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Essayist Shoba Narayan recalls spending "quality time" with family on the Internet...where they recently held a wake for a deceased relative.

GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona arrived in Philadelphia a day early to address the Shadow Convention, an unofficial gathering focused on campaign finance reform and poverty reduction. McCain urged his followers to turn their support to Governor Bush, which drew heckles from some in the audience. NPR's Lynn Neary reports from the University of Pennsylvania campus.

Convention planners have been worried about Seattle-style protests and disruptions this week in Philadelphia, but so far, the demonstrations have been low-key. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports on the Unity 2000 protest activities today.

On Tuesday, three members of the Kansas State Board of Education who voted to remove the theory of evolution from state-wide assessment tests are facing election battles. Peter Hancock of member station KANU reports that the school board race is garnering unprecedented attention, and the evolution issue has become something of a litmus test for candidates in many state-wide races.

UN Peacekeeping forces have begun to deploy along Israel's the border with Lebanon. Since the Israeli troop pull-out earlier this year, the border strip had been under the control of the Hizbollah Guerillas. Reporter Kate Seelye has more on what the arrival of peaccekeeping forces mean for the people of Southern Lebanon.

NPR's Don Gonyea reports from Cincinnati on the bus campaign tour that George W. Bush is taking on his way to the convention. Governor Bush has been met by enthusiastic crowds of supporters in Ohio. Today he'll attend rallies in Dayton and Columbus.

Stanley Kunitz will be named Poet Laureate today in Washington. Kunitz, a 95 year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning poet is the country's oldest poet laureate.

Linda talks sportswriter Stefan Fatsis about the NBA, its free agents, and salary caps. Grant Hill, for example, signed on with the Orlando Magic for a 97-million-dollar contract, rather than stay with the Detroit Pistons for 100-million-dollars. Stefan explains why Hill's making less as a free agent.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports from Moscow that the collapse of the Soviet sports establishment --and the financial hardships that accompanied it -- haven't dampened the desire of Russian athletes to compete. Even in the frozen reaches of Siberia, they're practicing beach volleyball...hoping one day to play on an actual beach and, perhaps, make it into the Olympics!

NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome that L'Unita, the official mouthpiece of the Italian communist party, folded this month amid dwindling sales and mounting debt. At the end of the Cold War, the Italian Communist party changed its name, but even so the Italian left lost its political clout. With the closing of L'Unita, Italy has lost a cultural institution that for decades featured the writings of leading western intellectuals, as well as East European dissidents.