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NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports from Kigali that Zairean Tutsi rebels today declared a unilateral three-week ceasefire. The guerrillas say the truce is designed to give more than one million Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire a chance to go home. In the past two weeks, the rebels have captured all of the main cities along Zaire's border with Burundi and Rwanda, and foreign relief agencies have evacuated their staffs. There is little hope the refugees will return to Tutsi-controlled Rwanda, and relief groups say shortages of food and medicine could soon lead to mass starvation and epidemics among the refugees.

Heart disease is one of the main killers of African-Americans, who have a higher mortality rate than whites. But there are variations in the occurrence of heart disease among African-Americans from different regions of the country and different parts of the world. Those who immigrated to New York from the South had a much higher death rate from heart disease, and blacks from the Caribbean had a much lower rate...a lower rate even than whites. NPR's Joanne Silberner says the report suggests that factors ranging from diet to cultural and social conditions are more important than genes.

NPR's Kathleen Schalch reports that a World Trade Organization court has ruled that the so-call Byrd Amendment to U.S. trade law is a violation of international trade rules. The amendment, named after Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), requires the Customs Service to hand over the anti-dumping duties it collects to the companies that brought the unfair trade complaints. Hard-pressed steel companies were the main beneficiary of the law. The U.S. Trade Representative's Office says it will work with Congress to bring U.S. law into compliance with international trade rules.

Deborah Amos concludes her final report on America's drug war. She picks up the story with a shift in the politics of the war on drugs in the early 1980's. As drugs such as cocaine and crack were becoming more popular, federal funding for treatment programs was being cut, replaced in many cases with incarceration. But in Arizona, the results of that shift have led the state to reconsider its approach. Arizona's treatment program is now a model for ballot proposals in two other states. (8:00)There's more about the Drug War Series at http://www.npr.org/news/specials/drugwars/.

NPR's Sarah Chayes reports from Paris that a French appeals court ruled today that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi can be prosecuted in France for complicity in the 1989 destruction of a French airliner over Niger. One-hundred-seventy people died in the terrorist attack. The ruling could expand the reach of international criminal law. The French state prosecutor had argued against this ruling, stating that Gaddafi enjoys what is known as "sovereign immunity," which protects a head of state from prosecution for acts performed while in office. But the French court -- citing as precedent the case of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in Britain -- ruled that the notion of sovereign immunity does not extend to charges of ordering the bombing of an airliner.

The city of Aswan has been dealing with an influx of scorpions and snakes, thanks to a recent rash of heavy storms disturbing their hiding places.

NPR's Julie McCarthy reports from The Netherlands that the defense began its summation today in the trial of two Libyans accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The defense attorneys had called only eight witnesses in the course of the eight-month trial in a special Scottish court, convened at Camp Zeist. In his closing argument, lawyer William Taylor tried to poke holes in the prosecution's case, saying the Crown had failed to prove his client Abdel Ali al-Megrahi was a Libyan agent who was working in concert with the co-defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. The attorney again tried to shift the blame to a Palestinian group. Two hundred seventy people died in the 1988 bombing.

NPR's Guy Raz reports from the village of Konculj that the three-mile wide buffer zone along the border between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia is far from secure. Under the agreement that ended the Kosovo war, the border strip is off limits to both the Yugoslav Army and the NATO-led peacekeeping force. But ethnic Albanian guerrillas are taking advantage of that void. The rebels are stockpiling weapons in the buffer zone, using it as a staging ground for attacks on Serbian targets within the Presevo Valley Valley of Serbia proper. The militants are fighting to end Serbian rule in majority ethnic Albanian towns in the valley, and to annex the territory to Kosovo. Some residents of villages in the border zone say rebel patrols make them feel more secure from attacks by Serbian forces.

Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura has published a book, and has his own action figure. Now a Minnesota newspaper will start a comic strip to parody the former wrestler. VenturaLand premieres in the St. Paul Pioneer Press the end of this month. The editorial board of the paper had been wanting to find a cartoon based on the Governor for some time. Kevin Lenagh, was just the man to do it, and took the name VenturaLand from a meteorologist who coined it when reporting on the strange weather in Minnesota. Noah talks with Lenagh about drawing the Ventura cartoon. (3:45)You'll be able to view the comic strip on-line at http://www.pioneerplanet.com in two weeks.

Former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic has turned herself over to the Hague tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, where she will face charges of war crimes, including genocide. Geraldine Coughlan reports from the Hague that the 70-year old Ms. Plavsic is the highest ranking Bosnian Serb to go to the Hague. Her lawyer says she believes the tribunal is the only place she can legally prove her innocence. Although she made a name for herself as a vocal proponent of Serbian nationalism, Ms. Plavsic later turned against hard-liner Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president she once served, accusing him of corruption.