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NPR'S Kathleen Schalch reports that Washington D.C. has played host this week to a gathering of micro-lending organizations from around the world. Lending very small amounts of money directly to the poor has shown great success in the developing world...and conference organizers want to dramatically increase the number of people such programs reach.

finally backed down in the face of ten weeks of opposition protests against his decision to annul election results.

Investigators say they are racing to keep up with an explosion of child pornography made possible by computer networks. They say the Internet makes creating and circulating sexually-explicit material easier than ever. Congress has tried to help law enforcement in its crackdown by passing a new law that expands the definition of child pornography. But NPR's Barbara Bradley reports that civil libertarians say the law infringes on the constitutional protection of free speech.

Robert talks to Roger Wilkins, a history professor at George Mason University, about the two trials of OJ Simpson. Wilkins says that Blacks and whites view the trials very differently.

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.

Commentator Kristine Holmgren says as a young girl she was taught to remember the poor -- to be generous and share. Now she says there is little respect for the poor...they are seen as evil and the demonization of the poor is breeding cynicism about poverty. She worries that the plight of the poor in general no longer moves us. Rather, we are only moved by an interruption in our own material success.

if the government were to change the way it calculates inflation, as recommended by a Congressional commission. To protect taxpayers from inflation, the tax code is pegged to the Consumer Price Index. Reducing the CPI by one-point-one percent a year, as the commission recommends, would effectively raise most people's taxes.

under the austere Islamic rule of the Taliban . There's no music, no soccer, no chess, no women to talk to. But there is no crime either and, among the thugs, there is still poetry.

While many efforts to use the Internet for commerce have proved disappointing, there are a few web-based businesses that appear to have the right formula. One such company is Tunes.com...the company runs a web site that allows you to listen to a little bit of every track from a cd. Tunes.com already has more than 200,000 music tracks available. NPR's John McChesney reports on how the company has managed to combine novelty and profitability.

the U.S. owes the United Nations in back dues and how that is affecting both the U.N.'s ability to carry out its obligations and the U.S. position in the U.N. President Clinton requested the money in his new budget, but Congress is unlikely to approve it, until the U.N. promises to make reforms.