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In December 2001, alleged members of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah had a plan: bomb the U.S., Australian and Israeli embassies in Singapore, steal and fly a jet into the terminal at Singapore's Changi airport, and attack a visiting U.S. warship at Singapore's naval port. Singaporean authorities stopped the plot in time. If the attacks had succeeded, they would have been the most deadly since Sept. 11 -- and would have had devastating ripple effects on the economy of the region. In part four of our series on terrorism in Southeast Asia, NPR's Michael Sullivan looks at the plot and how it was thwarted.

Secretary of State Colin Powell tells the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Iraqi weapons matter will be brought to conclusion "within weeks, one way or another." Meantime, there's skeptical reaction from France and many Muslim countries to Powell's U.N. presentation on Iraq Wednesday. Hear reports from NPR's Michele Kelemen, NPR's Nick Spicer and Khaled Al-Maeena, editor-in-chief of Arab News.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is attending the meeting in Brussels. The U.S. and Europe are imposing new sanctions on Russia and promising to speed up deliveries of weapons to Ukraine.

In the 1980s and 1990s, asthma rates in U.S. kids reached epidemic proportions. Though studies indicate the rates are leveling off, rates for African American and Hispanic children and inner-city populations aren't declining. New research suggests poverty, stress and poor mental health may be fueling the problem. Madge Kaplan of member station WGBH reports.

Robert talks with Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, about NASA's decision to use the NTSB model to figure out why the Columbia broke up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

Dan Keplinger was born with severe cerebral palsy. But at 30, he's already a successful artist, the subject of an Oscar-winning film, and he's finishing his second college degree. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports on the Baltimore, Md., artist's inspirational story. View a video clip from the documentary, and view examples of his art.

Secretary of State Colin Powell prepares to share U.S. intelligence with the U.N. Security Council, in hopes of persuading members that Iraq is in defiance of U.N. weapons resolutions. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair urges European nations to support the U.S. position. NPR's Vicky O'Hara and NPR's Guy Raz report.

NPR's Robert Siegel talks with documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman about his first feature film, Le Derniere Lettre, ("The Last Letter.") It's in French with English subtitles and has one actor, Catherine Samie. The film is a black and white adaptation of a short story by Soviet writer Vassily Grossman, about a letter written in 1941 by an elderly Jewish woman to her grown son, while living in a small Ukrainian village under Nazi occupation.

NASA officials back away from the theory that a piece of foam insulation, dislodged during Columbia's liftoff, caused the space shuttle's disintegration upon re-entry Feb. 1. As NASA continues its probe, engineers draw on risk assessments done after the 1986 Challenger explosion. Hear NPR's Richard Harris and NPR's Christopher Joyce.

The United States "burned" some intelligence sources when Secretary Powell told the U.N. Security Council yesterday what those had revealed. But American intelligence agencies believe the sources were not of great importance and contend that the loss of sources was outweighed by the need to convince the world that Iraq still conceals illegal weapons programs. NPR's Mike Shuster reports.