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The Senate agrees on a bill to create a Homeland Security Department after negotiating over labor issues for the new agency's staff. The House could vote on the measure today. NPR News reports.

As Kermit the Frog gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, The Muppet Show he starred in celebrates the 25th anniversary of its debut. NPR's Bob Edwards looks back at the enduring legacy of Jim Henson's creation.

On Capitol Hill today, politicians are holding yet another hearing about the risks of mercury. It's part of the latest wave of concern about mercury, which also turns up in fish, air pollution and in some vaccines. As NPR's Jon Hamilton reports, these fears have been around for hundreds of years.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports on the significance of the latest audiotape message from Osama bin Laden. U.S. experts believe it was the voice of Bin Laden on the Arabic language tape which aired yesterday on the al Jazeera television network. Until now, some experts had believed the al Qaeda leader was killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Robert Siegel talks with Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian political scientist and expert on Islamic fundamentalists, about the language of the alleged bin Laden audio tape released yesterday.

There is some doubt over whether the voice on the tape is actually bin Laden. Lynn Neary talks with Steve Cain, president and CEO of Forensic Tape Analysis, Inc., about what sort of voice recognition techniques would be key to identifying whether the voice on a tape received by al Jazeera television is really Osama bin Laden. (4:15)

Burmese writer Pascal Khoo Thwe has written his autobiography From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey. (HarperCollins). Thwe grew up part of a tiny remote tribe in Burma which practiced a combination of ancient animist and Buddhist customs mixed with Catholicism. He was the first member of his community to study English at University. When a brutal military dictatorship took over Burma, Thwe became a guerrilla fighter in the movement for democracy.

For families in the New York City homeless system, the first stop is the EAU, the Emergency Assistance Unit. It is supposed to be the place families go to get paperwork processed and be placed in a shelter. Fourteen-year-old Herbert Bennett Jr. came into the EAU with his father in June, and spent some of his time there writing in his notebook. Hear some excerpts. (2:30)

Iraq accepts the terms of a U.N. resolution ordering it to disarm and to permit new arms inspections, but denies it has any weapons of mass destruction. An advance team of U.N. arms inspectors will go to Baghdad Monday. NPR's Vicky O'Hara reports.

Phoenix is more than happy to pass along some holiday cheer to Tucson.