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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.

Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr wonders why George W. Bush is hesitant to engage Al Gore in presidential debates.

NPR's Michelle Kelemen profiles Anatoly Mironenko, a Russian who says he has a special kinship with Native Americans.

Renee Montagne talks with the pronunciation editor for American Heritage dictionary about the different ways people are pronouncing words these days.

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.

Former Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello. At the age of 12, she was discovered by Walt Disney at a dance recital; he was looking for kids for his new show, The Mickey Mouse Club. Funicello became the "most popular" Mouseketeer, and went on to star in a number of Disney films: The Shaggy Dog, Babes in Toyland, and The Monkey's Uncle. Before she went to star in the beach party movies for which she is also known, Disney requested that she wear a one-piece bathing suit instead of a bikini. Funicello agreed. In 1987 Funicello was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and she founded the Annette Funicello Research Fund for Neurological Diseases. Her autobiography is A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes. (REBROADCAST from 5

NPR's Eric Weiner reports on Australia's love affair with sports. While many Australians aren't really complaining about billions of taxpayer dollars spent preparing for the summer games, others say the obsession goes too far.

Veta Christy of Peach State Public Radio reports from Atlanta on a new paging system that's being installed on school buses and alerts school children in the morning, when their bus is within a few minutes of picking them up. It's called the Bus Pal, and sends a signal from the bus to a pager in the home, alerting them that the bus is approaching. It also alerts parents or caregivers, when students are about to be dropped off after school.

Chicago Public Radio's Edie Rubinowitz reports on Aaron Patterson, a Illinois Death Row inmate who claims he was tortured by police into confessing to a murder years ago. The Illinois Supreme Court recently agreed to allow an evidentiary hearing in the case and he could be the latest on Death Row in that state to be granted a new trial.

Commentator Bob Mondello looks ahead to the Fall movie season -- a season that he says is full of remakes, sequels and revivals. Among the few original films: a vampire movie for little kids (Little Vampires); a comedy in which Richard Gere plays a flattering gynecologist (Dr. T. and the Women); and a drama in which Cuba Gooding Junior stars as the Navy's first black deep-sea diver (Men of Honor).