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NPR's Jim Zarroli reports oil prices pushed higher again today despite word from Saudi Arabia that it will back another production increase. The price for two popular benchmark crudes rose to more than 34 dollars a barrel. President Clinton, in New York for the U.N. meeting, said he had told Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that prices were too high and that OPEC should take appropriate action on the issue.

Republican candidate George W. Bush, the frontrunner for more than a year in the presidential campaign, saw his lead suddenly disappear after the conventions this summer and has yet to recover his edge. So, today in Michigan, Bush said he was ready to make a few changes in his campaign style and negotiate some debate details with the campaign of Democratic rival Al Gore. Steve Inskeep reports for NPR News.

John Ydstie of NPR News has a report on the differing budget proposals of Democratic Presidential Candidate Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. Economic prosperity in America has brought a sharp debate over what to do with a projected budget surplus. Gore says his first priority is paying down the national debt. Bush says the surplus should mean tax cuts first.

NPR's Mike Shuster reports that Iraq appears to be violating a United Nations program that allows it to sell oil and buy food and medicine for needy citizens. There's evidence that Iraq is re-exporting some of the food and medicine to other countries. Iraq refuses to allow UN inspectors to evaluate living conditions 10 years after the UN imposed economic sanctions. And it refuses to allow UN weapons inspectors into the country.

Steve Young of Vermont Public Radio reports four state legislators lost their seats yesterday when they lost the primary election. The lawmakers were republicans that voted for a controversial law granting gay couples almost all the rights of marriage. After the bill passed a number of groups mobilized to repeal it...and to encourage voters to remove those who supported the measure.

NPR's Debbie Elliott reports that voters in Selma, Alabama elected their first black mayor yesterday. Businessman James Perkins defeated Joe Smitherman, a former segregationist who took office about six months before the bloody voting rights marches that eventually led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

NPR's Eric Weiner reports President Clinton joined leaders of the other G-8 developed nations in their annual summit. While economics is the reason for the summit, political issues normally take up much of the meeting. this year was no different and Clinton met with Russian President Vladimir Putin today to discuss the proposed US missile defense system that Russia and almost all other nations at the meeting oppose.

NPR's Barbara Bradley reports a federal judge in New Mexico will hear arguments today on why investigators believe Wen Ho Lee leaked classified nuclear information to the Chinese. Lee claims he's being singled out because of his race. The judge has already asked both sides to work with a mediator and try to come to terms on a grounds for bail and a possible plea bargain.

Noah talks to NPR's Wade Goodwyn about the jury verdict in the Branch Davidian lawsuit against the government. Goodwyn reports an advisory jury today quickly decided the government bears no responsibility in the deaths of Branch Davidians at the standoff at their compound in Waco, Texas in 1993. A long seige of the building by federal authorities ended in a fire that killed eighty people. Government attorneys argued the Davidians intentionally set the fire themselves. A judge will make the final ruling in the case.

The Senate today passed a bill that would phase out the nation's inheritance tax over the next 10 years. The vote was 59 to 39 --- with 9 Democrats joining all but 4 of the Republicans in the majority. But the vote was not sufficient to override President Clinton's promised veto. before final passage, the Senate stripped all of its own amendments from the bill, so as to match the bill passed by the House and send the measure directly to the President's desk. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.