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A bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide has been approved by the California state legislature, and now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown.

Frank Browning reports on the number two cancer killer in America -- colon cancer. More than 45-thousand Americans die from it every year. A study in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms that screening people over 50 for colorectal cancer saves lives. Malignancies are detected earlier, at a more treatable stage. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health and several private groups have launched an aggressive colon cancer prevention campaign. But it's been difficult to get people over 50 to get tested.

Researchers from Yale and Brown Universities report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association that they have measured the actual brain volume of children who were born prematurely, using M.R.I. scans once the children reached eight years of age. They found that the earlier the premature birth, the more insult to the brain, resulting in a related decrease in I.Q. test scores. It's a first step towards quantifying how much delayed brain development affects intelligence. NPR's Michelle Trudeau has the story.

He responds to concerns about conflict of interest in awarding military contracts to private companies. Pawlik explains how the Army Corps of Engineers gave contracts to put out oil fires in Iraq to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Secretary of Defense, was the CEO of Halliburton before he became vice president.

Good Morning Midnight tells the story of renowned mountain climber Guy Waterman, who committed suicide atop New Hampshire's Mt. Lafayette. Waterman became passionate about the outdoors after leaving an unhappy marriage and abandoning his career as a Republican speechwriter. Host Melissa Block talks with author Chip Brown.

NPR's Ina Jaffe talks with Linda about the closing arguments offered today in the OJ Simpson civil trial. The jury in the case will hear at least two days of arguments offered from the lawyers for both the plaintiffs in the case...the families of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson...and the defense. Lawyer Daniel Petrocelli, representing the families, said today that Simpson is a liar wwho refuses to take responsibility for his own actions. Lawyers for Mr. Simpson will be allowed a final response just before the jury heads into its deliberations.

2: Film maker JACK HILL. He's best known for his blaxploitation films, "Coffy" and "Foxy Brown" which he both wrote and directed. He was a classmate of Francis Ford Coppola and during the 60s he and Coppola worked for the master of the exploitation films, Roger Corman. HILL worked on the last of Boris Karloff's films. His 1975 film "Switchblade Sister" is now being re-released under the aegis of Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Films.

He's been at the forefront of contemporary jazz for over 40 years. He played with a number of bop groups in New York during the 1940s with quintets led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Later, a quintet led by him and Clifford Brown, came to epitomize the sound known as hard bop. During the Civil Rights movement, Roach was composing some of jazz' strongest political statements.(REBROADCAST from 6

Pianist and composer Dave Burrell was an important part of the free jazz scene of the 1960s, recording with Pharoah Sanders, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp and others. His new CD with his Full-Blown Trio, Expansion, marks Burrell's first recording for a U.S. label in almost 40 years.

David Kertzer is the author of The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (Knopf). In the book he focuses on the time period from Napoleon to Hitler, and how "traditional" Catholic forms of dealing with Jews became transformed into modern anti-Semitism. Kertzer is Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science and a professor of anthropology and Italian Studies at Brown University. He's also the author of The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara about a 6-year-old Jewish boy in Italy who in 1858 was taken from his family, secretly baptized, and sent to live in a Catholic household.