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NPR's Brian Naylor reports on difficulties facing Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore in dealing with his own party in the Old Dominion. Gilmore was recently named chairman of the Republican National Committee, but the obstacles facing his attempts to end his state's car tax and to name his successor as governor loom large.

NPR's David Kestenbaum reports on a possible wrinkle in the space-time continuum. Really. Physicists measuring the fundamental characteristics of a subatomic particle, the muon, have come up with some very puzzling results that could punch a hole in the long-standing "standard model" of how matter is put together. And that could help usher in a completely new theory of matter, time and space. Unless, of course, some scientist has made a mistake. (4:30) (It was later revealed this was a mistake: "Well, I would say I'm responsible for the mistake. My collaborator did most of the work, but I am equally guilty of making mistakes." Toichiro Kinoshita, a physicist at Princeton University. Kinoshita's sin was to have a minus sign where he should have had a plus or maybe the other way around. He can't quite remember, though it ended up having gigantic consequences. Kinoshita and his colleague were calculating how a particular subatomic particle behaves when it's stuck in a magnetic field. The particle, it turns out, wobbles like a toy top at a particular frequency. Kinoshita enlisted hundreds of computers and, after a decade of heroic work, had precisely predicted how fast it should wobble according to the laws of physics. Last winter, other physicists who were out measuring the wobble found it differed significantly from Kinoshita's prediction. In the clockwork world of physics, this was potentially a huge finding, signaling something new and mysterious, except that it wasn't. Kinoshita traced his error to a tiny quirk in a computer program he was using. He hadn't checked that bit, in part because other physicists using a different approach had gotten the same answer."

Commentator Rick Ridgeway recounts his return to a Tibetan mountain where twenty years ago an avalanche stopped his climb, and killed his friend Jonathan Wright. Ridgeway went back to Minya Konka with Wright's daughter, Asia, who had grown up without ever knowing her father. (4:00) Below Another Sky: A Mountain Adventure In Search of a Lost Father, by Rick Ridgeway is published by Henry Holt and Company, ISBN 0-8050-6284-X.

Robert talks with Margaret Love, who was the pardon attorney at the Department of Justice from 1990-1997, about the unusual way the Clinton Administration handled pardons at the end of President Clinton's term. According to the Los Angeles Times, 47 of the pardons by President Clinton didn't go through the Department of Justice.

Noah and Robert read some of the letters All Things Considered received from listeners this week. (4:00) Write to: Letters, All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 635 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington DC, 20001 or send e-mail to atc@npr.org.

Host Bob Edwards speaks with NPR's Jennifer Ludden about Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon's efforts to form a national unity government. Though nothing is final, much progress has been made in negotiations between Sharon's Likud Party and the more liberal Labor Party. In a national unity government, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Barak might be Sharon's Defense Minister and Nobel Laureate Shimon Peres could be Foreign Minister.

Jean Betrand Aristide was inaugurated as Haiti's new president last week. NPR's Gerry (jerry) Hadden reports on the situation in Haiti after a decade of instability, coups and political corruption.

Host Bob Edwards speaks with Anne Bancroft. Bancroft and Liv Arnesen have recently become the first women to cross Antarctica on skis. The last leg of their journey measures a relatively small part of the total distance-- though it is equivalent to the distance across France. And because of ice forming off the coast of Antarctica, their boat is leaving on February 22 -- with or without them.

This Friday, George W. Bush embarks on his first presidential trip outside the US. He will travel to Mexico to meet the new president of Mexico, Vincente Fox. We talk about Mexico with Journalist Sam Quinones. He has been covering Mexico for 7 years. His new book is called, True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx. Quinones work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, LA Weekly, and Ms Magazine.

Composer, arranger and trumpeter CHICO O-FARRILL. His music combines American jazz with the rhythms of Cuban/Latin Music. The 79-year old's latest CD is called "Carambola" (Milestone Records).