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The announcement Tuesday that Harvard University President Lawrence Summers is resigning points to the difficulties of running a high-profile university, and the need to balance many constituencies: alumni, governing board, faculty and students.

Two lawsuits were filed Wednesday challenging the Bush administration's authorization of secret eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. Renee Montagne talks to Larry Diamond, one of the plaintiffs in the case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Diamond is a specialist with Stanford's Hoover Institution who does research in the Middle East.

The captors of American journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped in Iraq almost two weeks ago, say they will kill her Friday unless all Iraqi women prisoners are freed. Simultaneous suicide and roadside bombings on the same Baghdad street Thursday have killed at least 22 Iraqis.

A group called the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has grabbed four oil workers and also attacked pipelines and platforms of Royal Dutch Shell. Shell is the biggest producer in the swamplands of the Niger River Delta. Financial Times reporter Dino Mahtani discusses developments with Steve Inskeep.

The Pentagon is defending its use of a toxic agent called white phosphorus to smoke out and capture insurgents in last year's battle for Fallujah. If ignited particles of the chemical land on a human, they can burn through flesh and bone. John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org discusses the controversy.

Members of Congress wrap up work on spending and taxes before the Thanksgiving break. Early Friday morning, the Senate approved a $60 billion package of tax cuts, and the House narrowly approved $50 billion in spending cuts. But finding common ground in December won't be easy.

The levees of Southern Louisiana remain under the control of local districts, but Hurricane Katrina revived a call to join them under a central authority. Some question whether surrendering local power would prevent a levee failure in the future.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announces plans to reform the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The move, she says, will bring the foreign assistance programs into line with the Bush administration's push to spread democracy, or "transformational diplomacy."

Police take the man who shot Pope John Paul II back into custody after an appeals court ordered him to return to prison to serve more time for killing a journalist and for other crimes in Turkey.

As residents of New Orleans returned to their neighborhoods, now drying out after Hurricane Katrina, bells rang out for the first time in a month today at the city's St. Louis Cathedral.