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NPR'S Margot Adler reports that the U.S. State Department and New York's Mayor Giulini have announced tough new parking regulations for diplomats. Starting April 1, diplomats will no longer be exempt from parking fines. Those who ignore the law and refuse to pay tickets within one year run the risk of losing their special license plates. The news isn't being received well among envoys. One Russan diplomat says the city was mounting virtual warfare against the diplmatic corp.

Laurie Neff reports from Jerusalem on Israel's decision today to go head with the construction of a large housing project in disputed east Jerusalem. That decision was made despite U.S. misgivings and a Palestinain warning of violence. The Har Homa project will place 6,500 homes for Jews in an area claimed by Palestinians as their future capital. Paelstinians see the move as Israel's attempt to solidify its claim over all of Jerusalem before final status talks on the future of the city can be held. Israel says it simply needs more housing for all the people who want to live in Jerusalem, and has pledged to build 3,000 units of arab housing near Har Homa as well.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports that relief agencies were able to bring food and medicine to the Zairean border town of Goma today, but the aid will not reach the one million Rwandan refugees displaced by warfare there. The supplies will be distributed to the tens of thousands of local residents who stayed in the city after Zairean rebels captured it earlier this month. But Zaire's army, along with exiled Rwandan Hutu militias, is fighting the Zairean rebels just to the west, preventing delivery of the aid to the vast numbers of people driven from their refugee camps by the recent fighting.

Robert talks to two young baseball fans, one in Atlanta and one in New York City, about the World Series, which is currently being led, three games to two, by the New York Yankees. Dominic Daugherty is a student at Evansdale Elementary School in Atlanta. He's still optimistic and advises Braves coach Bobby Cox to make a locker room speech to rouse the sagging team. Roberto Soto, a twelve-year-old Yankees fan from the Bronx, talks about his excitement at seeing the Yankees with the lead in the Series, and what he thinks the team needs to do to wrap up the championship.

In Yugoslavia, the nationwide protests against the Milosevic government continue. Those protests began a month ago in Serbia's second largest city, Nis (NEESH), when Opposition party victories in local elections were disallowed. Now a local court has re-instated the Opposition victory there. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli was in Nis recently and reports that information about the election, the vote fraud by the ruling Socialist party and the court's re-instatement have been carried by a private radio station and private television... a job neither had ever expected to perform.

Kerry Donahue from member station WBGO in Newark, New Jersey reports on the latest garbage skirmish between New York and New Jersey. On Staten Island, the Fresh Kills landfill will be closed by the end of next year and is the world's largest dump. After the Fresh Kills closure, 13-thousand tons of New York City garbage will pass through New Jersey every day by rail. And some New Jersey residents aren't happy about it.

Twin terrorist attacks against Israelis took place in Kenya today. More than a dozen people were killed when suicide bombers attacked the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala, an Israeli-owned resort on the Indian Ocean. And two missiles were fired at an Israeli airliner as it took off from the airport in the city of Mombasa. The missiles missed their target. We hear from Jerusalem Post reporter Kelly Hartog who is near Mombasa, Kenya. And Jacki Lyden talks with Cathy Jenkins of the BBC, who is in Nairobi.

Cantinero is the musical pen name of Chris Hicken, a British singer-songwriter with a debut CD, Championship Boxing. Recorded in a spare bedroom in his New York apartment, the songs are full of the sounds of city living.

By running a 1997 Chevy van on old vegetable oil, the funk band Patio Kings saves money and the environment during a 25-city tour. NPR's Petra Mayer takes a ride on the van.

The California Supreme Court rules that San Francisco's mayor overstepped his authority last February when he led the city in issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. The ruling invalidates the unions of more than 4,000 same-sex couples who got married before the court shut down ceremonies in March. Hear NPR's Michele Norris and NPR's Richard Gonzales