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The rate of home foreclosure is now three times its historic rate — "so large that it threatens the entire economy." Congressional Oversight Panel chair Elizabeth Warren discusses the problem — and possible solutions.

An Iraqi special tribunal turns its focus to procedural details needed to set up prosecutions of Saddam Hussein and senior officials of his former regime. A decision has been made to lift a ban on the death penalty in Iraq. Meanwhile, insurgents target two hotels in central Baghdad. Hear NPR's Steve Inskeep and NPR's Philip Reeves.

USA Today sports columnist Ian O'Connor followed high school hoops prodigy Sebastian Telfair to write a book called The Jump. The title is a nod to a trend that has seen many high school stars bypass college for a pro career. O'Connor tells Steve Inskeep how the NBA's new minimum age requirement — 19 — could affect players like Telfair.

Bill Hancock found peace while bicycling across the country, after the untimely death of his son. Hancock, a NCAA sports official, chronicles the journey in Riding with the Blue Moth.

The comic whose Beyond the "Seven Dirty Words" routine that sparked a famous obscenity case in the 1970s, George Carlin has been an icon of American humor for decades. Now he has a new HBO special, Life is Worth Living — a parody on life, death and suicide. The show, Carlin's 13th HBO special, will air on Nov. 5.

No Man's Land is the story of love and loss in postwar Vietnam. Michael Sullivan profiles its author, dissident Duong Thu Huong. The Vietnamese government has banned her books and jailed her for a time, but she refuses to accept exile.

All Things Considered ends its April poetry series with poet William Stafford, a pacifist who came of age between the two world wars. NPR contributor Henry Lyman, the longtime host of the public radio program Poems to a Listener, sat down with Stafford in 1990.

John Ridley's comic-book series The American Way has just been collected into a graphic novel; it takes place in 1961, when the government has created a team of super-heroes to battle foreign super-villains. But it's all just a show created to pacify the public. Ridley previously wrote the screenplay for Three Kings and the novel A Conversation with the Mann.

Where do the ideas for today's political thrillers come from? Gone are the cloak-and-dagger lives of agents fighting the Cold War: Two recent novels make suspenseful plots out of the people and places in contemporary headlines.

Journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun co-wrote a new book about Russian arms dealer Victor Bout, who's armed Islamic extremists and sold weapons to some of the Third World's most abusive and murderous dictators and warlords. And he's known for fueling both sides of conflicts.