Troops killed at least three attackers today in Kabul, a day after at least 20 died from violence across the country.  On the eve of the country's presidential election, we speak with the BBC's Lyse Doucet, who has been in Afghanistan for several days reporting on the run-up to the vote. She joins us from Kabul.

According to the Library and Book Trade Almanac, more than 24-million medical books were sold in 2008. But it can be difficult for doctors, who are trained in the intricacies of medicine, to write books geared towards a general audience. In Boston, nearly 200 medical professionals recently gathered at a Harvard Medical School course on publishing to learn how to pitch their books to literary agents. Here & Now's Jill Ryan brings us the story.

Author Anne LeClaire has been spending the first and third Monday of each month in silence, as a practice in meditation. We speak with her about her new book "Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence."

Polls show that older Americans feel hesitant about President Obama's health care reform plans, in part because most versions of the plan include proposals to reduce Medicare growth by more than $500 billion over the next decade. AARP, the advocacy group for Americans 50 and older, has been lobbying Congress to help shape health care legislation and it has just launched a multi-million dollar media campaign to combat what it says are myths about health care reform. We'll speak with Nancy LeaMond, Executive Vice President of AARP.

Hao Jiang Tian, the first world-class Chinese singer of western opera, recounts growing up during the cultural revolution in China and going from the Beijing boiler factory where he worked, to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. We spoke with him last September, about his memoir "Along the Roaring River: My Wild Ride from Mao to the Met."