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It's been a stunning fall for California's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Company. The company played a crucial role in California's fabled economic growth, and its clout was once unmatched in the state. But California's electricity crisis has been punishing for the utility. Its future now depends largely on a bankruptcy court judge. NPR's Elaine Korry has the story.

Linda Wertheimer interviews Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, former director of the White House Office of National Drug Policy under President Clinton. He is now president of McCaffrey Associates. They discuss the U.S. relationship with Peru and the war on drugs.

Three days after the Peruvian Air Force downed a small plane carrying a missionary family, military and diplomatic officials on two continents are still trying to sort out what happened. In Washington today, Bush administration spokesmen said the CIA had been involved in the drug interdiction effort that killed an American woman and her infant daughter. But they said the CIA-operated surveillance plane had no part in the decision that led to the tragedy. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.

Linda Wertheimer talks with Michael Loftis, president of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, about the work that his organization's missionaries were doing in Peru. Loftis discusses how the shooting down of a plane over Peru might affect the Association's approach to its work. The Association has 1,300 people in 65 countries. James and Veronica Bowers went to Peru in 1994, lived on a houseboat, and traveled among villages on the Amazon to preach and teach the Bible.

NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr uses the 2000 census to analyze President Bush's enthusiasm for a hemispheric common market.

The U.S. says a tape recording of the cockpit conversation in an American surveillance plane over Peru proves the crew tried to stop the shoot down of a missionary plane by the Peruvian Air Force. An American missionary and her 7-month-old daughter were killed when a Peruvian fighter mistook their plane for a drug smuggling aircraft. Robert Siegel talks to NPR's Pentagon Correspondent Tom Gjelten.

As our last poet in our National Poetry Month series, Ofelia Zepeda reads her poetry. Zepeda is a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her poetry is in both English and Tohono 'O'odham, her native language. She is a member of the Tohono 'O'odham tribe. Her tribe is an important part of her life and her poetry.

Linda Wertheimer and Robert Siegel read letters from All Things Considered listeners. (3:00) To contact All Things Considered , write to All Things Considered Letters, 635 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC 20001. The e-mail address is atc@npr.org.

No one would think to charge Starbucks Coffee with selling drugs for the caffeine it distributes every day. But David Courtwright, author of Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World, says psychoactives found in alcohol, coffee and tobacco are just as much drugs as psychoactives found in opiates, marijuana and cocaine. Robert Siegel talks to David Courtwright about the book. (9:30) Forces of Habit is published by Harvard University Press, March 2001.

NPR's Richard Gonzales reports on state and federal reaction to a plan to provide California with power during the summer months. The proposal was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) earlier this week. But California Gov. Gray Davis, and President Bush, are far from happy.