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Americans -- especially young Americans -- are losing the battle against fat. The percentage of teenagers who are overweight has doubled in the past two decades. Science reporter Frank Browning reports that the reason has to do with a culture that encourages overconsumption.

Noah Adams and Laura Kraut, a member of the U.S. Equestrian Olympic team discuss how the team's horses are shipped to Australia for the Sydney games. The horses are quarantined before participating in the competition.

Still enjoying the lift provided by his speech at the Democratic national Convention, Vice President Al Gore campaigned through the Midwest this week in an open-collared shirt and an upbeat mood. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports that Gore is borrowing heavily from his father's populist campaign style and, for the moment at least, it seems to be working.

Russia has released of a Hungarian World War Two prisoner after 53 years. Andras Tamas had been diagnosed as psychotic by his captors, and ended up in a Russian psychiatric hospital. Two weeks ago, the head of the Hungarian National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology brought Tamas home to Hungary. Robert talks with Giles Whittell, the Moscow Bureau Chief for The Times of London, about his visit with Tamas in Budapest.

Robert Siegel speaks with sportswriter Stefan Fatsis about the WBNA. The professional women's basketball league is in the midst of it's championship final series. The Houston Comets may win the title for the fourth straight year after defeating the New York Liberty last night to take the first game in the best of three series. This is the league's fourth year and while its growth may have reached a plateau, there's still a lot of enthusiasm for the game.

Commentator Amy Dickinson heads for her hometown in New York state every summer. She sent us this audio postcard about this year's vacation -- and how her quiet getaway has changed.

Campaigning has posed a new challenge this week for Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush, who has seen his pre-eminent position in the polls slip for the first time since March. Bush has also struggled to keep his focus on the issues he believes will carry him to victory, including his tax cut plan. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports.

John Burnett reports on the debate over liberalizing US immigration policy along the Mexico border to allow guest worker visas.

NPR News Correspondent Richard Gonzales reports on a ruling by Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that persecution because of sexual preference must be considered a legitimate reason for the INS to grant an immigrant political asylum.

For more than thirty years photographer Mark PoKempner has been taking pictures of Chicago's legendary blues clubs. His new book Down at Theresa's: Chicago Blues is a visual artist's tribute to one city's musical legacy. Host Jacki Lyden tours some of Mark's favorite South Side clubs. (16:00) (Down at Theresa's - Chicago Blues: the Photographs of Mark PoKempner, by Wolfgang Schorlau; ISBN: 3791323008 (2000) For more information, check out our feature on "Down at Theresa".

Host Jacki Lyden talks to travel writer Chris Elliott about airlines' efforts to crack down on fliers who buy tickets for "hidden cities." Some travelers are finding it cheaper to buy tickets for longer flights, and then get off in a connecting city, or to pay a lower round-trip fare for a one-way flight. Airlines say that's costing them money.

Commentator David Weinberger says making predictions is a waste of time, especially when it comes to trying to guess the future of technology.

Four years ago, a new federal law was enacted to limit the use of pesticides in American food production. But that was just the beginning of the fight. Enforcing the new law has proven difficult, beginning with the writing of detailed regulations. And a coalition of farm organizations and pesticide manufacturers has been working to slow the process, as well. Now there's a new bill pending in Congress that would cloud the picture further. NPR's Peter Overby reports.

A team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology has developed a new technique to recover information from magnetic tapes and disks. Noah talks with David Pappas, who heads that team, about the possibility that this technique could be applied to blank portions of the Nixon White House tapes, analyzed during the Watergate scandal. Recovering voices, he says, would be a long shot. But it might be possible to tell whether the tapes had been erased.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that Russian president Vladimir Putin finally flew to the Northern Fleet's base near Murmansk -- ten days after the submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. With the rescue attempt called off, talk has now turned to bringing up the bodies of the 118 men on board.

NPR's Mary Ann Akers reports on the first day of a two-day meeting about the 1996 crash of TWA flight 800. Members of the National Transportation Safety Board are discussing what the staff has compiled on the crash. They're also preparing to approve the staff report on the probable cause. The board is expected to vote tomorrow, and release safety recommendations. The staff has concluded, as has long been accepted, that the center fuel tank exploded and destroyed the airplane, killing all 230 people on board.

A new reality show of sorts has come to the Internet. It's called Reality Run. The idea is to set someone loose on the streets of a major city wired with a microphone and very little money. It is then up to people listening to that live microphone over the 'net to pick up hints about where the person is. The first person who finds the man or woman with the mic wins $10,000. The first "Reality Run" was played in Berlin and will come to the United States soon. Noah talks with "Roger." He was on the run in Berlin until a young woman found him in a Berlin library yesterday. (5:00) The Internet address is http://realityrun.com/

A brief note on some of the other news on today's program.

Robert talks with Russ Buettner, a reporter at the New York Daily News about how a Long Island-based anti-abortion group raised over 2-million-dollars to support anti-abortion candidates. But only one-percent of the money has gone to political campaigns. The rest has been taken by the direct marketing firm making the fundraising calls.

NPR's Phillip Davis reports Florida is offering motorists a new license plate featuring the slogan "choose life." Money from the sales of the new tags go to promote adoption. But abortion-rights groups say the message is inherently religious, and therefore unconstitutional. They've lost a round in court, but are still fighting against the plates.