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A recent United Nations report on the world wide status of women ranks Sweden number one in terms of women's equality. Last year the Swedish Prime Minister decided that half of Sweden's parliament and half of Sweden's cabinet should be female and so many men were forced to resign. Daniel talks to the deputy Prime Minister of Sweden Mona Sahlin who is also the minister of equality affairs.

Chinese orphans are placed in horrendous conditions, eading the majority of them to die of starvation and medical neglect. NPR's ary Kay Magistad reports on a study by Human Rights Watch/Asia, a U.S.-based onitoring group, which finds that the Chinese government singled out children or starvation in order to stabilize orphange populations.

NPR's Eric Weiner reports from Jerusalem on the $500 million missile defense system, to be funded by the US and Israel, which is designed to protect Israel from weapons of mass destruction. After meeting with Prime Minister Shimon Perez, U-S Defense Secretary William Perry also said the U-S would be willing to station U-S troops in the Golan Heights to guarantee peace.

NPR's John Ydstie reports that financial markets have stabilized today after a sharp fall Monday and Tuesday. The fall is largely attributed to a breakdown in the budget negotiations, though some analysyts say market factors were more important. The sharp reaction in the financial markets may put pressure on the politicians to make a deal. In fact, it may be that some of the Republican policical rhetoric is calculated to affect the market and put pressure on the President.

NPR's John Burnett reports that while most prisons across the country are trying to make life more difficult for prisoners (cutting back funding for basketball courts, initiating chain gangs, etc.), in Texas, which has the nation's largest prison population, prisoners are being given more access to one perk: the telephone. But Burnett says from the prison perspective, there's a business incentive for the move.

President Clinton has nominated Federal Reserve board chairman Alan Greenspan to a third four-year term at the nation's central bank. In addition, the president moved to fill two open slots at the Fed, nominating his budget director, Alice Rivlin, and St. Louis economist Laurence Meyer for vacant seats on the board. The renomination of Greenspan was expected and it has the support of the financial markets. NPR's White House correspondent Mara Liasson reports.

Daniel talks to Neil Munro, a reporter for Washington Techonology newspaper and Robert Ayers, chief of the Pentagon's defense information systems agency's information warfare divison, about the possibility of an infowar... an attack on the communications systems that support the defense of the United States. Enemy countries or terrorists could sabotage the civillian phone, air traffic control, and power systems on which the militray depends by linking up with international computer networks like the Internet.

In order to promote "traditional" family values, the Virginia Housing Authority, has decided to stop making housing loans to gays and unmarried single people. NPR's Adam Hochberg reports that the agency, which loans money to low and moderate-income first-time home buyers, has taken the step at the urging of Republican Gov. George Allen. Federal officials are examining policy changes for possible civil rights violations.

NPR's Brian Naylor reports that the eight men seeking the Republican presidential nomination spent the last day before New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary at a series of media events, speeches and rallies. Public opinion polls show that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, commentator Pat Buchanan and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander are in a close race for the state's sixteen delegates.

NPR's John Burnett reports on the efforts of anti-drug activist Herman Wrice to help small towns in the United States fight crack cocaine abuse through grassroots organizing and regularly confronting suspected drug dealers. Civil libertarians are concerned that this approach is tantamount to vigilanteism. If these people are known drug dealers, they argue, they should be arrested, not harrassed.