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The dating site Cupid.com has released a survey rating regional accents. The most attractive accent in North America is the Southern drawl. The New York accent came in second. Rounding out the top 5: the New Jersey, Boston and Western accents.

The White House is close to nominating someone to replace Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. Several other top candidates withdrew their names from consideration in the past week.

A dentist from Alberta, Canada, paid $10,000 for a crown that once belonged to The King: Elvis Presley. That isn't the only dental collectible this dentist has paid top dollar for. He shelled out $31,000 for a rotten tooth that belonged to John Lennon.

David Callaway, editor-in-chief at MarketWatch, takes over the top spot at the newspaper.

Apart from its better-known roles in bluegrass and Dixieland, the banjo was once a sought-after status symbol in late 19th-century America. Young ladies learned to play parlor music on the banjo; there were banjo societies and banjo virtuosi; and manufacturers fought wars over who could make the fanciest banjos. On top of that, this was primarily a northern phenomenon. It's chronicled in a new book, America's Instrument: The Banjo in the 19th Century, by Philip Gura and James Bollman. Paul Brown reports. (7:45) (America's Instrument: The Banjo in the 19th Century is published by University of North Carolina P

Host Bob Edwards talks to Richard Allen, National Security Adviser under President Ronald Reagan, about the tape recordings he made in the White House Situation Room the day President Ronald Reagan was shot. Most every top administration official was in the room that day, and the tapes provide a rare glimpse of their private conversations about who was in charge, whether the assassination attempt was part of a conspiracy, and what to do about Soviet subs closer than usual to U.S. shores. Next week marks the 20th anniversary of the attempt on Reagan's life. This interview is the first of two parts.

Vice Premier Qian Qichen is in Washington. He is the highest ranking Chinese official to visit since the Bush administration took office. Qian will meet with the president tomorrow at the White House. China's top concern right now is a decision Mr. Bush must soon make on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Taiwan wants to buy advanced anti-missile technology (Aegis destroyers) but China is adamantly opposed to such a sale. If the sale goes through, some analysts say China will drop the more moderate stance it has recently adopted toward Taiwan. Other analysts say China's views should not be a factor in any U.S. decision to sell weapons to Taiwan.

In the final part of her month long series on money, NPR's Susan Stamberg reports on the question of money in marriage and divorce. She focuses on a highly publicized divorce case involving a stay-at-home mother, whose husband was a top level corporate executive. The net worth of Gary and Lorna Wendt was $100 million in 1995, when he filed for divorce. She contested a settlement of 10 million dollars and was then awarded $20 million, plus $250,000 per year in alimony for life. (7:36) (Lorna Wendt is founder of www.equalityinmarriage.or

Babu Chhiri Sherpa, a guide well known to climbers of Mount Everest has fallen to his death. Noah Adams talks with Heidi Howkins, a mountaineer and author of the book K2: One Woman's Quest for the Summit. Howkins was on a climb with Babu Chhiri when he broke the record for the longest stay at the top of Mt. Everest without bottled oxygen. Babu Chhiri also set a record for the fastest climb of Mount Everest -- 16 hours and 56 minutes. (4:00) K2: One Woman's Quest for the Summit, by Heidi Howkins, is published by National Geographic Adventure Press.

The program calculates anti-prime numbers used in everyday software. His discoveries won him top prize in the Broadcom Masters, an engineering competition for middle school kids.