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As of Sunday, an independent monitoring group reports over 4,500 were detained across 63 cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The New York Times names Bill Keller as executive editor, more than a month after the newspaper's top editors resigned following a plagiarism scandal. A former Times managing editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent, Keller replaces Howell Raines, who resigned after former reporter Jayson Blair was found to have plagiarized and fabricated stories. Hear NPR's Rick Karr.

Cowboy poets, writers, musicians descended on the small town of Elko, Nev., for the 20th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Who better to report on the sights and sounds of it all than Morning Edition's own resident cowboy poet, Baxter Black. Hear several poems and songs from the gathering.

In January 1856, fugitive slave Margaret Garner killed her infant daughter with a butcher knife rather than see her returned to bondage. Toni Morrison turned the story into the novel Beloved, and has now written an opera, Margaret Garner, which debuts Saturday. Detroit Public Radio's Celeste Headlee reports.

Sandy Tolan reports for American Radio Works on the long Middle Eastern history of animosity toward the West, and America in particular. He says the Arab suspicion of the West reaches back to the days of the Christian Crusades, and has been compounded by more recent history, such as American support for Israel. There is a tension in modern Jordan and Egypt, for example, between a sense of great pride in Arab culture and a sense of defeat by the culture of the West. American films and freedom are admired by many, but American foreign policy is not. American Radio Works in the documentary project of National Public Radio and Minnesota Public Radio.

California's record $35-billion budget deficit is anything but a game, but a Sacramento Bee columnist has made it one. Daniel Weintraub challenged his readers to study where the money goes, and then plug their proposed spending cuts and tax increases into an online budget game. NPR's Andy Bowers reports on some of the novel solutions players came up with.

We begin a series on how China is viewed by its neighbors: Japan sees both opportunity and threat in the rapidly growing Chinese economy. It's a huge market for Japanese goods, but it is also taking away Japanese jobs. For most of the Cold War, Japan could concentrate on its own economic development and ignore China, but no more. One analyst says some Japanese feel a kind of jealousy toward China and a desire to see the country fail. NPR's Rob Gifford reports.

Gen. John Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, strongly advises any new Iraqi government not to ask American troops to leave until security is improved in the country. Abizaid adds he does not think Iraqi forces will be ready to maintain security on their own by June 30, the date when the United States hopes to transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqi people. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, President Bush's nominee to replace Gen. Tommy Franks as head of the U.S. Central Command defends the pre-war intelligence the administration presented on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Lt. Gen. John Abizaid says he expects U.S. forces to remain in Iraq "a long time" but declines to offer specifics. NPR's David Welna reports.

Pentagon officials acknowledge that extending the combat tours of some U.S. soldiers in Iraq will cost several hundred million extra dollars. The White House's 2005 budget curently includes no funding request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Concerns are growing among members of Congress from both parties about the overall cost of military operations in Iraq. NPR'S Eric Westervelt reports.