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NPR's Ivan Watson reports on vigilante justice in southeastern Nigeria. A provincial government has hired a machete-toting militia called "The Bakassi Boys" to deal with a spate of armed robberies. The results have been bloody but immensely popular, and the crime rate has dropped sharply.

People waiting for the bus in Madison, Wis., talk about their job security.

Robert Siegel talks with Robert Matthews, a physicist at Aston University in Birmingham, England and the world's foremost expert on Murphy's Law. Matthews is part of a six-week experiment across Britain that begins today. Up to 150,000 primary and secondary school pupils are dropping buttered toast. If the results prove that the toast is more likely to fall butter-side down, Murphy's law will be validated.

On Monday evening, 10 year old Rodney McAllister went to a city park across from his home in St. Louis, Mo. The next morning he was found under a pine tree, mauled to death by stray dogs. McAllister's mother, Gladys Loman, was charged with a misdemeanor for endagering the welfare of a child. Animal control officers rounded up nine stray dogs by late Tuesday. Robert Siegel talks with Greg Jonsson, a reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, about the mauling case and what animal control officials are doing to prevent a similar attack.

Commentator Judith Rich Harris says at times there isn't much a parent can do to prevent a child from using a gun at school and that signs are often not obvious. She says the best preventive measure is simply not to own guns.

NPR's Madeleine Brand talks with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser spent the last few years visiting slaughterhouses and various franchises to research his investigation into the industry. He discovered that fast food's impact reaches beyond consumers into the cattle, agricultural, and meat packing industries.

NPR's Tom Gjelten reports on the controversy over the military machine that's an airplane and helicopter in one--the Osprey V 22. It was developed specifically for the Marine Corps, but after two of the aircrafts crashed last year, many are asking the Pentagon to reconsider the Osprey program.

Commentator Matt Miller says President Bush's proposed tax cut will empty the government's stockpiles exactly when it should be filling them.

Host Bob Edwards speaks with Teresa LePore, elections supervisor of Palm Beach County, Florida. The state has municipal elections Tuesday, and officials are promising none of the problems of the November election, and none of the butterfly ballots.

NPR's Chris Arnold profiles a man considered a "social entrepreneur", who gave up a big-city law career to defend death-row inmates and prisoners denied medical care. That lawyer, Steven Bright, goes about his work at the Southern Center for Human Rights with a zeal usually associated with those in the high-tech sector.