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  • Thirty years ago, Pink Floyd's recording The Dark Side of the Moon became the number one album on Billboard magazine's pop music chart. So began the longest streak in music chart history: 741 weeks on the Top 200. No other recording comes close. The album has touched one generation after the next, which is odd because it's such a quirky album of electronic music, sound effects, saxophones, and a famous but unidentified female singer performing scat. Reporter Jad Abumrad of member station WNYC went around New York City to ask likely listeners why Dark Side has lasted.
  • Mexico's top two presidential candidates are each claiming victory in the country's highly polarized election -- and their parties have accused one another of election fraud. An official tally of the contest, in which 30 million Mexicans voted, isn't expected for days. Though sharply divided by ideology, leftist Andres Manual Lopez Obrador and conservative Felipe Calderon are separated by less than one-tenth of one percent.
  • Chocolate Genius is the brainchild of Marc Anthony Thompson. The music is a mixture of R&B and jazz experimentation — all topped off with a lyrical style more commonly heard in indie singer-songwriters. His new release is Black Yankee Rock.
  • Forty years ago, Allan Sherman topped the pop charts by replacing the lyrics of folk songs with satires of Jewish American life. And in doing that, he offered a perfect snapshot of what it meant to assimilate.
  • Final Fantasy is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Owen Pallett, who first achieved notoriety as a member of The Arcade Fire. Pallett makes music that marries the serious and the silly, informed by everything from Dungeons & Dragons to the songs on Top 40 radio.
  • Drawing from influences such as The Beatles, David Bowie, Elvis Costello and Simon & Garfunkel, Willie Wisely creates a sound that he describes as "swing-alt-pop." An upright bass, arch-top guitars and trombone help drive his singular style.
  • With his band the Belmonts, singer-songwriter Dion rose to fame as a '60s teen idol, topping charts with hits like "The Wanderer" and "I Wonder Why." The latest album in his long career is Heroes: Giants Of Early Guitar Rock.
  • Lahiri famously brought a disco vibe to India's biggest film industry. He composed dozens of hits in the 1970s and '80s — which appeared in many top Bollywood movies.
  • Steve Martin is at the top of his game. He has just been awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, at the same time that his newest movie, Shopgirl, is winning strong reviews around the country.
  • Richard Clarke, who served as the top White House counter-terrorism official under three presidents, says George W. Bush's administration did not consider terrorist threats to be urgent in its first seven months, despite Clarke's urgings. Speaking on Capitol Hill to a national commission investigating U.S. policies before Sept. 11, 2001, Clark said terrorism was given extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration. Also Wednesday, CIA Director George Tenet told the panel that terrorist intelligence was not properly integrated among different agencies. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.
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