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House Democrats elect Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as their leader over rivals Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN). Pelosi follows Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-MO) as House minority leader, and becomes the first woman to hold the post. NPR News reports.

Tennessee Congressman, Harold Ford Jr. talks with Bob Edwards about his bid to replace Richard Gephardt as the new House Minority Leader. Ford is challenging congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Charles Perkins, the man who was at the forefront of Australian Aboriginal struggles for civil rights, died this month at the age of 64. Perkins, who has been called the Martin Luther King, Jr., of indigenous Australians, was the first Aborigine to earn a university degree and play professional soccer. Host Lisa Simeone talks with Diane Bell, a George Washington University professor who knew Charles Perkins.

Noah Adams talks with NPR's Debbie Elliott about the verdict reached in the trial of a former Ku Klux Klansman for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church. Thomas Blanton Jr. was convicted of murder in the explosion at the Sixteenth Street Church, which killed four black girls. Adams and Elliott discuss the closing arguments and reaction to the verdict.

Host Bob Edwards speaks with Robert Hall, an attorney for Earl Washington, Jr. Washington is a Virginia man who spent nine years on death row for a murder he did not commit. DNA evidence cast heavy doubt on Mr. Washington's guilt, leading Virginia Gov. James Gilmore to pardon him.

A document circulating in Washington describes the U.S. government's vision of an Iraqi free market, with privatized industry, a modernized stock exchange and a new tax code. The responsibility for much of this transformation would go to American contractors. NPR's Robert Siegel talks to Wall Street Journal reporter Neil King Jr.

His Broadway musicals include Bye, Bye Birdie, Annie, Applause, It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman, and Golden Boy, which originally opened on Broadway in 1964 and starred Sammy Davis Jr. The show will be revived later this month by City Center Encores in New York. Strouse also composed music for film and TV, including "Those Were the Days," the theme song for TV's All in the Family.

Inventor Robert Edison Fulton, Jr., died last Friday in Connecticut at the age of 95. One of his many inventions was the 1940s Airphibian, a combination of a plane and a car, which he flew and drove for tens of thousands of miles. NPR's Melissa Block talks with Dorothy Cochrane, a curator at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.

requests for a jury trial of James Earl Ray in the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. The judge decided that new technology could determine whether Ray's rifle fired the shot that killed Doctor King.

James P. Hoffa Jr. is asking for a congressional investigation into the Teamsters election that he has apparently lost. At a news conference today, the son of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa challenged a discrepancy between an estimate of ballots returned, and the number of votes actually counted. The U.S. Postal Service reported that it had received thousands of ballots more than were counted. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.