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House Republicans continued their public campaign to keep Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich in control of the Speakership today. Party leaders held a conference call to reassure caucus members of the inconsequential nature of Gingrich's ethics violations. And Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour told a press conference that Democrats were making a raw partisan power play to manipulate the ethics process and deny Republicans the leadership they won in the election. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.

The independent nature of the annual Sundance Film Festival has been eroded in recent years as more films shown there have already landed distribution deals. But despite criticism that it's become too "corporate," Sundance still produces surprises. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan.

Insects known as "walking sticks" have gained and lost wings several times over the last 10 million years. At least that's what a study in this week's issue of Nature magazine contends. NPR's Michele Norris talks with Michael F. Whiting, professor of evolutionary biology at Brigham Young University and lead author of Loss and Recovery of Wings in Stick Insects.

John Burnett reports that President Bush's first foreign trip won't feel so foreign. The former Texas governor has traveled extensively in Mexico, cultivating friendships with President Vicente Fox and other leaders. Bush and Fox share natural affinities: both have an easy-going, back-slapping, plain-spoken style. The question now is how that translates into the way they deal with complex policy questions.

Natural gas prices have more than doubled since last year. Homeowners can expect to see, on average, a 50-percent increase in their bills this winter. There are some things you can do to try and keep your costs down.

Fears of war in Eastern Europe have pushed up the prices of oil, natural gas and other commodities.

Holly is a journalism student in New York City. She says her brother is doing the kind of work that puts him in a lot of danger... and to stay connected to him, she stays tethered to the TV news. She says her loyalty to him has brought some sudden changes in her life. Because of the nature of her brother's work, Holly asked that her last name not be used.

Robert Siegel talks to Jason Freeman, a Columbia University doctoral student in music, who has created a software, called N.A.G., that makes music montages off music-sharing networks. It relies on the way music files are downloaded -- some faster than others -- and puts items together that come from a word-search. Freeman likes the random nature of his creation, but not all of the results.

NPR's Elizabeth Arnold reports on the hardest-working river in the West: the Colorado. Seven states draw from the river to water crops and quench the thirst of rapidly growing cities. As more users step up to tap the river, the conflicts increase between individual states, competing industries and nature itself.

NPR's Melissa Block talks with Seth Coleman, lead author of a study on the mating preferences of female bower birds to be published Thursday in the journal Nature. He says older female birds respond more to strong character traits in their male mates than the shiny objects or ruffled feathers that younger male birds may try to woo them with.