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Much of the world's cotton comes from Texas, even though it's not a particularly great place to grow the crop. Big subsidies and heavy technology and R&D spending have helped the United States dominate the global cotton trade for two centuries.

The House Judiciary Committee holds hearings on the "Downing Street Memo," notes that suggest the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq months before the conflict began. The memo is from a meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his aides in July 2002.

The alleged mistreatment of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay sets off a heated Senate debate. Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, compared a description of mistreatment -- submitted to a Pentagon investigator by an F-B-I agent -- to actions carried out by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Some Republicans accused Durbin of maligning American military personnel.

Virginia Gov. Mark Warner says Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, is putting states in financial peril, especially as Congress eyes $10 billion in federal cuts. The Democrat is chairman of the National Governors' Association, which has developed its own plan for Medicaid reform.

Anne Bradstreet is considered America's earliest poet, and a new biography details her life. Scott Simon speaks with Charlotte Gordon, author of Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet.

In the fifth part of our Vietnam series, Michael Sullivan travels to Quang Ngai province, where the massacre of My Lai occurred in 1968. Now, 30 years after the end of the Vietnam War, it seems old wounds are slow to heal.

Even before it disappeared in the 1940s, the ivory-billed woodpecker had near-mythical status. Christopher Joyce reports on what scientists are planning now that they believe they've rediscovered a species long thought extinct.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was thought to be extinct. Now, scientists say it's been sighted again and conservationists are planning ways to protect it. The striking bird has been discovered in the Big Woods area of Arkansas.

Dennis Kozlowski, the former chief executive of Tyco International, has taken the stand in his own defense. Kozlowski offered an explanation of bonuses his employees' claimed were unauthorized. Kozlowski is accused of looting the company of $150 million and artificially inflating its stock.

Journalist Mirta Ojito arrived in the United States from Cuba as a teenager in 1980, part of an influx of Cuban refugees from the Mariel boatlift. Her new book, Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus, explores that time.