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Linda talks to Ann Reilly Dowd, Washington correspondent for Money Magazine, about the record high credit card delinquency reported today by the American Bankers Association. During the April-June quarter of this year, credit card payments overdue 30 days or longer rose to 3.66 percent of the total accounts, higher than it has ever been since the association began collecting data in 1974. During that same period, banks suffered $3.8 billion in losses on credit card and consumer loans, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

NPR's Anne Garrels reports from Moscow on new speculation about Russia, Chechnya and who's in charge in the Kremlin. Russian President Boris Yeltsin is out of town. And the man he put in charge of running government policy in Chehcnya, his security chief Alexander Lebed, is fighting on two fronts. While he works at settling the war in Chechnya, he's in daily battles with the bureaucracy in the Kremlin. The most recent attack from Lebed against the Kremlin is that Yeltsin's signature on recent decrees concerning Chechnya are facsimiles and not original.

NPR's Richard Harris reports that the Defense Department says it is starting to refocus its investigation of illnesses among Gulf War veterans as a result of recent revelations that some troops may have been exposed to chemical weapons during clean-up efforts after the war. The Pentagon's top doctor, Steven Joseph, says the realization is "a watershed" in trying to understand the mysterious ailments. The Pentagon now presumes some soldiers have been exposed to chemical weapons, though no illnesses have been clearly linked to the chemicals.

NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports from Goma, Zaire that tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees suddenly began flooding back to Rwanda today. The dramatic development came after an exiled Rwandan Hutu militia abandoned a vast refugee camp a few miles outside of Goma. For the past two years the Hutu militiamen had prevented the refugees from returning to Rwanda, whose Tutsi-led government is fighting the exiles. The breakthrough comes as the international community finalizes plans for a multinational force to help get food and medicine to those refugees remaining in Zaire.

NPR's Ted Clark reports that the US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians will get under way Tuesday as forecast, but the talks will begin with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat meeting separaely with President Clinton before any face-to-face meeting between the two Middle East leaders can take place. Even as the meetings in Washington were being prepared, however, US administration officials were lowering expectations that even the previously-agreed-to Oslo Accords could be reactivated.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich is facing calls for him to step aside because of his unpopularity with the general public. Some of his problems stem from the conservative agenda, others from ethics charges. Even among his usual supporters, some GOP congressmen say Gingrich should step aside as Speaker for the good of the agenda. But NPR's Brian Naylor reports Gingrich still has many congressmen behind him, and is likely to be reelected Speaker next week when House Republicans meet to elect their leaders.

New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani has announced plans to send 1000 poorly-performing students from the city's public school system to local Catholic schools. We visit Bishop Loughlin (LOCK-lin) High School in Brooklyn to talk with students and educators about the differences between the public and parochial school settings. As NPR's Barbara Mantel reports, teachers feel that Catholic schools like Loughlin bring a sense of a mission to the job of teaching -- giving students a greater feeling of belonging than they receive in public schools.

NPR's Vicki O'Hara reports that President Clinton today announced his decision to waive for another six months a controversial provision of a law that tightens the U.S. embargo against Cuba. The president said he will once again suspend that part of the so-called Helms-Burton Law which would allow Americans who had property confiscated by the Cuban government to sue foreign firms doing business on that property today. Mr. Clinton said he expects to continue suspending this provision every six months, so long as America's European allies continue to pressure Cuba to improve its human rights record.

Carrie Kahn of member station K-P-B-S reports on the escalating drug-related violence in Tijuana, just twenty miles from San Diego, California. Seven Mexican federal law enforcement officials who worked in Tijuana have been murdered this year. Officials suspect the drug cartel run by the three Arellano Felix (ah-ray-YAH-no FAY-lix) brothers was behind the killings. Experts say the murders--along with a general rise in drug violence in Tijuana--are evidence that a power struggle is underway for control of the area's lucrative narcotics trade.

The Justice Department has turned down a third request for an independent counsel to investigate possible campaign finance violations involving former Democratic fundraiser John Huang. But NPR's Barbara Bradley reports that the Attorney General is referring the case to an internal Justice Department campaign finance task force. The Justice Department says the case does not meet the criteria of the Independent Counsel Act: It doesn't involve high administration officials and it doesn't create a conflict of interest for the Justice Department. Senator John McCain made the request, and says the decision not to appoint an independent counsel may make congressional hearings necessary.