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Twenty days after the first confirmed case within the U.S., omicron is now the dominant strain of coronavirus — accounting for 73% of new infections last week.

The modern Bible is the product of translations and interpretations that span centuries. But a true understanding of its meaning should take into account its origins in Jewish culture, according to biblical scholar Marc Zvi Brettler, author of How to Read the Bible.

In Houston, federal prosecutors and former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay continue to spar on the final day of Lay's testimony. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Houston accused Lay of ignoring concerns about the company's accounting. He also pressed Lay for details on $70 million he made selling his own Enron stock.

Public schools perform favorably with private schools when students' income and socio-economic status are taken into account, according to a new report from the U.S. Education Department. The findings counter a popularly held notion, that private schools outperform public schools.

Comedian and actor Andy Richter's new sitcom is Andy Barker, P.I. Richter plays an accountant who is mistaken for the detective who formerly occupied the office he is renting. He reluctantly takes on the role of private investigator and discovers he likes it.

Gen. Romeo Dallaire was commander of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Rwanda 10 years ago during one of the worst massacres in modern history. Some 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days. Most of them were Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians. During that time Dallaire and his troops were denied authority to intervene. The experience changed him, tormented him, and filled him with guilt. He suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, was suicidal and depressed. He's written a new account, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.

Commentator Kristine Holmgren says that she is concerned about the effect that the new welfare reform bill will have on the poor families at her church and around the country. She says the bill's supporters, who assume that private charities will increase services to offset welfare cuts, haven't taken into account one important factor. After 10 years of working with the poor, Holmgren says, she has learned that the poor are proud -- maybe too proud to ask for help from people in their communities, whom they have to face every day.

Linda talks to Ann Reilly Dowd, Washington correspondent for Money Magazine, about the record high credit card delinquency reported today by the American Bankers Association. During the April-June quarter of this year, credit card payments overdue 30 days or longer rose to 3.66 percent of the total accounts, higher than it has ever been since the association began collecting data in 1974. During that same period, banks suffered $3.8 billion in losses on credit card and consumer loans, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Sandy Tolan talks about his book The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East. The account grew out of a 1998 NPR documentary in which Tolan reported on a friendship between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman that served as an example of the region's fragile history.

In April, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins will receive the George Polk Award for War Reporting for "his riveting, first-hand account of an eight-day attack on Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah." We talk with him about the rebuilding country and its recent elections.