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Lawmakers on Capitol Hill blasted the Japanese supplier Takata for refusing to participate in a national recall of its air bags. So far, the potentially deadly air bags have been recalled in warm and humid areas where they may be most likely to rupture. While Takata is resisting a nationwide recall, Honda said Wednesday it would recall all its vehicles with Takata driver-side airbags in the U.S.

up Radios - Daniel talks to Trevor Baylis, the designer of the windup radio. The radio will initially be used by aid agencies in remote areas such as Rwanda and Sarajevo, where people do not have access to batteries because of expense and availability. Owners of the radio will only need to wind it up for 20 seconds and it will play for 40 minutes. This new invention is being manufactured by disabled people in South Africa. Bayliss says demand for the radio is high worldwide.

San Francisco based Wells Fargo won its three-month effort to takeover another California based bank today. First Interstate agreed to be acquired in a stock transaction valued at $11.6 billion. If the deal is approved by regulators it will be the largest merger in U.S. banking history. The deal is expected to eliminate as many as 7,000 jobs, half of them in the Los Angeles area, as hundreds of First Intersate branches are closed.

NPR's Tom Gjelten reports from Sarajevo that United Nations officials there are reporting an atmosphere of chaos and anarchy today in two Serb-populated suburbs that will soon come under the control of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government. Fires are raging in both places, with reports of widespread theft and looting. Most Serb residents have already fled the area. Many of those remaining are asking NATO troops to protect them from local thugs.

Laura Womack reports from Albany, Georgia that Alabama and Georgia have both been declared agricultural disaster areas because of the southeastern drought, but that may not help some farmers survive. The disaster declaration means farmers can apply for federal assistance programs, but after being hammered by three successive years of drought conditions many farmers are so deeply in debt that they may not have the minimal assets necessary to qualify for the programs.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports that at the heart of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is insistence on ruling the tiny, one-mile-square old city of Jerusalem, a site sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Since its conquest of the city in the 1967 war, Israel has ruled the old city insisting that it must remain the undivided capital of the state of Israel. Palestinians are demanding sovereignty over, at least, the areas of old Jerusalem where Arabs are a majority.

Join the Grand Rapids Area Freethinkers in presenting Taproom Trivia at Klockow Brewing, hosted by the popular KAXE/KBXE Green Cheese host Julie Crabb!Individuals will battle it out to see who can answer the trivia questions the fastest and win a free KBC beverage in the taproom!Free will donations to KAXE/KBXE welcome and volunteers will be on site selling merch! GRAF will also be on site to talk about their group and work within the community!

Virginia Biggar reports from Los Angeles on a debate over the last remaining wild area of west L.A. Home to migrating birds as well as the hangars where Howard Hughes built the Spruce Goose, at one time the world's largest plane. The land is to become the newest movie studio for Steven Spielberg's new company, Dreamworks. Environmentalists object, as do some who object to the $70 million in tax breaks the company got.

Commentator John Chambers wants to highlight what he says is a rare occurrence in Washington: a genuine joint effort by the EPA, Congress, and the Clinton Administration to help clean up brownfields. Brownfields are abandoned industrial sites which have been devastated by the environmental impact of industry. These blighted areas, which are often in inner cities, may now be cleaned up due to a major new initiative designed to bring brownfields back to life.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports that today is the deadline Tanzania had given Rwandan refugees to leave their camps and go home. Nearly all of the half-million Rwandans in Tanzania have done so. But relief officials estimate there are still at least two or three hundred thousand Rwandans stuck in a remote area of eastern Zaire, without access to sufficient food or medicine. These refugees apparently include many who perpetrated the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Linda talks with Greg Fagan (FAY-gun), an associate editor for TV Guide, about the controversy surrounding the NBC made-for-TV movie concerning the alleged murder of a highschool student by two other students. KXAS, a Dallas-Fort Worth television station serrving the area where the murders occurred, is choosing not to air the film for fear of tainting the jury pool...even though they went to court to obtain the right to show the movie.

- The United States is frantically trying to arrange a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PLO leader Yasir Arafat after four days of fierce fighting in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. Danny speaks with Terje Larsen, the Special U.N. Coordinator in the West Bank and Gaza about the dangers facing the peace process. Then NPR's Eric Weiner reports from Jerusalem on the communal tensions that still grip the area.

Noah talks with NPR's Jennifer Ludden about conditions in the eastern Zairean city of Goma, recently captured by Zairean Tutsi rebels. The rebels escorted foreign journalists into the city today. The city is for the most part calm, though reporters were only allowed to see certain areas. Goma is the site of camps housing hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees; the battle for the city left the refugees cut off from food and medicine.

A major environmental lobbying group has broken ranks, issuing a report that calls the Endangered Species Act a failure. The Environmental Defense Fund says the law hasn't protected species on private land and that the law needs to be overhauled to extend its reach to these areas. But other groups don't want Congress to tinker with one of environmentalism's monumental achievements. And as NPR's John Nielsen reports, ranchers and farmers are also opposed to any changes.

Linda talks with Walter Meshaka , curator of the Everglades Regional Collection in the Everglades National Park in Homestead, Florida. South Florida has been coping with an infestation of Cane Toads, which were introduced into the region to help control pests in the sugarcane fields of that region. However, the toads themselves are now causing problems because they have no significant predators in the area. The toads, called Bufo marinus, can grow to be as large as three pounds, and are toxic to people and to pets.

NPR's Noah Adams talks with Cecilia Smith, the president of the Kona Coffee Council and a Kona coffee bean farmer, about fraudulent Kona beans that have been sold in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kona coffee sells for about $16 a pound and only 2 million beans are cultivated a year. The beans, according to Ms. Smith, must be grown in North or South Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii, otherwise the beans are not authentic.

Ever since John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo -- the suspects in the Washington-area sniper case -- were arrested last Thursday, government attorneys from Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Washington, D.C., and Washington State have been competing with the Department of Justice over first crack at prosecuting them. NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr is concerned that this competition may be at the expense of the interests of justice. (2:45)

Lynn Neary talks with Wall Street Journal sportswriter Stefan Fatsis about this Sunday's Super Bowl. The NFL is having a successful year and ABC, which is broadcasting this weekend's game, is selling ads at huge rates and expecting a huge audience. The weekend is also a forum for off-the-field issues and the league, which has been criticized for lagging behind in minority hiring, has had an opportunity to trumpet some advances in that area.

Minimum wage increases in the San Francisco Bay Area have had an impact on the local restaurant industry, according to a study released by Harvard Business School. Restaurants with low or middling Yelp reviews have become more likely to go out of business. Places with high reviews have been unaffected. The study doesn't attempt to determine whether the wage increases have been good for employees or the local economy overall.

Producer Ginna Allison sends us this story of one of the most famous of American folk songs, "John Henry", and of the man and community behind it. John Henry was a black railroad worker who's said to have died after outperforming a mechanized railroad spike driver back in the 19th century. He is said to have come from Talcott (pronounced: TALL-cut), a small town in West Virginia. Allison brings us the voices of Talcott's people...and the music of Doc Watson and John Cephas...which echo the exploits of John Henry, and reveal how the racially diverse community views the song, the town's history, and each other.