Search results for

NPR's Chris Joyce reports on a fire burning out of control at one of the main telecommunications centers in Baghdad. U.S. troops have sealed off the area around the blaze but no firefighters have arrived. Few Iraqis are taking notice of the latest blaze in a city badly hit by arson and looting.

In Baghdad, one of Saddam Hussein's most notorious prisons is now abandoned. Looters took everything of value from the building. But people who were tortured there remember all too well. NPR's Scott Simon reports.

Host Robert Siegel talks with NPR's Guy Raz about Thursday's re-opening of Iraq's criminal courts. An American adviser says Saddam Hussein and top associates in the Baath Party could be put on trial in Iraq. There have been protests in Baghdad -- most recently Wednesday by a group of Iraqi doctors -- against the rehiring of Baath Party members for government posts.

Barbara Bodine, the U.S. official assigned to govern central Iraq, will leave her post and return to the United States to take a position at the State Department. The move comes just days after the top civilian administrator in Iraq, retired Gen. Jay Garner, is replaced by L. Paul Bremer, a longtime State Department official. Bodine and Garner have been criticized for being slow to restore services and form an interim government. Hear NPR's Guy Raz.

The Defense Department investigates the contents of a trailer it says may have been used as a mobile biological weapons lab. A U.S. official says the trailer, recovered April 19 near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, has all the equipment of a lab, but that preliminary tests have not turned up any evidence of banned biological agents. Hear NPR's Eric Westervelt.

The kitschy, Americanized "tiki" adaptation of island life includes everything from Hawaiian shirts to Hula girls... and don't forget tropical drinks garnished with paper umbrellas. Hundreds of people are gathering under bamboo torches in Palm Springs, Calif., for a third-annual celebration of tiki culture known as the Tiki Oasis. Alex Cohen of member station KQED reports.

Kurdish commanders say their fighters will withdraw from Kirkuk after working with U.S. forces to gain control of the oil center in northern Iraq. Turkey is uncomfortable with a continued Kurdish presence in Kirkuk. NPR's Ivan Watson reports.

U.S. Marines have moved into the Iraqi city of Kut, which fell with little resistance. NPR's Steve Inskeep spent an afternoon at a checkpoint just outside of Kut, where Marines stood guard trying to prevent Iraqi fighters from fleeing the city. The experience at the checkpoint hints at the challenges U.S. forces face now that central authority has collapsed.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says more peacekeeping forces may be needed to maintain order in Iraq. He says no decisions have been made, but suggests other nations may supply some of their own forces to provide security as Iraq moves to form a new government. Hear Dana Priest of The Washington Post.

NPR's Melissa Block talks with Barham Salih, the prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan about the aspirations of the Kurds.