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NPR's Richard Knox reports the National Institutes of Health has announced new guidelines allowing federally funded researchers to perform experiments with cells taken from human embryos. Research with embryonic cells is controversial. Scientists say cells taken from human embryos may be helpful in treating many serious diseases, including Parkinson's and diabetes. But some people have moral objections to the research because it involves destroying a human embryo. The NIH guidelines attempt to strike a balance by insisting that federally funded scientists can only use cells taken from embryos that are left over from fertility treatments -- embryos that would otherwise be thrown away.

Ron McKay, a scientist at National Institutes of Health, joins Robert Siegel in NPR's Washington studios to talk about new guidelines for stem cell research.

Noah Adams and Laura Kraut, a member of the U.S. Equestrian Olympic team discuss how the team's horses are shipped to Australia for the Sydney games. The horses are quarantined before participating in the competition.

The National Transportation Safety Board has concluded that the TWA Flight 800 disaster of 1996 was probably caused by an electrical short circuit. The four-year investigation formally ended today, as the board stressed that the flight was NOT brought down by a terrorist action. NPR's Mary Ann Akers reports.

Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease. For some reason, rates of asthma keep going up every year. Researchers have been looking at the causes for this increase, which has been found to be much higher in the industrialized world. Everything from exposure to dust mites and cockroaches to diet has been implicated. Now, a new study from the New England Journal of Medicine concludes that there might be another cause: too much cleanliness. The more sterile the early environment for infants six months and younger, the more problems with asthma they seem to have later in life. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.

Susanna Capelouto of Peach State Public Radio reports on a plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to reduce the flow of the Chattahoochee River to protect Atlanta's drinking water supply. The plan has upset those who live downstream. Because of a long regional drought, the Corps wants to hold the water in Lake Lanier, which is the main reservoir for Atlanta. Environmentalists fear that plan will prevent aquatic life below the dam from getting enough water in the river to survive the dry conditions.

NPR's Brian Naylor reports on the congressional race in 36th district of California, near Los Angeles, between incumbent Steve Kuykendall and former seatholder Jane Harmon. It's one of the battleground seats in this election, and the Democrats are hoping to retake the seat and others like it as they try to retake control of the house.

The United States has acknowledge what it calls "less than honorable" actions against Native Hawaiians more than a century ago. Yesterday the federal government recommended that indigenous islanders be given the same sovereign status as most American Indians.

Steven Dudley reports from Bogota that non-governmental relief agencies are worried that the newly approved American aid package for Colombia relies too heavily on military solutions to the drug problem. The NGO's say that the 1.3 billion-dollar program puts them in danger.

Commentator John Ridley may have missed the conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, but he had a chance to attend a far more inclusive convention in the small town of Britt, Iowa.