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Linda Wertheimer speaks with Alex Crosby, a medical epidemiologist at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, and author of a new report on suicide and the elderly. After many years of declining rates of suicide among persons 65 and older, the rates have started to increase.

Lynne Terry reports that in advance his visit to the United States, French President Jacques Chirac called an early end to his government's controversial series of underground nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Saying that the tests guarantee a "viable and modern defense," he announced that the sixth test would be the last.

In our ongoing series of stump speeches delivered by the Presidential candidates, we hear an excerpt from an address by Alan Keyes.

Daniel speaks with Sandy Rikoon, a sociologist at the University of Missouri about Rachel Caloff (KAY-loff), a young woman who in the 1890's left her native Russia for the United States marry a man she'd never met. Together, Caloff and her new husband moved to North Dakota where they became part of a small Jewish farming community. Rikoon found a manuscript of Caloff's memoirs in an historical archive and worked with the family to get it published. It's called 'The Rachel Caloff Story' and is published by Indiana University press.

NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr says that U.S. relations with China appear to be heating up again, just in time for the U.S. presidential election.

In the third part of our series on the income gap, reporter Elaine Korry examines whether America is still the land of opportunity or whether that cornerstone of our national identity has been eroded by years of stagnant wages and a growing disparity in incomes.

Film critic Bob Mondello reviews "A Midwinter's Tale", Kenneth Branagh's behind-the-scenes farce about an English production of Hamlet.

Noah talks to the BBC's Chris Nuttal about a group of rebel Chechens who hijacked a Russian ship today in Turkey and are holding the passengers hostage.

Robert talks with journalist Tom Goltz about freedom-fighting Turks of Caucasian ancestry and the hostage crisis on the Black Sea. Chechens have taken 200 people hostage aboard a ferry boat and have threatened to blow the boat up once they reach Istanbul. Goltz spent the last four years in Turkey and the Caucasus and is writing a book about the wars in the post-Soviet Caucasus.

NPR's Brian Naylor reports a commission headed by former housing secretary Jack Kemp is recommending the current income tax system be replaced with a single rate system -- the so-called flat tax. The panel's recommendations come as the flat tax issue is a major topic of debate in the Republican presidential campaign.

NPR's Joe Palca reports that astronomers have found evidence for the existence of two new planets outside our solar system. Both putative planets are about 35 light years from Earth, and are orbiting stars at a distance that would allow water to exist on them. One appears to be orbiting a sun in the constellation Virgo, while the other appears to be orbiting a sun in the Big Dipper.

NPR'S Phillip Davis reports on growing opposition to a provision in the telecommuncations bill recently sent to President Clinton for his signature. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups say the bill's vaguely-worded ban against the transmission of "indecency" over the internet violates the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. They plan a legal challenge.

Commentator Marion Winik in her late 30's and PMS has set in. It makes her a total nut. One day she behaved so badly she called a parent counselor, the school counselor, her ob-gyn and almost called social services to come and take her away for being a bad parent.

Alan Cheuse reviews Mario Vargas Lllosa's new book "Death in the Andes". It's a political detective story set in his native country of Peru. (published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux)

Film critic Bob Mondello reviews Clifton Taulbert's film memoir, Once Upon a Time...When We Were Colored. The drama chronicles Taulbert's coming of age in the segregated South.

In New York City, dozens of pyschiatrists are volunteering to find and help homeless people suffering from mental illness. Reporter Richard Schiffman reports that they they are seeking out these non-traditional patients in some very non-traditional ways.

U.S.-Iran relations are expected to get even tougher when a new Iranian president takes office Thursday. He's a former prosecutor expected to take a hard line inside and outside the country.

Robert talks with Linda Wertheimer who is in New Hampshire following the campaign. She assesses the mood of Granite State, as well as the fortunes of the Republican presidential candidates in the run-up to the state's primary next week.

A conversation about legendary pool player Minnesota Fats who died this morning at his home in Nashville. Noah talks with Jim Murray, who's a columnist with the Los Angeles Times.

Commentator Mickey Edwards says that neither Congress nor President Clinton will decide the outcome of the current budget crisis. He says it is the voters who made balancing the budget the issue in 1994, and it is the voters who will rule on it in this year's elections.