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Mariza is a 29-year-old singer of fado — the rich, emotionally textured music tradition from Portugal. She recently spoke with NPR's Melissa Block about her childhood in Lisbon, and about how fado has been her anchor. Hear samples from Mariza's latest CD, Fado Curvo.

British garden expert Keith Wiley visits the Pacific Northwest in a search for the demure bulb Americans call the trout lily or the dog-tooth violet. NPR's Ketzel Levine hunts along with him. View photos from the Olympic Peninsula, and from Wiley's Garden House in Devon, England.

The World Health Organization says it's developing a $100-million fund to combat SARS in China. The money would go to disease-control measures and research into the origins of SARS. WHO officials say the fund does not represent dissatisfaction with China's response to the disease. Hear NPR News.

At 21, singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart has drawn an unusual mix of comparisons: Billie Holiday, Beck, Tiny Tim. Critics are calling his debut album — Oh Me Oh My... — a timeless, haunting and irresistible recording. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports.

Before the war in Iraq, the Pentagon assumed that much of the Iraqi army would survive the conflict and would help with postwar reconstruction. U.S. military planners hoped that surviving Iraqi forces would form the basis of a new national army, which would stabilize the country and protect it from outside aggression. But the war did such damage to the Iraqi military that U.S. occupation authorities have little to work with as they try to reconstitute an army. In addition, they have to contend with a demoralized officer corps and ethnic and religious differences in the ranks. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.

Tom Fontana is executive producer and writer of HBO's Oz, the realistic drama about life in an experimental unit of a maximum-security prison. Fontana also created Homicide: Life on the Street and the 1980s hospital drama, St. Elsewhere. The new DVD box set Homicide: Life on the Street collects the show's first two seasons, and includes special features.

Music critic Michelle Mercer reviews new recordings from two Brazilian artists: Natural by Celso Fonseca, and the self-titled Blue Note debut by the Tribalistas. She says both will put you in the mood for summer.

Thousands of Shiite Muslims in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf greet the arrival of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim. Hakim spent the last two decades living in exile in Iran. The cleric is demanding the pullout of U.S. military forces and says the Iraqi people should be able to establish their own government. NPR's Jackie Northam reports.

Christopher Buckley, the author of Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation's Capital, recently took NPR's Liane Hansen on a walking tour of his adopted home -- a city full of intrigue, history and hidden surprises. Listen to Buckley describe the truth and legend behind "the curse of Lafayette Square," and see photos of the tour.

U.S. Army engineers begin excavating a rubble-filled crater in Baghdad that was the site of an April 7 bombing which officials believe may have killed Saddam Hussein. Residents of the area say the former Iraqi ruler's remains were not among those pulled from the devastated home. NPR's Nick Spicer reports.