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Quinn Klinefelter of WDET in Detroit reports the head of the National Highway Traffic Administration says automakers must improve the safety of sport utility vehicles or the government may force them to do so. But car companies counter that they are already offering improved safety devices on the popular vehicles.

Satirist Harry Shearer reflected on the apparently deteriorating standards of television networks (witness tonight's reality show, Man versus Beast) and movie studios (the upcoming Dumb and Dumberer, for example), and decided there's still a way to go in the "race to the bottom."

Randall McClallen says bringing some warmth and care to Peorians battling housing insecurity is challenging, but rewarding.

Raquel Maria Dillon reports Boston area critics of the Roman Catholic Church have turned their sites north, to the Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire. John McCormack was a top aid to Cardinal Bernard Law, who stepped down last month as a result of the priest sex abuse scandal. The protesters say McCormack is also to blame for the abuse, and they want him to step down.

In space, one cannot hear sounds. But a new musical work -- commissioned by NASA -- is based on radio waves gathered from the far reaches of the solar system. For Morning Edition, Gayane Torosyan reports on Sun Rings, composed by Terry Riley and performed by the Kronos Quartet. The work includes sounds collected over 40 years by University of Iowa physicist Don Gurnett.

A new study in The Journal of the American Medical Association supports the "gateway drug theory," which states that early marijuana use increases the likelihood of using other drugs or becoming dependent on drugs or alcohol. NPR's Vicky Que reports.

The battle to drill in the area has been playing out for decades.

Gregory Crouch reports from the Netherlands that Dutch voters go to the polls for the second time in eight months today. The party of slain right-wing Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn is plummeting in popularity after months of negative news reports about its members. Fortuyn, best known for his anti-immigrant stance, was assassinated a few days before last year's elections.

In Miami, opening arguments begin in the trial of 11 veteran police officers charged with federal corruption. The officers are accused of planting guns at the scenes of four controversial police shootings and then conspiring to cover up their actions. NPR's Phillip Davis reports.

On Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court declared that the constitutional right to privacy "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." On the 30th anniversary of the case that came to be called Roe v. Wade, an NPR News series examines the state of abortion rights in America. For Morning Edition, NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner chronicles the recent incremental successes by abortion rights opponents.