It's Monday and we are asking our guests to peer into their crystal balls and foresee this week's agenda. This week Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner, and New York Times' International Business Editor Marcus Mabry, look at President Obama in Latin America, the fallout of the CIA torture memos, bank earnings, and the legacy of the school shooting at Columbine High School.

Last week, President Obama announced an ambitious goal to build a high-speed passenger rail line in ten regions across the country. But even if President Obama’s plans for passenger rail materialize, it won’t necessarily help the entire rail system. America's freight, the cargo that moves goods across the country by rail, is in big trouble. To look at the state of the rails, The Takeaway talks with Rick Karr, a correspondent for Blueprint America. His report on the nation’s ailing freight-rail system will air on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer tonight.

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School. On April 20, 1999, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on their classmates, killing a teacher and 12 students, and wounding 24 others before turning the guns on themselves. This month also marks the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, where 32 people were fatally shot by a mentally unstable student in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Commemorating these attacks against the backdrop of another shooting at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York, begs the question: “How bad does it have to get before we take serious steps toward gun control?” Joining us to try to answer this question is Jeff Fagan. Jeff Fagan is a professor of Law and Public Health at Columbia Law School

Today in New Orleans a trial gets underway that could ultimately determine what kind of damages thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina can demand from the government. Five residents and one business are suing the Army Corps of Engineers because, they say, the Corps did not properly maintain a shipping channel and that act intensified the storm surge, causing the devastation of neighborhoods including St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. Saiward Pharr is a radio host in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and is reporting on the case. She'll join The Takeaway with a preview.

The fallout from the release of the so-called torture memos that document the CIA's interrogation techniques against purported terrorists continues. Now more details of the potentially illegal torture are becoming clear. In 2007, a former CIA officer told new organizations that an al Qaida operative, Abu Zubayadah, had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew. Now new analysis of the so-called torture memos shows that Zubaydah was actually waterboarded at least 83 times. The same simulated drowning technique was used almost 200 times against Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-described planner of the September 11 attacks. New York Times reporter Scott Shane has been following this story for the paper and he joins The Takeaway with the disturbing tale.

For more, read Scott Shane's article, Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects in today's New York Times.

Historian and author Philipp Blom’s latest endeavor makes the case that the period between 1900 to 1914 in Europe was, as the title of his new book calls it, The Vertigo Years. Those tumultuous times at the start of the last century were an era that was marked by revolution and war, but was also a time where cultural and technological changes happened at an accelerated pace. Blom joins The Takeaway from Vienna, Austria for a look at how the dizzying turn of the 20th century compares to these vertiginous times.

Desperate to not be deadbeats, hundreds of thousands of consumers are turning to debt settlement agencies to escape crushing piles of bills. Everyone has seen the ads: you call, they help, and eventually you are a debt free. But a report in today's New York Times says many consumers have begun to complain that those companies collect large fees and don't do much to help. Unfortunately, it seems the typical experience according to consumers is that a settlement company collects a large fee, often 15 percent of the total debt, and accomplishes little or nothing on the consumer’s behalf. Needless to say, state attorneys general are being flooded with complaints about settlement companies. The Takeaway talks with New York Times business reporter David Streitfeld for more on the story.

For more, read David Streitfeld's article, Debt Settlers Offer Promises but Little Help

Ads like this one from In Charge Debt Solutions offer consumers hope that they can help resolve disputes with debt colletors:

Last week, hundreds of women marched in the streets of Afghanistan to condemn a new law that critics say legalizes marital rape. Outrage from both Afghan women and the international community over the passing of this law has been well-documented and President Karzai is reconsidering signing the law. But what does this indicate about the push to democratize Afghanistan? Are we seeing growing signs that some Afghan women have finally had enough of restrictive laws? The Takeaway talks to Gretchen Peters, former Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent for ABC news and author of the forthcoming book, Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Our partners at the New York Times have footage of the protests in Kabul:

The Department of Homeland Security last week warned in an internal memo that the disastrous economy may spur some Americans to join right-wing extremist groups. The memo focused particularly on U.S. servicemen and women and drew outrage from some who say it paints returning vets with an ugly brush. Janet Napolitano, the head of DHS, has been apologizing ever since. But does the report hold any water? The Takeaway talks to Charles Blow, an op-ed writer for our partners, The New York Times. He's been taking his own look at the link between the economy, extremism, and servicemen.

For more, read Charles Blow's article, The Enemies Within, in the New York Times.

Jailed Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi has been sentenced to eight years in prison for alleged espionage. President Obama has called for her release, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has urged the country’s chief prosecutor to fairly examine the case. But Robin Wright, Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the author of Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, says Saberi may be caught in the crossfire during a period of extraordinary tensions within Iran and between Iran and the US.

For more on this case, watch the video below from the Associated Press.

Washington has confirmed it will boycott a United Nations forum on racism in Geneva because of differences over Israel and the likening of Zionism to racism. The boycott was prompted by concerns that the conference would be a flashback to the initial world summit meeting against racism in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, which critics said served as a platform to bash Israel. Those fears were confirmed when Iran's President just called Israel a 'racist government' at the start of the meeting, prompting Western delegates to walk out. For more we turn to the New York Times' Isabel Kershner, who is in Jerusalem and watching this conference closely.

For more, read Isabel Kershner's article, As U.N. Racism Conference Opens, Israel Recalls Envoy, in today's New York Times.