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Shoko Asahara, the leader of Japan's doomsday sect Aum Shin Rikyu, goes on trial tomorrow on murder charges for the nerve gas attacks on Tokyo's subways last year. As NPR's Julie McCarthy reports, the attacks have shattered the image of Tokyo as a peaceful place and cast doubts on the abilities of the city's world-renowned police department.

NPR's Don Gonyea speaks with Aisha Khurram, a student at Kabul University, about what she is seeing in the city as it falls to the Taliban.

Cities adding more bike lanes hasn't stopped hundreds of cyclists from dying in crashes with cars and trucks. Some riders and drivers are turning to technology.

What would a local news broadcast be without its rousing Action News! theme song? Host David Wright speaks with 24-year-old Byron Graziano of New York City, who collects local news themes for his web site, the TV News Music Museum. http://www.geocities.com/Pipeline/7612/

Scott Horsley of member station KPBS reports that San Diego is trying a new campaign to encourage more courteous use of cell phones. Cell phone maker Nokia and the San Diego city government are teaming up to post signs asking cell phone users to turn off their ringers, or their phones, in public places such as churches, libraries and movie theaters.

NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City on the future of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. In wake of Sunday's defeat at the polls, many PRI supporters are trying to re-establish their party as a player in the new realm of Mexican politics. But others say the victory of the National Action Party's presidential candidate, Vicente Fox, could be the end of the PRI.

NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City on the visit of Mexico's President-elect Vicente Fox to the United States. Fox meets in Washington today with Vice President Al Gore and later with President Clinton, and then tomorrow in Dallas with Republican Presidential nominee George W. Bush.

Euen Kerr of Minnesota Public Radio reports on the popularity of the 101 fiberglass statues of Snoopy that are spread around St. Paul. The city commissioned the representations of Charlie Brown's dog to celebrate the 50th anniversary of native son Charles Shultz's Peanuts comic strip. Many of the statues will be auctioned this weekend, with proceeds going to a Charles Shultz memorial scholarship fund.

NPR's David Welna reports that for weeks, free of charge, Chicagoans have been able to pick up ping pong paddles and play at any one of three hundred tables set up around the city. It's an attempt to let residents and visitors have some fun whenever the mood and wind seem right.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that the tragedies of the gulag archipelago still haunt the Siberian mining city of Norilsk. Stalin deported prisoners to this frozen region in Russia's far north to mine some of the world's richest deposits of nickel, palladium and platinum. Today, construction crews plough up miners' bones from mass graves in the industrial wasteland.