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Reducing poverty tops the priority list for Brazil's president-elect, Luiz da Silva. Poor Brazilians have high hopes for his administration, but "Lula" faces creditors who demand he not bust the federal budget. NPR's Martin Kaste reports. Oct. 30, 2002.

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.

Jazz percussionist Mongo Santamaria dies on Feb. 1 at 85. Santamaria scored a Top-10 hit with his version of Herbie Hancock's jazz-funk classic "Watermelon Man" in 1963. He also wrote the song "Afro Blue," later performed and made famous by John Coltrane. NPR's Elizabeth Blair has a remembrance.

NPR's Ron Elving profiles Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK), the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who will have a critical role in helping President Bush try to get his budget through Congress. Nickles has been in the Senate since the early years of the Reagan presidency. Sen. Nickles has made elimination of the estate tax a top priority.

The director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory resigns, along with his top deputy, amid Department of Energy accusations that managers ignored fraud and theft by lab employees. The DOE spends $1.5 billion a year to run the lab, birthplace of the atom bomb. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports.

U.N. arms inspectors search Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's main palace for evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, top U.N. nuclear monitor Mohamed ElBaradei warns Iraq that it must cooperate more intensely with arms inspectors. NPR's Lawrence Sheets reports.

Internet toy seller E-Toys was supposed to be one of the e-commerce companies with a shot at becoming a retail powerhouse. It had a top-rated Web site, a vast selection of high-end toys and excellent customer service. But as NPR's Elaine Korry reports, E-Toys is having a miserable holiday season. Sales are running way below expectations, cash is running short, and the company is unlikely to survive without a merger or a major sell-off of assets.

Linda Wertheimer talks with Sebastian Rotella, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times in Lima, Peru, about the four-month-old manhunt for Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's former chief of the National Intelligence Service. He says that top officials fear Montesinos could still threaten the country's fragile democracy as long as he's still at large. Eighty investigators are looking for him.

The two men, who happen to acrobats, walked up 100 stairs together outside a Spanish cathedral. One brother was upside down with his head balancing on top of his brother's head.

Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian official in Iraq, denies media reports that the Bush administration is postponing the creation of an transitional Iraqi authority. In the northern city of Mosul, Bremer meets with the city council billed as postwar Iraq's first elected body. Hear NPR's Guy Raz.