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of operating on elderly patients, and how with people living longer than before, procedures that previously would not have been considered, are now common place.

Noah talks with Kathy McCoubrey, from the Virginia Dalmatian Assistance League, about dalmatians as pets. Disney is releasing a new version of the movie, "101 Dalmatians" this Christmas season. There are reports of a surge in dalmatian breeding because many children will want them after seeing the movie. McCoubrey says dalmatians should be chosen carefully. They are very high-strung, and they need frequent exercise and plenty of space.

We hear excerpts from the ceremony at which President Clinton presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to astronaut Shannon Lucid today. Lucid holds the American record for spending the most time in space. She stayed in space for 188 days earlier this year.

which the state of Florida will try to help resolve. At Miami's request, Governor Lawton Chiles has sent advisors to assist the city to bring the budget into balance, as required by state law. Miami faces a $68-million shortfall in the current year.

Federal officials have determined that poverty isn't the only reason why many public housing projects in the United States have deteriorated into virtual war zones where drugs and crime plague residents. They believe that the architectural structure of the complexes may have something to do with it. NPR's Barbara Bradley reports that government architects are exploring new designs for public housing to make them safer places to live.

The BBC reports on today's defiant statement by P.W. Botha, former apartheid president of South Africa, to that nation's Truth Commission. Botha refused to apologize for white minority rule, and shunned the suggestion that he would need to seek amnesty for past crimes committed by the regime.

Robert talks with NPR's Ann Cooper, who's in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, about the uncertainty surrounding the number and whereabouts of the refugees who remain stranded in Zaire. Relief groups generally agree that there are several hundred thousand people still in need of food and water, but they don't really know how many there are, or where they are. One United Nations agency today said it has information that at least one hundred thousand refugees are on the move towards Goma, Zaire, the site of last weekend's mass return to Rwanda of approximately a half-million people.

Phyllis Joffe reports on a program that has been teaching children in impoverished neighborhoods in Pittsburgh how to work with ceramics. The program, now thirty years old, has grown to beome one of the country's most successful art centers and a model for community development. (12:00) (S

Commentator Elissa Ely tells the story of a psychiatric patient whom she was asked to assess, in order to see if he was competent to make decisions. His loving children thought he was not; his social worker thought he was. This man spoke only one word-- but with the help of his social worker, Ely learned volumes about the man's capacity to make his own decisions.

Commentator Reynolds Price remarks on his obsession with time and his constant fear that he will be late and hold someone up. He traces this back to his childhood. He adored his travelling salesman father, but when he would drive around with him, his father often would leave him waiting in the car for endless stratches of time.