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Congress returns Tuesday for a lame-duck session with several must-pass items on the agenda, ranging from spending bills to the new Department of Homeland Security. Also on the list is fixing a glitch in Medicare that's cutting fees to doctors. For Morning Edition, NPR's Julie Rovner reports.

The frontier is long gone, but the American West clings to some of its roots. Morning Edition presents a series of profiles of people who are inspired by the region's landscape, resources and culture. The series concludes with Montana writers Judy Blunt and Rick Bass. NPR Online offers excerpts of their works.

Joe Palca speaks with Donna Sheehan, who organized a group of 50 women this week to demonstrate in the nude against the war in Iraq. Using their bodies, the women formed the word "peace" in the grass in Point Reyes Station, Calif.

In Anouar Brahem's native Tunisia, the oud is known today mainly in the context of loud and large ensembles that leave it all but buried in a dervish of sound. But Brahem highlights the stringed instrument in a delicate, often introspective context. On his new CD, Le pas du chat noir, the oud is part of an unlikely trio including piano and accordion. He talks with Liane Hansen on Weekend Edition Sunday.

She is the manager and friend of Sekou Sundiata. She'll discuss her decision to donate her kidney to him, and what it's been like to have done such a thing.

In the latest installment of NPR's series on finding homes for people who need support and services, NPR's Joe Shapiro reports on the problem elderly residents of so-called assisted living facilities have when they are forced into nursing homes because of their special medical needs and government regulations.

Would it bother you to find the neighbors' cattle grazing on your front lawn? Just how long can you live without power when it's 20 degrees outside? Some communities in western states have drafted ground rules for newcomers -- a new "Code of the West." Read some helpful hints for life on a new frontier.

Arab League foreign ministers gathered in Cairo indicate that Iraq is likely to accept the terms of the U.N. resolution calling for disarmament. NPR's Kate Seelye reports.

Beyond the glamour of Hollywood and the romance of the Golden Gate Bridge, there is another California -- and it's home to the greatest garden in the world. The 400-mile-long Central Valley supplies fully one-quarter of the food America eats. Now the region faces huge changes. NPR's John McChesney and Richard Gonzales begin a four-part series focusing on the future of California's Central Valley.

Robert Siegel talks with David Spencer, mission manager for the Mars Odyssey, a spacecraft that's scheduled to begin orbiting Mars tomorrow.