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NPR's Martha Raddatz talks with Noah about how the Pentagon is discounting reports that the Air Force is clearing the General who was in charge of the military housing facility where 19 US airmen were killed in a terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia last June. An earlier report..by a special task force headed by a retired Army general...had faulted the Pentagon's entire command structure for paying insufficient attention to terrorist threats.

The Working Group on U.S. Presidents Disability, a private commission, examines whether the 25th Amendment provides enough contingencies for a smooth transition and sufficient guidelines for succession of power, in the event that a sitting president's physical or mental health is impaired. The group, which includes four former White House physicians, historians, and scientists, is reviewing past questions about presidential disability such as those surrounding Presidents Kennedy, Wilson and Reagan. Joanne Silberner reports.

Alan Cheuse reviews the translation of Jules Verne's lost manuscript Paris in the 20th Century, which has just been published in the U-S. The story was written over one hundred and thirty years ago, and describes what Paris might be like in the 1960's. It would be a city in which art is consumed by science and business and which people communicate by a machine eerily similiar to a fax machine. Paris in the 20th Century is published by Random House.

NPR's Ted Clark reports that the Clinton Administration is sending Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the Mideast this weekend to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the eve of new peace negotiations at Erez on the Gaza border. Christopher's Mideast visit, only days after the two-day Israeli-Palestinian summit at the White House, underscores the importance the US is placing on reviving the Middle East peace process.

to defend him against allegations that his past fundraising activities broke House ethics rules. Speaker Gingrich is replacing Jan Baran, Washington's leading attorney on campaign finance law, with J. Randolph Evans of Atlanta, a nationally known specialist on legal malpractice.

Fallout continues from the indefinite postponement of a hearing on House Speaker Newt Gingrich's violations of ethics standards. A Democratic member of the ethics panel has called the announcement a "Thursday Night Massacre," and the casualties are bipartisan consensus and ethics process. Meanwhile, Republicans are calling for a criminal investigation into tape recordings of a cellular phone conversation in which Gingrich is heard discussing plans to manage the public disclosure of the charges against him, an apparent violation of a promise to the committee. NPR's Brian Naylor has a report.

Voters across the country elect a new Congress. All 435 House seats and 34 Senate posts are in play, as well as 36 state governors' races. Florida's much-maligned voting procedure is on display. Hear NPR's John Ydstie and Pam Fessler.

NPR's Guy Raz reports from London that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's close alignment with the White House on Iraq is increasingly making Blair the odd man out in Europe. Analysts say Blair risks damaging Britain's relations with Europe. What's more, the British public is strongly opposed to war in Iraq and the tabloids have taken to calling Blair "Bush's poodle."

A native of Indiana, John Poindexter went to the Naval Academy, became an admiral and went to work in the White House with the National Security Agency. He then became a central figure in the mid-1980s affair called Iran-Contra. That got him indicted and convicted of misleading Congress, but it did not end his government career. Today, John Poindexter is back, and NPR's Linda Wertheimer has this profile.

Mitch Daniels, the White House budget director, undergoes bipartisan grilling by the Senate Budget Committee over the $2.23 trillion budget President Bush sent to Congress. Committee members pressed Daniels to answer how the budget could assume a new round of tax cuts amid forecasts of record red-ink spending. NPR's David Welna reports.