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Enormous deficits loom over the federal budget this year and next. The White House is pressing Senate Republicans to trim nearly $10 billion from spending bills approved last year when Democrats ran the Senate. Democrats respond that the president's proposed tax cuts need trimming -- not federal spending. NPR's David Welna reports.

NPR's Kathleen Schalch reports that a World Trade Organization court has ruled that the so-call Byrd Amendment to U.S. trade law is a violation of international trade rules. The amendment, named after Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), requires the Customs Service to hand over the anti-dumping duties it collects to the companies that brought the unfair trade complaints. Hard-pressed steel companies were the main beneficiary of the law. The U.S. Trade Representative's Office says it will work with Congress to bring U.S. law into compliance with international trade rules.

They have collaborated on the new book Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. Patricia Due was a civil rights activist with CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and was part of the movement's landmark "jail-in." Protesters served time instead of paying a fine for the so-called crime of sitting at a Woolworth lunch counter. Patricia Due worked with many of the movement's great figures during the 1960s. Tananarive Due is a former features writer for The Miami Herald, and has written the novels The Black Rose, My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood.

It turns out many office thermostats are just for show, but the placebo effect seems to work on fussy cubicle-dwellers.

Autism is a disease that often drives people apart. It separates children from parents, and can leave parents feeling abandoned by researchers who offer no cure and little hope. But the MIND Institute, founded by fathers of autistic sons, is trying to change that by making parents key players in the search for a cure. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports.

As the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches, debate over abortion continues. Abortion rights opponents stress abstinence-only education and point to Uganda, where emphasis on abstinence has lowered a 30-percent HIV rate to 5 percent in a decade. NPR's Brenda Wilson reports.

He is a two-time Academy Award winner for his performances in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty. His other films include L.A. Confidential, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Negotiator, and The Shipping News. On television he was a regular in the series The Wiseguy. In 1997 Spacey formed Trigger Street Productions which has produced plays on Broadway, as well as films. Recently Spacey launched TriggerStreet.com, an interactive Web site dedicated to nurturing and development of undiscovered talent. Spacey's new film is The Life of David Gale. [Spacey declined to give permission for this Web site to offer audio of his interview, or sell tapes or transcripts of it.]

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously hoped for a day when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. It's been nearly 40 years since then, and commentator Aaron Freeman hopes for even more for his daughters. He wants to raise them as if "African-American" is not their primary identity, but one of many things they are, along with athletes, Chicagoans and scholars. The problem is that it's working. They have a different outlook than he does, and he's afraid they are a different race than he is. The struggle against racism has defined much of his life, and he fears that they don't even take racism personally.

France accuses the United States of impatience in its push for war against Iraq and says it is not prepared to support any U.N. Security Council resolution that would authorize military action. Russia and China, which like France have veto power, support the French position. Hear NPR's Nick Spicer.

Commentator Herbert "Crazylegs" Seward played trumpet in Alabama State's marching band, and he says the music and moves portrayed in the film Drumline are no match for the performances of the real bands of historically Black Colleges and Universities. One band's routines are so precise they form the score of the game at halftime; another has a style called "The Rattler" that resembles the slither of a snake.