This one: the Department of Agriculture reports that in almost four million families last year, someone went hungry because the family couldn't afford to buy food…That's a 22 percent increase from 1999.

BRANCACCIO: Here's another one: THE GUARDIAN of London sent a reporter to Ohio to check up on middle America. He reports that Ohio's 11 million households made over two million visits to food charities last year. That's up 18 percent from the year before. Ohio has lost one out of every six factory jobs.

MOYERS: Kentucky changed governors this week and that's not all. The Louisville COURIER-JOURNAL reports that Kentucky is starting to charge twenty to thirty dollars a month for kids enrolled in state health care plans for families of the working poor. A spokesman for the state calls it, quote, "a way to educate families about the value of health care and the cost of health care."

BRANCACCIO: Curling up with a General Accounting Office report may not be your idea of romance on a cozy November night, but here it is: The GAO says overly clever corporate tax shelters SAVED businesses 85 billion dollars last year. Let me rewind and say that again: Abusive corporate tax shelters are COSTING the government 85 billion. But what could the government possibly do with an extra 85 billion?

MOYERS: If you have some time on your hands, Uncle Sam is looking for a few good men and women to sit on draft boards. You may be surprised to realize that draft boards still exist because the draft was abolished in 1973. But the government is trying to fill the vacant seats on existing boards through a Web site urging people to "Serve Your Community and the Nation." What's going on, you may ask? Well, according to the online magazine SALON, some experts are suggesting that the number of military personnel needed for an extended occupation of Iraq might outstrip the supply of volunteers.

BRANCACCIO: Promotions in the news: the man who stage-managed the Bush administration's media campaign against Saddam last spring will be doing the same thing against the Democrats next year.

Jim Wilkinson was responsible for the impressive communications center the U.S. military built for its media briefings in Qatar. Now the Texan is embedded in midtown Manhattan, where he'll be running communications for next summer's Republican National Convention over here at Madison Square Garden.

MOYERS: There's a new twist in the outsourcing story we reported on last summer.

The accelerating trend in American business to send computer and clerical jobs overseas just hit a speed bump. The SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE has a story that The University of California Medical Center was held hostage last month by a data entry worker in Pakistan. It seems she hadn't been paid by a Texas subcontractor who was working for the Florida outfit brought in by the California company originally hired to handle the medical center's records.

She threatened to post patients' confidential files on the Internet unless she got her money. She finally did. But, says a hospital spokesman, "We'll have to live with this risk on a daily basis." Outsourcing, you might say, to the fourth power.

BRANCACCIO: And remember the other day when the Justice Department went around raiding Wal-Marts, looking for illegal immigrants? You might have thought that would be a black eye for the biggest employer in the country. Well, don't presume. Wal-Mart's stock went up three-quarters of a percent that day. The mystery of why that happened has now been solved by the TEXARKANA GAZETTE. The Texas paper quoted business observers suggesting that the FBI raids gave Wal-Mart a bounce by reminding the public that the Christmas shopping season is about to get into full swing.

MOYERS: Words escape us. But not the links to the original stories. Connect to NOW's revamped Web site for the full bibliography. That's it for NOW. David and I will be back next week. I'm Bill Moyers.