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Alan Cheuse reviews Eater, a new novel by Gregory Benford, a physics professor at the University of California's Irvine campus. Benford is one of the country's most prolific and successful writers of science-fiction. (2:00) Eater, by Gregory Benford is published by Avon.

Robert talks to Jorge Lang, an alternate juror in the Florida tobacco trial. He is returning to his job at a medical supply company after two years on the jury, and talks about what it was like to serve. The jury decided on Friday that the tobacco industry must pay 145-billion dollars for damage to smokers.

Maryanne Zeleznik of member station WNKU reports that jailers in Kentucky can now charge inmates up to $50 per night plus administrative fees for their stay in the county jail. Supporters say the income will take some of tax burden off law-abiding citizens and hope that the additional penalty will act as a deterrent to potential law-breakers. Opponents believe that the additional financial burden could lead former inmates back to a life of crime to pay for their jail time.

Commentator Andrew Lam remarks on the substance of e-mail conversation. He says a friend of his complains that although she hears from him more by e-mail now, she misses him more and knows him less than when he wrote letters. Their conversation is shallower. There's a high price for digital communication; language is streamlined and intimacy lost.

NPR's Larry Abramson reports on Congress's struggle with a couple of communications issues: whether to require cable systems to open their lines to outside Internet providers, and whether local phone companies will be allowed to offer long distance data transfer. These issues are becoming a major target for industry lobbyists on all sides of the issue, and the result has been a stalemate as to the best way to speed deployment of hi-speed Internet access.

NPR's Ted Clark reports the Camp David summit has entered its crucial final stages, with no firm word on whether an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal can be sealed before President Clinton's scheduled departure for Japan early Wednesday.

NPR's Wendy Schmelzer reports that even young men need to worry about their cholesterol levels. A study in this week's Journal of The American Medical Association finds that men who had high cholesterol in their 20s and 30s were more than twice as likely to die from heart disease later in life.

Palestinian human rights groups are calling for an international boycott of Burger King. They're angry that the company has maintained a franchise in a West Bank Jewish settlement -- one Burger King officials promised last year they would close. Protesters charge by maintaining the restaurant in an area populated by Israeli Jews, the company is tacitly endorsing Israeli claims to the land. NPR's Linda Gradstein reports.

Dan Tritle from Member Station WNAN on Nantucket reports that tomorrow morning, a Boston woman and a blind Australian man hope to become the first to swim from Martha's Vineyard to Nantucket. The islands are off the Massachusetts coast, in often turbulent Atlantic waters.

Massachussetts has long been one of the most generous states for students with special needs. A 26-year old law has required school districts to give students the "maximum feasible benefits" to keep them on track in public schools. But lawmakers have recently limited those services, and that has parents of special needs kids worried. From Member Station WBUR, Toni Randolph reports.