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Auto talks between the United Auto Workers union and Ford, Chrysler and General Motors began this week as they prepare to negotiate a new U.A.W. contract. NPR's Don Gonyea reports that the talks will be difficult, particularly concerning the issue of outsourcing. The union wants auto companies to hire new workers and to increase job security.

about the resignation of the Turkish Prime Minister.

Commentator Mike Thoele (TAY-lee) waits for the call in the night from his daughter or son, telling him they are off to fight yet another Western fire. Both are members of elite groups of firefighters -- the daughter is a smokejumper and the son is on a "hot shot" crew. Each summer they join 50,000 other seasonal firefighters in what Thoele calls "a summer rite of passage."

- NPR's Adam Hochberg reports that later this month, the oldest textile mill in the south will be closing. It's the Rocky Mount mill in North Carolina. The mill opened in 1818, and its closing mirrors the fate of other mills in the U.S.

- Storyteller Carmen Deedee brings us back to her childhood in Cuba, and recalls how she almost wasn't able to bring out her doll when her family left Cuba for the United States in the early sixties.

In the first of two reports, NPR's Michael Skoler reports on the escalating ethnic violence in the central African nation of Burundi. The United Nations is worried that fighting between the minority Tutsis and majority Hutus could erupt into the sort of mass killing that gripped neighboring Rwanda two years ago. A weak coalition government has been unable to stop the violence, as the Tutsi-dominated army battles Hutu rebels. Many average Burundians are losing hope that their political leaders can find a way out of the conflict.

NPR's Anne Garrels reports from Moscow on the presidential campaign in Russia, where opinion polls indicate that the leader of the Communists...Gennady Zyuganov ((Gen-NAH-dee zyoo-GAHN-off))...is trailing President Boris Yeltsin. Zyuganov, who has positioned himself as the candidate for the "forgotten voters," is wooing voters who are disenchanted with the economic reforms and other social changes that have taken place under Yeltsin's government. Zyuganov's followers say they don't believe the polling data which gives Yeltsin the lead in the race. Over the weekend, Zyuganov and his supporters staged one last big rally before the election scheduled for next Sunday.

NPR's Melissa Block profiles the New York Police Department's new cold case squad, set up this past February to investigate unsolved homicides. So far, they've closed 27 cases. Some of the work involves tracking down known fugitives, trying to figure out where they've gone. And for those cases WITHOUT a known perpetrator, the detectives start from scratch: lots of phone work, knocking on doors, digging around. The head of the unit calls it the "purest police work you can do."

NPR's Marc Roberts reports that four people have voluntarily left the ranch where the anti-government group known as the Freemen have been engaged in a standoff with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The four, all members of the Ward family, are the first to emerge from the Freemen compound since April.

Robert talks to 2 former students of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; Elizabeth Eckford and Kendall Rhinehart. Eckford, a Black woman, was one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated the school in 1957. Rhinehart is a white man who was among the few who treated her as an equal in the classroom. They recall the harassment that they both withstood, and reflect on the ways their friends and families reacted at the time. The two have been reunited as part of a student history project.