 11th attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans were killed in those attacks, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. As NPR's David Welna reports, the only open hearing today on Benghazi turned into a political slugfest.