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New fines were issued Wednesday by the Federal Communications Commission. The fines are aimed toward indecent programming on broadcast television.

In downtown St. Louis, the opening of the new Busch Stadium is the latest effort to beautify and improve an area that once was called an eyesore and a tragedy. More than 50 businesses have opened in the area, where residential lofts are booming and major projects are building excitement in St. Louis.

Patients with Alzheimer's disease show clear damage to their brains as they age. But some have wondered whether this damage is a cause of the disease or a result of it. Scientists at the University of Minnesota have found a protein that appears to cause memory loss before brain damage appears.

NPR Books Editor Petra Mayer posthumously receives the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

For the past two decades, Kurds have traditionally gathered in Halabja, Iraq, in mid-March to mark a grim chapter in their history: the day when Saddam Hussein's government unleashed a poison-gas attack that killed more than 5,000 people. Thursday, that normally peaceful commemoration turned turbulent.

Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne read listeners' letters, including praise for stories on China and gardening in London.

Renee Montagne talks with Rhea Paul, professor of communication disorders at Southern Connecticut State University and a researcher at Yale's Child Study Center, about Asperger's Syndrome. Paul explains the disability in the context of this week's StoryCorps installment that features a conversation between a child with Asperger's and his mother.

Belarus will hold presidential elections Sunday, and the current president, Alexander Lukashenko, is widely expected to win. The European Union and the United States accuse Lukashenko of crushing human rights, and warn of new punitive measures if the election is declared unfair.

President Bush's choice head the CIA, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, begins his confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) and senators from both parties are expected to grill Hayden on issues of privacy and national security, particularly the role of the NSA in collecting the phone records of ordinary Americans.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert demands a retraction from ABC News for reporting that he was involved in an investigation of a corrupt lobbyist -- even after the Justice Department had denied the report. Hastert has said that someone inside the Justice Department might have led ABC astray in an effort to intimidate him.

Barry Bonds hits a 445-foot home run off Colorado Rockies' pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim, delighting the home fans in San Francisco. His 715 career home runs put him second on the all-time list behind Henry Aaron, who passed Ruth in 1974 and finished with 755 home runs.

If the budget allows, the Census Bureau will be out with GPS devices in 2009 to pinpoint every American dwelling. The collected data is confidential, but some private companies might challenge that law.

Army Sgt. Tim Brumley says he had expected things to be pretty quiet in Afghanistan, where he was deployed last year after 10 months in Iraq. But he ended up losing his foot after being wounded in a major firefight with the Taliban.

World leaders are expressing outrage over an Israeli airstrike Sunday that killed more than 50 civilians -- many children -- in the southern Lebanese village of Qana. The pre-dawn attack flattened a building where several families had taken shelter. Grief and anger were evident and the scene of the bombing.

Alaska's Stryker Brigade was scheduled to wrap up the state's biggest deployment since Vietnam, but instead the Department of Defense announced this week that the unit's deployment would be extended. One Stryker soldier is coming home. Sergeant Irving Hernandez was killed by sniper fire just a few weeks before his deployment was scheduled to end. Libby Casey of member station KUAC in Fairbanks has this remembrance.

The Marine Corps announces a second investigation into the deaths of unarmed civilians in Iraq. The first incident -- which left 24 Iraqis dead in the town of Haditha -- happened in November. The second occurred in April, in a town west of Baghdad. Marine Gen. Michael Hagee flew to Iraq on Thursday.

Marine Gen. Michael Hagee is on his way to Iraq to talk to his troops about using lethal force "only when justified." The trip comes amid allegations that Marines killed unarmed Iraqi civilians in two separate incidents. The military has opened investigations into the deaths.

For the past 20 years, president and director Gary Graffman has nurtured top talent at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music. Now 77, he's stepping down from his adminstrative posts and focusing once again on teaching piano.

The judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing trial has halted testimony after being informed that a government lawyer shared trial testimony with upcoming witnesses, in violation of court rules. Brinkema calls the action a breach of the defendant's constitutional rights, and is considering what sanction against the government is appropriate.

Through a robotic vehicle, a team of scientists are the first to witness up-close the eruption of an underwater volcano. The volcano is not too far from a gigantic undersea trench where one continent-sized piece of the Earth's crust is grinding underneath another.

Pioneering punk band the Sex Pistols will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a ceremony on Monday night — but the surviving members of the band, perhaps in true punk style, are refusing to attend. Madeleine Brand speaks with former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, now a popular disk jockey at a Los Angeles radio station, about why the band has promised to be a no-show.

President Bush prepares for the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq by launching a public relations offensive on the domestic front. NPR White House Correspondent David Greene discusses President Bush' s speech at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Iraqi police have found at least 85 bodies, killed execution-style, in a Shiite neighborhood in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. Host Alex Chadwick discusses the mass execution and ongoing Shiite-Sunni Muslim sectarian violence in Iraq with New York Times reporter Ed Wong, reporting from Baghdad.

Ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq has U.S. politicians and the public wondering if Iraq is on the brink of civil war. Madeleine Brand talks to Stephen Biddle, defense expert and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, about the Bush administration's efforts to clamp down on Shiite-Sunni Muslim blood feuds. Biddle asserts U.S. forces are applying lessons from the Vietnam War to the Iraq War -- a strategy he says is destined to fail.

The Department of Agriculture confirms that a cow in Alabama was infected with mad cow disease. It's the third case of mad cow disease detected in this country. Agriculture officials say the animal's carcass was buried and was not used for animal or human food.