June 29, 1998 All Things Considered (entire program) Requires the RealAudio Player

An index of the day's stories:

CLINTON IN SHANGHAI -- President Clinton has arrived in Shanghai, the third stop on his nine-day tour of China. NPR's Mary Kay Magistad reports that Mr. Clinton will see a cosmopolitan, commercial city where spirits are still high despite the Asian financial crisis. (6:00)

STUDENTS' QUESTIONS -- We will hear excerpts from President Clinton's question-and-answer session with students at Beijing University. (3:30)

LIVE EVENTS -- NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr says the decision to broadcast both of President Clinton's major appearances in Beijing on live Chinese television suggests a strong personal rapport between the Chinese and American presidents. (3:00)

TAIWAN INCIDENT -- Robert talks with former Secretary of Defense William Perry, who is now the Berberian Professor of Engineering and a fellow at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. They discuss a crisis concerning Taiwan that occurred between the United States and China in March of 1996. (6:00)

ALL THE TEA -- The BBC's Joe Morgan reports that the tea auction in London, England, has come to an end after three hundred years of operation. Technological developments have superseded the necessity of the tea auction for business, and the city of London has become less important as a center for tea trade. (2:00)

EXTREME STRESS -- Frank Browning looks at how the new understanding of stress in mental health is being used to handle the problems of people who are often exposed to high levels of stress. Police forces are now using therapists and peer counselors, in a so-called "quick reaction response mode". The counselors will intervene before stress (most often caused by job related dangers), can cause psychological harm. (12:00)

AIDS CONFERENCE -- Claire Doole reports from the international AIDS conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on new studies of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. For several years, a course of the anti-AIDS drug AZT has been shown to reduce by two-thirds the odds of an HIV-positive pregnant woman passing the virus onto her child. But the drug has been too expensive for women in poorer nations...until now. A short course of the drug appears to work in these countries, at a fraction of the cost to women in wealthier countries. (1:50)

PEDIATRIC AIDS -- Noah Adams talks with Dr. Nancy Hutton who is attending the AIDS conference in Geneva. She is director of the Intensive Primary Care Center at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Hutton has been working with children with AIDS since 1985 and has noticed marked improvement in the care of patients...and in the amount of time that they survive. They discuss the reduction in rate of HIV transmission from mother to child, as well as the growing number of children who have lived to adolescence with the virus. (5:00)

LINDSEY ARGUMENTS -- NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg reports from Washington on today's U.S. Court of Appeals hearing to determine whether Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey is covered by attorney-client privilege. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr argues that Lindsey, a federal employee, is not protected, but Clinton is trying to prevent his long-time friend Lindsey being compelled to give grand jury testimony about their conversations regarding Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. (5:00)

SEXUAL HARASSMENT -- NPR's David Molpus reports that employment law experts are predicting sexual harassment suits will increase in the wake of two Supreme Court decisions last Friday. The court held that employers can be liable even when they were unaware of the harassing acts by a supervisor. Analysts said that while the overall number of suits may increase, many suits will be easier to defend because the court has clarified what businesses must do. (5:00)

FLORIDA FIRES -- NPR's Cheryl Devall reports that Vice President Al Gore visited parts of Florida damaged by a month of wildfires today. Mr. Gore thanked the firefighters who have come from around the country to assist with the effort in central Florida, and he visited with families whose houses have been destroyed. Gore pledged more federal disaster aid to help the fire fighting and relief efforts. (2:00)

KOSOVO -- NPR's Tom Gjelten reports that fighting is intensifying in Serbia's Kosovo province. Western diplomats and Albanian officials are warning that the upsurge in fighting could make it impossible to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. (4:30)

SERB SUICIDE -- Gillian Sharpe reports from The Hague that suspect Slavko Dokmanovic apparently committed suicide in his cell last night while awaiting the verdict at the Yugoslav War Crimes tribunal. Dokmanovic, a Serb, was accused of participating in the 1991 massacre of some two hundred men, mainly Croats, when he was mayor of the Croatian city of Vukovar. Investigators are trying to find out how he managed to hang himself. It was known that Dokmanovic was suffering from severe depression, and was he supposed to be under close watch. (4:00)

ALABAMA RUNOFF -- NPR's Debbie Elliott reports tomorrow's Republican gubernatorial runoff has become a struggle for the future of the Republican party in Alabama. The bitter campaign pits incumbent Governor Fob James, whose base of support has been religious and social conservatives, against Winton Blount, who has the support of the state's business community. The winner of this election may be decided by Democratic crossover voters, who can vote in the Republican runoff even if they didn't vote in the GOP primary earlier this month. (7:30)

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE -- Noah talks with Peter Sturrock, Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University. Professor Sturrock recently assembled a panel of scientists to review data from a collection of UFO sightings. This panel made the first independent review of UFO sightings since 1970 and concluded that a collection of alleged UFO sightings merit additional scientific study. Professor Sturrock believes that a lack of institutional support hinders the study of UFOs. (4:30)

MIDWEST FLOODS -- Alison Holm of member station WCBE in Columbus, Ohio reports on the aftermath of 3 days of rain and high winds, which led to damage and flooding in Eastern Ohio. Holm visits Muskingum County, Ohio, about 60 miles east of Columbus. Here, many fields are under water and disaster teams are just now visiting. (3:30)

MAIL TRUCKS -- Noah talks with Ray Enos, the general manager of Downtown Ford in Sacramento, California. Enos says that he's been noticing a large number of people buying the used, reconditioned United States Postal Service delivery trucks that he sells. He says that parents seem to like buying the trucks for their driving-age kids because, with only one seat in the truck, the kids can't ferry their friends around very easily. The trucks are also popular with mail-delivery personnel who have to work in rural areas and with people who have paper routes and other delivery-oriented companies. He also talks about a man who bought a truck so he could take his dog to the riverside, and about the proprietor of a brothel in Nevada who bought one because it's colors matched the brothel's decor. (4:00)