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This afternoon, in a closely watched case in New York, a federal judge reversed his controversial ruling handed down last January. In the case, Judge Harold Baer said drug evidence that was earlier deemed "tainted" was now admissible in the case. Robert Siegel talks with Melissa block about this case and about Judge Baer's rulings.

Linda Wertheimer speaks wtih Janet Fleischman, Washington director of Human Rights Watch/Africa. She describes some of the recent political history of Liberia and attempts to current descent into factional chaos the country is experiencing. The current fighting represents the failure of the 12th agreement in the last several years which attempted to bring all the conflicting parties together within a single authority which would lead to a government.

The National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane watch Friday for tropical storm Henri as it makes its way up the Eastern seaboard.

NPR's Elaine Korry reports on the effects of the recent economic downturn in Silicon Valley -- where money that was made fast is money that disappears quickly too. Some of the people who made millions in high-tech start-up companies have watched their fortunes vanish, as stock prices have fallen since March.

With the presidential election up for grabs in many big states, the candidates and their supporters are flooding the airwaves with political commercials designed to rev up their supporters and convert the undecided. The ad war is particularly fierce in several Midwestern states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Missouri. NPR's Steve Inskeep spent much of this week watching television in suburban St. Louis to get a flavor of what voters there are seeing each day.

NPR's Debbie Elliott reports Mississippi has a new take on the reality TV craze: It's a Website where the world can watch four young smokers living for a week in an apartment trying to quit. The state is offering a cash prize to each member of the group who makes it through the week without lighting up. And the web audience gets to vote on activities that will make it harder or easier for them.

It's taken a quarter century of watching and waiting, but physicists have finally caught up with an elementary particle called the tau neutrino. These elusive subatomic particles are one of the fundamental bits that make up the matter of the universe. NPR's David Kestenbaum reports scientists at the Fermi National Accellerator Laboratory near Chicago found direct evidence of the particle, which had been theorized, but never proven, to exist.

How has surveillance changed over the years? And why are we so watched now?

Dan O'Connell used to watch Magic Johnson play basketball during his college days in Michigan. For O'Connell, who is also HIV-positive, it's a thrill to see him back on the court again following his four-and-a-half season absence from NBA.

Linda talks with Tyler Nordgren, a graduate student of astronomy at Cornell University. They talks about how Carl Sagan, who died today at the age of 62, inspired him to study astronomy. Nordgren used to rush home from school to watch Sagan's PBS series "Cosmos" on television, and eventually decided to study interacting galaxies as a result.

Commentator Reuven Frank looks at the year in the TV...an industry that keeps on changing, with recent developments in satellite services and multiple channel offerings. but he says most of these changes don't amount to improvements---multiple channels seem to offer multiple opportunities to watch old movies or talk shows -- and all this diversity of programming means television will no longer provide a shared national experience.

Commentator Cynthia Fuchs says that while two high profile new cop shows, Dragnet and Kingpin, are getting all the attention, there are other badges worth watching on TV. FOX's Fastlane and FX's The Shield have some surprising new approaches to race relations and institutional corruption.