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A sound montage of some of the voices in this past week's news, including White House spokesman Joe Lockhart on the Middle East summit at Camp David; former South African President Nelson Mandela at the closing ceremony of the international AIDS conference; Texas governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore at the NAACP Convention in Baltimore; Judge Robert Kaye, who presided over the civil lawsuit in Miami against the top five tobacco companies; Phillip Morris attorney Dan Webb and smokers' attorney Stanley Rosenblatt on the $145 billion punitive damages verdict.

NPR's Richard Harris reports that the Defense Department says it is starting to refocus its investigation of illnesses among Gulf War veterans as a result of recent revelations that some troops may have been exposed to chemical weapons during clean-up efforts after the war. The Pentagon's top doctor, Steven Joseph, says the realization is "a watershed" in trying to understand the mysterious ailments. The Pentagon now presumes some soldiers have been exposed to chemical weapons, though no illnesses have been clearly linked to the chemicals.

Blanton helped research information for The Cuban Missile Crisis. In the book, released documents and top-secret files reveal how close the US came to a nuclear entanglement. In 1987, the National Security Archive filed suit against the US government for failing to produce the documents they requested. Since then there has been more compliance with the archive, especially since the Russian government told the US to go ahead and release the Kennedy-Krushchev letters.

Host Bob Edwards talks to Richard Allen, National Security Adviser under President Ronald Reagan, about the tape recordings he made in the White House Situation Room the day President Ronald Reagan was shot. Most every top administration official was in the room that day, and the tapes provide a rare glimpse of their private conversations about who was in charge, whether the assassination attempt was part of a conspiracy, and what to do about Soviet subs closer than usual to U.S. shores. Next week marks the 20th anniversary of the attempt on Reagan's life. This interview is the first of two parts.

Vice Premier Qian Qichen is in Washington. He is the highest ranking Chinese official to visit since the Bush administration took office. Qian will meet with the president tomorrow at the White House. China's top concern right now is a decision Mr. Bush must soon make on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Taiwan wants to buy advanced anti-missile technology (Aegis destroyers) but China is adamantly opposed to such a sale. If the sale goes through, some analysts say China will drop the more moderate stance it has recently adopted toward Taiwan. Other analysts say China's views should not be a factor in any U.S. decision to sell weapons to Taiwan.

The program calculates anti-prime numbers used in everyday software. His discoveries won him top prize in the Broadcom Masters, an engineering competition for middle school kids.

Adele is the first female artist to have an album spend 10 consecutive years on Billboard's top 200. She's only the tenth artist to hit the milestone, joining the likes of Metallica and Bob Marley.

Director Brad Bird and actor Patton Oswalt talk about their film Ratatouille. The animated feature tells the story of a foodie rat who becomes a chef in a top Paris kitchen. Bird previously directed and wrote The Incredibles and The Iron Giant. Oswalt is a writer and stand-up comedian.

In the weeks and months immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a working group of top military lawyers considered how to handle captured prisoners. Ret. Rear Admiral Donald Guter was the Judge Advocate General of the Navy at that time.

A top Palestinian official says he's hopeful that a "small window" of opportunity exists for peace with Israel in the wake of this month's cease-fire agreement. But Nabil Shaath, foreign minister for the Palestinian Authority, says Israel is moving too slowly on several issues.