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Host Debbie Elliott and Chris Roberts dissect the meaning of the nursery rhyme "Little Jack Horner." It's about a real estate swindle in 16th-century England. Roberts is the author of Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme.

A U.S. military strike has killed the most feared terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Jordanian-born Zarqawi was killed when U.S. warplanes dropped 500-pound bombs on his hiding place. Pentagon officials say they found a treasure trove of material at the safehouse.

Annual forecasts are brimming with good cheer for 2014: Jobs will come back, stock prices will keep heading higher, and consumer spending will continue to improve, economists predict.

NPR's Linda Gradstein in Jerusalem reports the violence in the West Bank and Gaza escalated again today, with a sustained gun battle near Bethlehem and day-long clashes in Gaza. At least five Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were killed.

A jury will hear opening statements Monday in the trial of five foreign-born Muslim men accused of plotting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The government is presenting the case as one of the most frightening examples of homegrown terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

NPR's Linda Gradstein in Jerusalem reports one of the last points of Israeli-Palestinian contact was severed today. An Israeli soldier was killed and at least two Palestinians injured in an attack on a joint security liaison office in the Gaza Strip. Israel then ordered Palestinian security officers to leave all the liaison offices throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

Verdi's A Masked Ball skirted the Italian censors when he moved the sensational story from a European royal court to the governor's mansion in colonial Boston.

David Newman is a political columnist for The Jerusalem Post. He is also chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and editor of The International Journal of Geopolitics. He'll discuss the history of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. He's written about the settlements in The New York Times. Newman is also author of the book, Population, Settlement and Conflict: Israel and the West Bank (1991, Cambridge University Press). Read the Transcript

Shortly after the Six Day War ended in 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, a highly controversial move that is still not recognized internationally. Part of the fallout — the ownership of a Palestinian home in an East Jerusalem neighborhood on the frontline between Israel and Jordan — remains in dispute.

"Science Out of the Box" is a new series that will explain scientific phenomena big and small. And also wet. The first topic: how come the shower curtain bows inward when the water blasts on?

Fresh Air's book critic says it's just a fluke that 9 of the 11 titles she picked this year were written by female authors. Her favorites include a jumbo-sized Dickensian novel, a biography of Ben Franklin's sister, a comedy of manners, a stunning Scandinavian mystery and more.