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The Tavis Smiley Show bids music legend Ray Charles a final goodbye. On Thursday, a long line formed around the Los Angeles Convention Center where people paid their final respects to the music legend. We hear from Mable John, who wrote more that 52 songs for Ray Charles and served as lead vocalist and director of the Raylettes backup singing group.

In 2014, after disastrous spills and opposition from environmentalists, the Environmental Protection Agency imposed new rules on the storage of coal ash. Now utilities are planning to close down the ponds that hold the toxic ash, but it has to go somewhere. Environmentalists say the safest place for it is in securely lined landfills, such as the municipal landfill in Wayne County, Ga. Locals are fighting the plan, but there's not much they can do.

Throughout November, hundreds of people are lining up to peer through the telescope at Lowell Observatory in northern Arizona. What they'll see: Mars in close opposition with the Earth. This is the nearest the red planet has been to Earth since 2003. If you miss it this month, you'll have to wait until 2018 for such an incredible view. Sadie Babits has this postcard from the observatory.

Noah talks with Bob Gnaizda (guh-NAYZ-da) of the Green Lining Institute in San Francisco. Mr. Gnaizda, is a community advocate, who helped negotiate a deal that ensures $45 billion will be reinvested in the communities effected by the Wells Fargo / First Interstate merger. Mr. Gnaizda says that while bank mergers are bad for communities, especially low-income ones, in this case it's a pretty fair deal.

NPR'S Derek Reveron reports that the downing of two planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue with the death of four pilots, has strengthened the hand of hard-line Cuban exile groups in Miami. Recently, more moderate voices, advocating negotiation with Fidel Castro, have been assuming a more prominant role in Cuban-exile politics, but since the shoot-down, they are on the defensive, and the hard-liners again enjoy the upper hand.

NPR's Larry Abramson reports on Congress's struggle with a couple of communications issues: whether to require cable systems to open their lines to outside Internet providers, and whether local phone companies will be allowed to offer long distance data transfer. These issues are becoming a major target for industry lobbyists on all sides of the issue, and the result has been a stalemate as to the best way to speed deployment of hi-speed Internet access.

Candidate Phil Gramm stumping in Mesa, Arizona at the rotary club. He says he wants less government and more freedom. He thinks Washington has too much say about how people run their lives. He wants to balance the budget by setting priorities and by saying no, when no is the right answer. As president he says he'll use the line item veto.

The House of Representatives approved today the main portion of President Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut. Republican leaders were exultant about passing the president's prize proposal in record time. The vote followed party lines, despite weeks of courtship by the White House. And the bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where a bipartisan group of centrists is insisting on modifications. NPR's David Welna reports.

NPR's David Welna reports on the second installment of President Bush's tax plan, which passed the House Ways and Means Committee today on a party-line vote. This installment, which the full House is expected to take up next week, focuses on the so-called marriage tax and the child tax credit. But Democrats argue -- and some Republicans agree -- that none of this addresses the immediate problem of the faltering economy.

Charles de Ledesma reviews the debut CD from the Belgian band, Hoover. It's called "A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular", and it's a new take on the so-called trip-hop sound, combining elements of hip-hop music and ambient, but slower and spookier. (The label is Sony Music Entertainment (Belgium)... for more info on-line the address is http://www.sonymusic.be) ((STEREO))

NPR's Tovia Smith reports on an aggressive new policing program in Boston. The program sends cops and local probation officers out at night together to look for offenders out past curfew. Unlike police, probation officers don't need a warrant to go into an offender's home. Officials say they're catching lots of violators this way, but critics charge it crosses the line and is a violation of privacy.

Commentator Bob Garfield was recently in Pittsburgh, and decided to check out the telephone information service provided by the University of Pittsburgh. The fact line will answer virtually any questions, as he found out...especially if your question involves where to get a class schedule or when spring break begins...but the student employees will also find out the meanings of obscure words and answers to trivia questions if you ask.

Retired U.S. military officers are training and equipping a joint Muslim and Croat army in Bosnia to defend their territory against a possible attack by the Bosnian Serbs. But NPR's Tom Gjelten reports that U.S. officials are concerned that the program may not prepare the Bosnian Federation for the most likely dangers it is expected to face: infighting between the Croat and Muslim sides, and militancy among the hard-line Muslim nationalists.

In "Sea Change," the London folk-pop duo Turin Brakes makes the most of its impeccable vocal phrasing. Opening with a picked guitar line that wouldn't sound out of place if played on a banjo in a bluegrass band, the song moves with a bright and bouncy pastoral swing that's packaged alongside dark sentiments such as, "Six billion backs against the wall / Now, do we walk or run?"

While recent polling suggests public opinion is weighing against the GOP's approach to the government shutdown, the message is very different for Republican congressmen from deeply conservative districts. The word from back home is to continue to take a hard line. That's the case in one district in the northwest corner of Georgia, which is home to Congressman Tom Graves, a leader of the defund Obamacare movement in the House who was elected in 2010.

Cash has a new album on which she sings one of the most famous lines in country music: "The lights in the harbor don't shine for me." That's from the Hal David and Paul Hampton classic, "Sea of Heartbreak." Many artists have recorded this song in the past half-century, and Cash recently sat down with NPR's Steve Inskeep to discuss its history and significance.

Hazmat Modine is a New York band fronted by two harmonica players. Their repertoire starts with blues and branches into various genres of Americana, but always with a difference: tuba bass lines, lacings of Eastern European hammer dulcimer, or Tuvan throat singing. The group's debut CD is Bahamut — reviewer Banning Eyre says its charm lies in how it lends an air of mystery and other-worldliness to familiar sounds.

Commentator David Weinberger says new wireless devices are changing how the internet will be used. As you carry your hand-held computer, you'll now be able to learn what restaurants and stores might be around you, and even who is nearby. Weinberger says this will also create more social interaction, though interaction of "decreasing significance," like strangers passing to ask each other directions on-line.

NPR's Mike Shuster reports from Arusha, Tanzania, that President Clinton has arrived there to lend American support to efforts to end Burundi's civil war. He met with former South African President Nelson Mandela, who has been trying to broker a Burundi peace, as well as with Burundi leaders. But five hard-line Tutsi groups boycotted the accord between Hutus and Tutsis that Clinton saw signed today.

Commentator Barbara Klein finds printed names on the bottom of paper bags at fast food restaurants. One of the names, "Alan Rumbo," intrigues her. She traces the bag back to its maker, and actually gets to talk to the line worker at the paper bag plant, Rumbo himself, who explains how the name on the millions of bags he makes propelled him to hero status with his kids. (3:00)