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NPR's Eric Westervelt has an update on the war in Afghanistan. An explosion outside a United Nations guesthouse in Kabul yesterday punctuated the U.S. military's sober assessment of the war that came just hours earlier. Instability still seems to plague Afghan cities. The war is now characterized by skirmishes, while coalition forces hunt for Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives along the Pakistani border.

Singer Marianne Faithfull got her start in the English music scene of 1964, when she dated Mick Jagger and had the hit song, As Tears Go By. In the following years she had a drug addiction that almost killed her, before recovering in 1985 and releasing new albums. Her memoir, Faithfull: An Autobiography published in 1994 tells her story of highs and lows with music and drugs. This interview first aired September 26, 1994.

His new book is Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. It*s about a 1995 heat wave in that city which proved to be an insidious natural disaster. Streets buckled, electric power blew, and over 700 people died. Klinenberg is an associate professor of Sociology at New York University.

Dennis McNally is the publicist for the Grateful Dead, and the band's official historian. He's also the author of the new book, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead. He is also author of the book, Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation.

West Nile virus is spreading through the United States faster than experts had predicted. Nearly 300 people have contracted the mosquito-borne virus and at least a dozen are dead. Humans aren't the only victims; many species of animals are also at risk. NPR's John Nielsen reports NPR's John Nielsen reports.

The confusion of the 2000 presidential election led to calls for more reliable ways to vote -- but federal election reform remains stalled. With the 2002 elections only weeks away, Maryland isn't waiting for the feds to take the lead. NPR's Pam Fessler reports on the state's new high-tech voting machines -- see the machines in use, and view an online simulation.

Host Brian Naylor talks with Timothy Docking of the Institute of Peace about the Bush Administration's Africa policy. The president has said he will not attend the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development that kicks off in Johannesburg tomorrow. But Secretary of State Colin Powell is to attend. He is expected to announce $4 billion in development aid for Africa.

After two major studies link hormone replacement therapy to serious health risks like heart disease and breast cancer, millions of menopausal women -- and their doctors -- are reconsidering their options. Millions of those women are now reconsidering their use of hormone replacement pills. And doctors around the country are trying to figure out what to tell them. NPR's Joe Palca reports for Morning Edition.

Morning Edition's Bob Edwards gets a sneak preview of the new International Spy Museum now open for business in Washington, D.C. Hear about spy props, including a KGB pistol disguised as a tube of lipstick, a camera that can see through walls and a Soviet shoe transmitter.

Some 30 years ago, a public health investigator overheard a story about a doctor being reprimanded for treating an elderly black man with syphilis. The investigator had stumbled upon one of the most notorious medical experiments in U.S. history: 399 black men with syphilis went untreated so scientists could study how the disease ravages the body. NPR's Alex Chadwick reports for Morning Edition.