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The Federal Reserve has taken a bold step to infuse Wall Street investment banks with cash, cutting its emergency lending rate to banks by a quarter-point. It also approved the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to rival JP Morgan Chase for what can only be described as a rock-bottom price.

Iranians are voting Friday in a parliamentary election with limited choices. Many pro-reform politicians were barred from running as candidates. Conservatives are split over the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States comes at a time when Roman Catholic seminary enrollment is down 60 percent since 1968. Two seminarians talk with Michele Norris about the shrinking pool of priests and other issues facing the U.S. church.

Last year, TurboTax's Web site was unable to process tens of thousands of last-minute electronic tax filings, causing the IRS to grant taxpayers a 48-hour filing extension. This time TurboTax says it's ready for the deluge.

Pope Benedict is visiting the United States for the first time as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. R. Scott Appleby, a professor of religious history at the University of Notre Dame, says the pope's message to America's "Cafeteria Catholics" will likely be a positive one, rather than focusing on differences with the Vatican.

It's one of the most common words in English, and one of the most maligned. But it has been doing useful work for centuries, and lately it's acquired a new, hip meaning. Fresh Air linguist Geoff Nunberg gives us his thoughts on the little word, "um."

Sheriff Bill Smith — once considered one of the most successful sheriffs in the nation at confiscating drug money off the highways — is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation into whether he misused the forfeiture funds.

Two top intelligence officials have testified in Congress about the implications of climate change for U.S. national security. They discussed an assessment that identifies parts of the world where climate change could produce political instability.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung is being received at the White House Tuesday. There are calls on Capitol Hill for President Bush to make human rights a focal point of talks, but the administration is playing up economic cooperation.

The Supreme Court is wrapping up its term, which means blockbuster decisions coming down all at the same time. The justices issued two major rulings early Wednesday. They ruled against the death penalty for people convicted of child rape. And they reduced punitive damages against Exxon for the Valdez oil spill.