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Robert Siegel previews the Supreme Court's arguments over affirmative action at the University of Texas with legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.

The BBC is apologizing to women who claim they were sexually abused decades ago by one of the broadcaster's top entertainers. Jimmy Savile had been knighted for his charity work in 1990. He died last year. The number of women alleging abuse could be more than two dozen and the scandal has dominated Britain's media.

In Michigan, unions have bet big on ballot proposals to stem a tide of Republican legislation curtailing organized labor's ability to bargain contracts, collect dues, and raise money for political races. Their top goal is to make sure the state legislature cannot pass a so-called right-to-work law that outlaws compulsory union membership. They also want to reverse a law that allows the state to temporarily take over financially struggling local governments and scrap public employee contracts.

Thousands of Coptic Christians marched through central Cairo on Tuesday to demand justice for the more than two dozen Copts who were killed a year ago when army units moved in to stop their protest.

When Mitt Romney said he would cut PBS funding in the first presidential debate — and singled out Big Bird, whom he said he liked a lot — he perhaps inadvertently introduced the befeathered yellow children's icon smack into the center of political debate. President Obama approved a cable-only commercial dinging Romney for going after Sesame Street rather than Wall Street, but Romney appears to think he has a winning hand — castigating the president for focusing on a profitable educational puppet empire rather than big issues, like terrorism in the Arab world.

Robert Siegel talks to UCLA Law Professor and author Richard Sander about the impact on California's education system when the state banned Affirmative Action.

Graphic novelist Chris Ware's latest, Building Stories, is a collection in many formats, following the (mostly) sad and lonely lives of the inhabitants of a Chicago brownstone. But reviewer Glen Weldon says the work is colorful, intricate and ultimately beautiful.

Round 9 of Three Minute Fiction is currently underway. Readers from more than a dozen graduate programs are plowing through the nearly 4,000 entries received. Host Guy Raz shares one of the favorite picks so far, The Generous Application of Grease by Stephen Fratus of Walnut Creek, Calif. You can read the full story below along with other stories at www.npr.org/threeminutefiction.

Mark Helprin's sweeping midcentury novel, In Sunlight and In Shadow, describes a postwar New York in limbo. Helprin borrowed from his own experiences to write this tale of love and familial obligations. "It's all based on what I know and what I knew," he says.

Colombia's government has announced peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Marxist insurgency that has been fighting a brutal conflict for nearly five decades. But memories of previous, unsuccessful attempts at peace are still fresh for civilians in the rebels' mountainous heartland.