- Kevorkian Free on Bond
- On-Line Holiday Shopping
- IT'S OFFICIAL!!! - AOL & NETSCAPE MARRY
- AOL/Netscape/Sun Talking Deals
- Russia Launches First Space Station Module
- New Rules for Digital Airwaves
- Avoiding Shooting Stars
- Former Death Row inmates weep as they urge reform
- Global Warming Treaty
- Who's Watching?
- U.S. study sees jump in liver transplant demands
- CHEMIN DES DAMES
- Small islands say global warming hurting them now
- Death toll climbs to 9,000 in CentAm floods, 13,000 missing
- Could 'loose nukes' go to Mafia? Scholars worry
- Glenn finds space 'beautiful' after 36 years away
- Age Discrimination (in real audio)
- Glenn's Missions Then and Now
- Search engine failures by John Dvorak
- Hubble telescope sees galaxies at edge of universe
- A must see for all you computer hardware gurus "Tom's Hardware Guide"
- Need sports tickets to a game, but the game's sold out? Try SportsTicket.com

Assisted-suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian is free on a $750,000 personal bond after being charged Wednesday with first-degree premeditated murder in the death of a 52-year-old Michigan man who was suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Thomas Youk had sought Kevorkian's help in dying, and his death by lethal injection was videotaped and broadcast on "60 Minutes." Kevorkian admits to assisting in more than 100 suicides over the past eight years, but says the Youk case was the first time he actually administered fatal drugs himself. For the details, listen as NPR's Don Gonyea reports for Morning Edition.

This weekend is the opening of the holiday gift buying season. For some people, the big crowds and decorations in the shopping malls are a kind of exciting buildup to the holidays. For others, the crowds, cranky children, expense and other frustrations can be overwhelming. Fortunately, those who really dread the mall don’t have to go there for their holiday shopping -- they can use catalogs and the Internet. To hear more, listen as All Things Considered host Linda Wertheimer talks with Greg Schwartz, senior producer of the on-line magazine TechShopper.

America Online Inc. and Netscape Communications Corp. signed the deal on a $4.2 billion merger.  AOL will now have control of Netscape's popular Netcenter Web site, with nine million members, as well as its enterprise software. The deal includes a three-year pact marketing and development pact with Sun Microsystems Inc. Sun will help AOL distribute Netscape's commerce software, and the two companies will co-develop new technologies and devices using Sun's Java language.

AOL and Netscape have announced that they  are in talks relating to a merger.  This is an interesting deal on many levels.  The latest ZD Market Intelligence data shows that IE has now become the browser used by a majority of AOL customers.  However, the big money will likely come from the commerce and portal deals that AOL can now bring to Netcenter.  Check out InfoBead Insider for Details. 

America Online confirmed today that it is in talks to acquire Netscape Communications Corp. and potentially strike a deal with Sun Microsystems Inc. to develop and market Netscape products. AOL is by far the largest online service. Netscape is the company that just a few years ago helped create the World Wide Web by introducing software that made the Internet easy to use. Sun would take control of Netscape's business-level "server" software, and benefit from widespread distribution among AOL's 14 million subscribers of its Java technology for running Internet programs. A deal would affect the online industry and the browser war between Microsoft and Netscape. That conflict   is at the heart of the government's ongoing antitrust suit against Microsoft which enters its sixth week today.   Listen as Morning Edition host Bob Edwards discusses the implications of any deal with NPR's John McChesney.

The first component of the international space station was lifted into orbit Friday. A Russian Proton rocket blasted off in Central Asia carrying the 24-ton Zarya control and cargo module. Several more modules must be sent into orbit before astronauts begin living and working aboard the station in early 2000. It is due to be completed by 2004. Officials from the 16 nations involved see the launch as the beginning of a new era of cooperation. Listen as NPR's Michele Kelemen reports for Morning Edition.

Until high definition television (HDTV) comes online, somebroadcasters are using the free digital spectrum to sell things like Internet access and paging services. On Thursday the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruled that broadcasters using the digital airwaves for other than transmitting HDTV must surrender five percent of their gross revenues. The new rule adds to the controversy over Congress' decision to award free spectrum to the nation's broadcasters as a way to ease their transition to digital technology. Find out more in this Morning Edition report from NPR's Jim Zarroli.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Twenty-eight wrongly convicted former Death Row inmates from across the country wept and hugged each other at a  conference Saturday as they urged the U.S. to end capital punishment.  Each of the 26 men and 2 women walked across the stage at   Northwestern University's school of law, put a flower in a vase and  read a similar statement. "My name is Joseph Burrows," said one. "The  state of Illinois sought to kill me for a murder I did not commit. I  was put on Death Row in 1989. I was released in 1994. If the state had its way, I'd be dead today." Audience members cried and gave the former prisoners standing ovations.

Representatives from around the world Saturday endorsed a timetable aimed at fighting global warming. The delegates, who met for two weeks in Argentina, agreed to adopt what is being called "the Buenos Aires plan of action." The accord gives the international community until 2000 to devise ways to enact the historic 1997 Kyoto protocol, which calls for 38 developed nations to cut their greenhouse emissions by 5 percent early in the next century. The negotiations also covered ways to transfer eco-conscious technology to developing countries and whether the group can penalize nations who violate the rules. Hear more as NPR's Alison Aubrey reports for Weekend All Things Considered.

A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that people may not perform a difficult task very well when friends and family are watching. A series of psychology experiments finds that people with friends or family in the audience were more comfortable and thought they did well. Actually, they did worse than the people who performed in front of strangers.  Hear more about the study as NPR’s Richard Harris reports for Morning Edition.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Hepatitis C infections could cause a five-fold increase in the demand for liver transplants in the United States by 2008, according to a report Monday. The University of Florida study, released at a meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, based its conclusions on a projection of current infection rates. Hepatitis C, a blood-borne viral disease, affects about 170 million people worldwide, 4 million of them in the United States. In about a third of all cases, the disease leads to a chronic infections that can cause fatal liver disease.

This Wednesday marks the 80th Anniverary of the end of World War I. From the NPR Archives of 1984, we play a piece produced by Neal Conan that relays the story of the start of World War One as told by some of the soldiers who were there during the first few weeks of fighting on a pivotal battlefield called the Chemin des Dames.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Pacific islands which could vanish for ever if global temperatures continue to rise are already suffering as rising sea levels swallow surrounding islets and contaminate drinking water, island leaders said Tuesday. A delegation from the idyllic but fragile Pacific islands traveled to Buenos Aires to try to convince world leaders at United Nations climate talks to take more action to stop global warming which they fear will cause rising seas to cover their low-lying nations. Rising sea levels have already endangered sacred sites and drowned some small islands off the tiny nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu, including the islet of Tebua Tarawa, once a landmark for Tuvalu fishermen.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Fatalities from Mitch, now a revived tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico, climbed to an estimated 9,000 in flood-hit Central America and the fate of greater numbers of missing remained in doubt. As many as 13,000 people, mostly in Honduras and Nicaragua, were unaccounted for in remote areas beaten by five days of relentless rain from one of the century's strongest storms. As pledges of help from industrialized nations trickled in, Pope John Paul II pleaded for the world to help the impoverished region get badly needed food and medicine to hundreds of thousands of people cut off by flood waters.

Aid for Central America
The United States announced today it is sending more than $70 million in urgent assistance to victims of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras and Nicaragua. In Central America, the death toll has climbed past 10,000 with more than 14,000 missing -- and the numbers are still growing. Find out more as Tom Gibb reports from the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.  And listen as Morning Edition host Bob Edwards talks to Tom Jacobson owner and manager of the Grand Hotel Sula on the north coast of Honduras about his efforts to help some 250 refugees from the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Organized criminal syndicates such as the Italian Mafia could be building a global distribution network for smuggled nuclear material from Russia, scholars said Thursday. At the State of the World Forum a panel of U.S. nuclear experts said there was disturbing evidence organized crime may be getting into the nuclear game. "Criminal drug syndicates are known to be seeking nuclear weapons, and have vast resources," said former U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston. William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said economic crisis had left Russia with lax controls over its estimated 30,000 nuclear weapons and stockpiles of radioactive material.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Astronaut and American legend John Glenn journeyed into space again Thursday at the age of 77 aboard the shuttle Discovery, 36 years after his first, history-making mission.  Cheered on by an enthralled nation, Glenn blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center at 2:19 p.m. EST to become the oldest person to fly in space - more than twice the age of the youngest of his six fellow crew members. "It's beautiful up here," Glenn enthused in his first call back to mission control about three hours and 20 minutes into the launch. A door panel ripped from the tail of the Discovery as it blasted off, but NASA officials said the mishap should not affect the mission.

Weather permitting, on Thursday the Space Shuttle Discovery begins a nine day mission with Senator John Glenn and six other crew members on board. The astronauts are currently undergoing medical tests and checking over their equipment; the countdown has already begun. Glenn's return to space is getting a lot of attention --- so did his mission 36 years ago when he was the first American to orbit the earth. While many things will seem familiar to the 77 year-old astronaut, a lot will be very different. Listen as Morning Edition Commentator Andrew Chaikin compares Glenn's missions then and now.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Hubble Space Telescope has peered farther back in space and time than ever before, spotting galaxies that could be 12 billion years old, astronomers said Thursday. The galaxies would have been formed just after the birth of the universe. They are so far away it has taken their light 12 billion years to reach the telescope, which orbits the Earth. "These images are the deepest images of distant galaxies that have ever been obtained," Rodger Thompson of the University of Arizona, who led the study, told a news conference.

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