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Guest host John Ydstie talks with Alberto Almeida, who has devised an index to measure fear among residents of nine major cities in Brazil. Almeida is the head of opinion research at Brazil's leading business school, the Fundacao Getulio Vargas, in Rio de Janeiro.

NPR's Robert Siegel and NPR's Michele Norris read from some of this week's listener letters.

Enormous deficits loom over the federal budget this year and next. The White House is pressing Senate Republicans to trim nearly $10 billion from spending bills approved last year when Democrats ran the Senate. Democrats respond that the president's proposed tax cuts need trimming -- not federal spending. NPR's David Welna reports.

Top U.N. nuclear monitor Mohamed ElBaradei increases pressure on Iraq to divulge information about weapons programs, saying Baghdad must answer questions about the 12,000-page report it gave the United Nations. NPR's Lawrence Sheets reports.

U.N. weapons inspectors find 11 empty chemical warheads in an ammunition storage area in southern Iraq. They are said to be in excellent condition, but it's unclear if they've ever actually contained chemical agents. NPR's Kate Seelye reports.

NPR's Kathleen Schalch reports that a World Trade Organization court has ruled that the so-call Byrd Amendment to U.S. trade law is a violation of international trade rules. The amendment, named after Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), requires the Customs Service to hand over the anti-dumping duties it collects to the companies that brought the unfair trade complaints. Hard-pressed steel companies were the main beneficiary of the law. The U.S. Trade Representative's Office says it will work with Congress to bring U.S. law into compliance with international trade rules.

As the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches, debate over abortion continues. Abortion rights opponents stress abstinence-only education and point to Uganda, where emphasis on abstinence has lowered a 30-percent HIV rate to 5 percent in a decade. NPR's Brenda Wilson reports.

Host Bob Edwards talks with cartoonist, writer and playwright Jules Feiffer about the late Al Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld was famous for his "Nina" caricatures of celebrities and Broadway shows. He died in his sleep yesterday at age 99.

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously hoped for a day when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. It's been nearly 40 years since then, and commentator Aaron Freeman hopes for even more for his daughters. He wants to raise them as if "African-American" is not their primary identity, but one of many things they are, along with athletes, Chicagoans and scholars. The problem is that it's working. They have a different outlook than he does, and he's afraid they are a different race than he is. The struggle against racism has defined much of his life, and he fears that they don't even take racism personally.

Commentator Herbert "Crazylegs" Seward played trumpet in Alabama State's marching band, and he says the music and moves portrayed in the film Drumline are no match for the performances of the real bands of historically Black Colleges and Universities. One band's routines are so precise they form the score of the game at halftime; another has a style called "The Rattler" that resembles the slither of a snake.