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NPR's Rick Karr reports that Napster, the controversial online music-sharing service, has upped its profile in D.C.: It's retained a prominent GOP lobbying firm, hired as its chief counsel a former staffer for GOP copyright stalwart Orrin Hatch, courted right-libertarian think tanks, and encouraged users to call their members of Congress. Can the electoral power of 70-million Napster-users be harnessed to trump the established lobbying clout of the (mostly-Democratic-leaning) recording industry?

Commentator Baxter Black details a specific kind of person, at least in his world view -- the Horse Person.

NPR's Ivan Watson in Monrovia reports there are few signs of recovery or reconstruction in Liberia four years after the end of the country's long civil war. Now, the United Nations is threatening to impose sanctions on the Liberian government.

NPR's Elizabeth Arnold reports the population of the Intermountain West, including Nevada, Arizona, Colorado Utah and Idaho, is the fastest growing in the country. And the region is experiencing growing pains. The boom is stressing water supplies, air quality and the general quality of life.

The White House has so far refused to apologize to the Chinese for the reconnaissance plane incident, a stance that pleases conservatives in the president's own party. But NPR's National Political Correspondent Mara Liasson reports that some want the president to take a still harder line.

NPR's Margot Adler reports that more than a dozen states have joined a push against telemarketing. New York just enacted its law -- and more than a million people have signed up.

Researchers have found a way to take stem cells from fat pulled from liposuction patients -- and to use them to grow everything from human muscle to bone. This method of harvesting stem cells avoids the ethical issues associated with embryonic stem cell research. Linda Wertheimer talks with Dr. Patricia A. Zuk, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine, who is the primary author of the study published today in the journal, Tissue Engineering.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports from Moscow on a recent performance by an unusual ballet troupe from the Siberian city of Perm. The company, calling itself the Fat Ballet, features hefty ballerinas weighing, on average, 200 pounds.

Linda Wertheimer talks to Tim Boggan, historian for the United States Table Tennis Association. Boggan was a member of the U.S. table tennis team that made the historic visit to China in 1971. He recounts the team's reception in China and the matches against the Chinese players.

People from the drug industry, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization are among those meeting in Norway today to talk about ways to make life-saving drugs more readily available to people around the world. NPR's Richard Knox reports.