National News from NPR

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AUDIE CORNISH, host: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Audie Cornish.

It's an historic day in Libya. The country's new leaders are set to declare their country liberated. An interim government will soon be sworn in and Libyans are hoping to have elections in eight months. But the road ahead won't be easy. In Misrata, Moammar Gadhafi's body has been left on display. Libyans who went to see his corpse yesterday had their own thoughts on what lies ahead and what the former dictator's death means to them.

NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro is in Misrata.

Moammar Gadhafi styled himself as Africa's king of kings and long pursued his grand plan to unite the continent under his rule. NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports on how his brutal end is resonating in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is a member of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, otherwise known as the supercommittee. The group is working on a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Host Audie Cornish gets an update from Van Hollen, who played a major role in Vice President Joe Biden's debt talks earlier this year.

Iowa voters were getting an earful Saturday at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition forum. Meanwhile, Nevada decided to move back its caucus to Feb. 4. NPR National Political Correspondent Mara Liasson joins host Audie Cornish to look at the week's political news and preview what's ahead for the presidential race.

Albert Pujols and the St. Louis Cardinals gave a performance for the record books Saturday night in Game 3 of the World Series. They beat the Texas Rangers 16 to 7. NPR's Mike Pesca reports.

In a single 24-hour period, the National Park Service and National Geographic led a "treasure hunt" to catalog all the species in Arizona's Saguaro National Park. NPR's Ted Robbins takes us to the "BioBlitz."

Three home runs. Five hits. Six runs batted in.

Sounds like what a Major League Baseball team might do on a typical night.

But that's what one guy — the St. Louis Cardinals' Albert Pujols — did Saturday evening against the Texas Rangers in Game Three of the World Series. His heroics led the Cards to a 16-7 win and a two-games-to-one advantage in the best-of-7 fall classic.

Four years ago in the Iowa caucuses, evangelical voters rallied behind former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won an upset victory and shook up the Republican field in the process.

With the 2012 Iowa caucuses just over 10 weeks away, conservative Christian Republican voters in Iowa are still searching for a presidential candidate. Saturday night they sized up six GOP hopefuls at a banquet in Des Moines, sponsored by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Behind every pitch in professional ball is a guy like Dan O'Rourke, rubbing up baseballs in the Philadelphia Phillies clubhouse. He plucks a ball from a stack of boxes between his knees and prepares his hands with mud.

"I'm applying mud to the baseball to take the sheen, the shininess off the ball, so the pitchers have something to hold onto," he says. He gives the ball a few quick turns against his palm.

"I do roughly three to four balls at a time," he says.

While the overall U.S. economy seems to be stuck in neutral, there are a few bright spots. One of them is charitable giving to the arts, which was up more than 5 percent last year.

But a new study cautions that much of that support serves audiences that are wealthier and whiter than the country as a whole.

Audiences at the Metropolitan Opera in New York cheered this year's season-opening production of Anna Bolena. The Met has something else to be excited about: a record fundraising campaign.