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Fifty-one homes in Montana have been destroyed this fire season and nearly 900,000 acres of land in the state has been charred by wildfires.

Smallpox vaccinations for half a million health and emergency workers are scheduled to begin later this month. There have been some concerns about the safety of the vaccine for the recipients and the people around them who might also become infected with the vaccine virus. For commentator Anne Burt, anxieties are closer to home. Recently, she caught her daughter singing a version of Ring Around the Rosie, and it seemed ominous. After all, it's a retelling of the story of the Bubonic plague. "All fall down" is the result -- death. But after some research she discovered that Ring Around the Rosie is really a Victorian game, and "all fall down" is a curtsey at the end. Anne Burt won the 2002 Editors' Prize in fiction from Meridian Literary Magazine.

NPR's Steve Inskeep profiles Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords, a moderate Republican who cast a crucial vote against President Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal. Sen. Jeffords' tie-breaking ability on close votes in the evenly divided Senate gives him considerable influence. He used it to help reduce the size of the tax cut by about a fourth and divert more than $200 billion of it to pay for special education. Jeffords was just re-elected and has received less criticism in his home-state than from conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. military doesn't do all its public relations work overseas -- it's also investing in grass-roots efforts here at home. The Pentagon's "America Supports You" program employs Pentagon staff and private PR contractors to coordinate activities that support the armed forces.

Startling as it may seem to outsiders, the housing market in New Orleans is alive. The city's biggest residential brokerage firm reports that signed contracts on properties are up compared to last year at the same time.

In a town full of museums, the Phillips Collection has always been Washington, D.C.'s most intimate, personal home for paintings. Now some 60 of its European masterworks are back after a four-year absence.

Christopher O'Riley, host of NPR's From the Top, considers Elliott Smith to be one America's greatest songwriters. Smith died in 2003 before ever achieving massive fame. O'Riley's latest release, Home to Oblivion, is a classical translation of Smith's work.

For seven years, Lisa Keyte has been a curator at Newport's Oregon Coast Aquarium, former home of Keiko the killer whale. But all that's about to change, as Keyte is set to dive into her new job -- as a coffee roaster.

China's growing appetite for energy may be driving the bid for Unocal by the country's third-largest oil company. But it may take Wall Street's appetite for cash to drive home the deal's acceptance in the United States.

Link Wray is the man who is said to have inspired rock-and-roll legends such as Pete Townsend and Neil Young with his power chord guitar playing. Link Wray was 76 when he died earlier this month at his home in Copenhagen. Wray's style was considered to be the foundation for heavy metal and punk music.