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North Carolina is fed up with air pollution from other states making people sick and blanketing its scenic vistas with haze. Now it hopes to force the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of country's biggest polluters, to change its ways by using one of the oldest types of lawsuits: the nuisance suit.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died today at age 94.

The House of Representatives will be under new management in 2007, but leadership posts within each party are undecided. Maryland's Steny Hoyer wants to be Majority Leader, but Nancy Pelosi backing Rep. John Murtha. Republican Speaker, Dennis Hastert, says he won't run for a leadership post, creating room at the top for the new minority party.

In the coming weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue a regulation that will extend 1 million years into the future. But the EPA doesn't even know if humans will exist a million years from now.

Star writers gathered in New York City on Wednesday night for the National Book Awards ceremony. Books dealing with the events of Sept. 11, and war, were among the nominees. A graphic novel was also among the nominees, a first. Among the winners was Richard Powers' The Echo Maker, which took the prize for fiction.

President Bush wraps up the NATO summit in Latvia, where the focus has been on Afghanistan, and heads to Jordan for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Members of the Iraq Study Group are expected to make their recommendations on the direction of U.S. involvement in the next few weeks. But analysts say that events in Iraq are moving so quickly that the proposed recommendations may have lost their relevance by the time they are revealed.

Michele Norris talks with Marita Golden about author Bebe Moore Campbell. Campbell died today of complications from brain cancer at her home in Los Angeles. She was 56. In addition to being an author, Campbell was an NPR commentator and an advocate for the mentally ill. She is survived by her mother, husband, daughter and two grandchildren.

The Supreme Court takes on carbon dioxide as it hears arguments over climate change and CO2 emissions. Madeleine Brand talks with Slate.com's legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick.

A case in the Supreme Court today may determine the fate of millions of inventors' patents. A law says that an invention can't be patented if it is "obvious," but the definition of "obvious" isn't clear after decades of litigation. Now, many companies have filed briefs calling for a change to the rule.