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has good news for retailers. It says shoppers will be spending 20-percent MORE on holiday gifts this year. The retail industry relies heavily on holiday purchases...for some it totals half their annual sales.

, just three months after an armed insurrection broke out. Authorities were relieved that voting was peaceful. It's the first significant election in Mexico since major electoral reform went into effect.

Nationally, House Speaker Newt Gingrich is something of a whipping post for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. But at home, his opponent, a cookie magnate, is resisting tough talk about Gingrich. NPR's David Molpus reports.

NPR's Ted Clark reports that in Sunday's presidential debate Robert Dole tripped up on the facts in criticizing President Clinton's handling of foreign policy. Dole's biggest error was in accusing Clinton of being the US president who had sent the most troops abroad in history, a fact which he should have known was wrong from his own service overseas in World War II. But Clinton too stretched the truth some, taking credit for foreign policy successes in Europe that more rightly belonged to his predecessor, President Bush.

Noah talks with four different youngsters -- ardent baseball fans all of them -- who are rooting for their home teams in the National and American League playoffs. We'll hear from kids in St. Louis, Atlanta, New York, and Baltimore about why they think their team is going to make it to the World Series.

Senior news analyst Daniel Schorr says that the lack of excitement in Sunday night's debate may have dissapointed some, but he applauds the return to civility--which may even bring the presidential campaign closer to discussing concrete issues.

Banning Eyre reviews "Sarala: Hank Jones Meets Cheick-Tidiane Seck and the Mandikas". Eyre, who has lived and studied music in Mali, finds that American jazz pianist Hank Jones, now 79 years old, uses his well-honed jazz sensibilities to mesh perfectly into the traditional music of that west African country.

Linda talks with NPR's legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg about the right to die, and other issues and cases before the Supreme Court in this year's session, which began today.

With the renewed focus on the violent lyrics of gangsta rap after the death of Tupac Shakur, a group of Minneapolis rappers -- who call their collective Head Shots -- say they want to take rap back to its roots...and away from the corporate music industry they say has corrupted it. Chris Roberts reports.

The campaign reform group Common Cause today asked for an independent counsel to investigate what it called "an illegal scheme" on the part of both the Republican and Democratic parties to circumvent campaign finance laws by buying television ads that presidential candidates Bob Dole and President Clinton should have paid for, because the ads weren't for party-building, but were meant to support the candidates. NPR's Peter Overby reports.