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Forty years ago, Allan Sherman topped the pop charts by replacing the lyrics of folk songs with satires of Jewish American life. And in doing that, he offered a perfect snapshot of what it meant to assimilate.

The world mourns Betty Friedan, who died Saturday at 85, as the author of The Feminine Mystique and a catalyst for the modern women's movement. Kitty Eisele first knew her as "Aunt Betty." She offers a remembrance of a family friend.

A tiny group of enthusiasts in California say they've demonstrated how to push your Prius to get as many as 99.9 miles per gallon -- if you're willing to plug it in overnight. Toyota says that although the idea is intriguing, it's not ready for prime time.

If the 5th Dimension reunited, kept its sunny melodicism intact, and sprinkled its music with subtle hip-hop beats, an intoxicating song like Benny Sings' "Make a Rainbow" would be born. The Dutch singer defies the boundaries of hip-hop, both musically and thematically.

Novelist Kevin Baker has just published the third volume of his City on Fire trilogy. Strivers Row is set in Harlem in 1943. The story focuses on a fictional character — Jonah Dove — and the very real Malcolm Little, later to become Malcolm X.

Voters in Haiti head to the polls Tuesday to elect a new president. But street fighting is so intense that Haiti's interim government will not put voting booths in Cite Soleil, a desperately poor slum in the capital of Port-au-Prince. For residents there, avoiding stray bullets is part of the daily struggle to survive.

The New Orleans Health Department is providing a week of free healthcare for city residents at a clinic in the Audubon Zoo. There is free dental care, eye exams and other outpatient procedures for whomever shows up -- and there have been a lot of people showing up.

In their new book, Cobra Two, Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor conclude that a bitter Iraqi insurgency was not pre-ordained, and they recount the military and political opportunities that were lost along the way.

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.