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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.

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.

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.

A massive heat wave continues to broil many parts of the United States, with temperatures topping 100 degrees for the third consecutive day in many places. And with high humidity and other factors, the heat index shows that the temperatures often feel even hotter.

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.

Host Robert Siegel talks with NPR's Guy Raz about Thursday's re-opening of Iraq's criminal courts. An American adviser says Saddam Hussein and top associates in the Baath Party could be put on trial in Iraq. There have been protests in Baghdad -- most recently Wednesday by a group of Iraqi doctors -- against the rehiring of Baath Party members for government posts.

Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi talks about Sunday's elections. He has spent the past week urging Iraqis to vote, while campaigning at the top of the Iraqi List slate. He discusses his legacy as interim leader and his determination to keep the polls open, regardless of security concerns.

Gas prices are soaring across the country, but particularly in California. Fuel in the San Francisco Bay Area has topped $3, though the hike has not caused an attendant spike in public transportation ridership.