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Shorey's, a Seattle legend, is closing its famed bookstacks. In business since 1890, the landmark bookstore is now doing 60% of its sales on line. So owners are shutting down a local landmark and becoming a web-only service. Christine Arrasmith of member station KPLU in Seattle reports.

Norwegian divers struggled to open the hatch of the sunken Kursk submarine today, 354 feet under the Barents Sea. There have been conflicting reports from Russian, Norwegian and British rescue teams over the amount of damage to the submarine's hatch and over what may have caused the accident. From Moscow, NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports from Moscow that Norwegian divers in the Barents Sea have confirmed Russia's worst fears: all 118 men aboard the submarine Kursk are dead. As the rescue effort wound down, Russians continue to ask questions about their government's handling of the tragedy. Attention also turned to the task of raising the sub from the ocean floor before its nuclear reactors begin to leak.'

The Pain Relief Promotion Act would establish that the alleviation of suffering is a "legitimate medical purpose" for potent drugs. The bill also would reassert a federal ban on dispensing drugs for doctor-assisted suicide. Commentator Joe Loconte likes the bill, and tells us why.

A small development for gays and lesbians in Florida -- the first in the nation -- may be the edge of a new trend, retirement communities for gays where they don't have to stay "in the closet."

High School student Melanie Thomasson says when she hears the kids she used to baby-sit playing baseball outside on a summer night, she realizes she's lost her summers to obligations and activities.

Jyl Hoyt of member station KBSX in Boise reports efforts to battle the Rankin fire in central Idaho. This year's western wildfires are the worst in nearly half a century.

Host Steve Inskeep talks with author Adam Cohen about his book, American Pharaoh, a biography of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.

Past racial and ethnic tensions are heating up the congressional campaign in New York's 17th District. Congressman Eliot Engel who is Jewish, is seeking a seventh term challenged by State Senator Larry Seabrook, an African-American. Andrea Bernstein reports from member station WNYC.

Host Steve Inskeep talks with James L.W.West III about Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby (Edited by James L.W. West III/Cambridge University Press/2000). West says that F.Scott Fitzgerald's Trimalchio was a good novel, but that The Great Gatsby was a masterpiece -- and that Fitzgerald and his editor, the famed Maxwell Perkins, achieved this in the re-writing. West is Distinguished Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University.

Host Steve Inskeep talks with Professor of Labor History Nelson Lichtenstein about why companies so often have workers work overtime. The issue has been central to recent strikes at United Airlines and Viacom.

Labor day is the traditional start of the fall campaign. Political watchers believe that 90% of the electorate have already made up their minds on their presidential selection. Host Steve Inskeep talks with Dan Gonyea on how both Bush and Gore are targeting the remaining 10%.

Host Steve Inskeep talks to columnist Doug Grow of the Minneapolis Star Tribune about a dispute over kosher dill pickles at the Minnesota State Fair.

Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome that the Vatican's watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, released a document today asserting the primacy of Roman Catholicism over all other world religions. The document's release follows just two days after the controversial beatification of Pius the Ninth, the pope who established the dogma of papal infallibility. The document released today asserts that non-Christians are "in a gravely deficient situation" with regard to salvation. Other Christian churches, it states, have defects, in part because they do not recognize papal authority.

Linda speaks with Larry Lozier, the owner of the Hyde Park, NY house, who found Mastodon bones in his back yard. The bones were discovered after he decided to dredge and deepened the pond in his yard. What appeared to be a log turned out to be a big bone. He called local colleges, but no one believed him, until he called Dr. Christopher Lindner at Bard College. Now he has a team of scientists excavating his pond.

Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush proposed today that low-income seniors receive prescription drugs for free. Bush also said that all seniors ought to have a choice of plans that would pay up at one fourth of their drug costs, either by government program or through private insurance. Steve Inskeep, traveling with the Bush campaign, filed this report for NPR News.

NPR's Pam Fessler reports on the Democrats' push to get their agenda acted on during these final weeks of the 106th Congress. Led by President Clinton, Senate Leader Tom Daschle and House Leader Richard Gephardt, the Democrats once again urged passage of an increase in the minimum wage and a patients' bill of rights. But both parties know that much of what is going on maybe less about legislation and more about gaining the electoral advantage as November 7 approaches.

Noah speaks with Craig Dremann, co-owner of the Redwood City Seed Company, about the Indian Military's claim that the world's hottest chili pepper is grown in Assam. He says it's the hottest domesticated pepper, but the hottest is a wild pepper called the Pepper Tepin, which grows in the dry desert mountains of Northern Mexico. His company sells old fashioned vegetable and herb seeds from all over the world, including Assam. For the chili seeds, he's had to developed his own testing system, which is similar to the scoville scale at the turn of the century.

Supreme Court nominations are rarely debated as part of a presidential campaign. But the next president may fill several vacancies on the nine-member high court in his first term, changing the makeup of the court for a generation. That may indeed prove to be the next president's most lasting legacy, yet the candidates are less than eager to talk about whom they might choose. Nina Totenberg filed this report for NPR News.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that environmentalists in Russia are going to court over Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's restructuring of the country's environmental protection system. Activists fear that the new system is really a cover for a plan to open up long protected nature reserves to commercial usage, to bring in badly needed cash to the central overnment. Kelemen visited a reserve in southern Siberia where rangers are worried about their future and the protection of the reserve.