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Matthew Ferguson of Michigan Public Radio reports on the ruling against Ameritech. The Chicago-based phone service was fined for failing to clear the credit record of a customer who was wrongly billed for an account. The company, which serves five Midwestern states, has been under investigation in Indiana and Wisconsin for slow repair and service lapses.

Host Jacki Lyden speaks with New York Times Magazine reporter Benjamin Weiser. One of his recent articles gives a detailed account of one man's harrowing journey. Diagnosed schizophrenic Kerry Sanders was falsely imprisoned for two years, a sentence that should have been served by Robert Sanders, a fugitive with a long criminal history.

The House of Representatives today approved a bill that would raise the amount that certain savers can contribute to their tax-deferred retirement accounts. The current annual limit on these contributions is $2,000 but the new legislation, if passed by the Senate and signed by President Clinton, would raise that limit to $5,000. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.

We play a reading from a 100-year old newspaper account from the Chicago Tribune which describes the first automobile race in America. The 55-mile race was held on Thanksgiving day 1895...from downtown Chicago to Evanston, Illinois.

Representatives from the Government Accounting Office and Librarian of Congress James Billington faced off today at a Congressional hearing. The GAO has just released a very critical report of mismanagement at the Library of Congress. The report also challenges the Library's mission. Dean Olsher reports.

Commentator Captain Rosemary Mariner calls for a return to the concept of "vertical accountability" in the military. Recent allegations of sexual misconduct in in Army training schools violate one of the most basic moral concepts in the military; if these are allegations are true, we should be disciplining people at the top of the pyramid, not the bottom.

Jacki speaks with Paulette Giles, author of "Northern Spirit," (Hungry Minds Press, Doubleday Canada) her account of seven years of living among the Ojibway and Cree Indians in Canada's north woods. Giles says she discovered and learned to appreciate a world apart during her years in the wilderness.

Today's topic in our regular Point/Counterpoint segment is Social Security "reform" and private personal investment accounts. We hear from Niger Innis, national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, and from economist and author Julianne Malveaux.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins has been covering the recent elections in Iraq. In April, he received the George Polk Award for War Reporting for "his riveting, first-hand account of an eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Falluja."

Personal accounts and reflections of individuals affected by the Iraq war. Jesse Mays has a tattoo parlor near Camp Lejeune, N.C., where he's applied his art to many Marines who train there. They are now in Iraq, and 11 have been killed in action.

Noah talks to the executive at Orion Pictures in charge of international marketing of movies... and several foreign buyers. International sales account for a tremendous chunk of the Hollywood money chest - with foreign buyers contributing early on in the movie making process. It appears that people all over the world are as obsessed with the American dream as we are.

Consumer confidence tumbled in December, the third straight month it has fallen. The decline in the closely watched Conference Board index is another indication that the economy has cooled and that consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the nation's economic activity, is slowing. NPR's Snigdha Prakash reports.