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NPR's John Ydstie reports on Vice President Al Gore's economic plan. Gore and his rival, Texas Governor George W. Bush, both say they will work to pay off the national debt. And they both say they'll use half of the budge surplus for social security, but when it comes to their tax cuts, they both over-simplify.

Anita Bugg reports that Masatoshi Ono, Chairman and CEO of Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., announced his retirement Tuesday in Nashville, effective immediately. Company officials named John Lampe, an executive vice president, as Ono's successor at the embattled company, which recalled six-and-a-half-million tires in August. The company faces scores of lawsuits in connection with fatal accidents blamed on faulty Firestone tires.

For a handful of American universities, training emergency "first responders" is becoming a business. With each new terror threat, increased funding arrives from Washington for programs that train emergency personnel. NPR's Greg Allen reports.

NPR's Cheryl Corley reports that decades after a federal judge ordered it, new houses are about to built for black residents who lost their homes in an ethnic enclave next to Detroit. The few African-Americans in Hamtramck, Mich., in the 1960s successfully claimed in court that urban renewal targeted their homes for destruction and withheld relocation help.

For the third straight day, California officials issued a power emergency that allows electricity to be cut to industrial customers. As Scott Horsley reports, electricity remains in short supply in California, even though the peak summer season is long past. So dire is the shortage that Governor Gray Davis switched off the lights on the state's official Christmas tree a few minutes after the official lighting ceremony.

NPR's Jerry Hadden reports from Santiago, Chile, on the case of two American journalists killed during Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup. The widow of one has been seeking answers in her husband's case for nearly 30 years. Now, with Pinochet's hold on the Chilean court system loosening, she finally has hope.

NPR's Debbie Elliott reports from Tallahassee that Florida's state legislature has been called into special session to consider appointing a slate of presidential electors. The legislature is controlled by Republicans who appear to favor appointing electors for Governor George W. Bush. Democratic legislators are speaking out against the special session, saying it is not appropriate for the legislature to appoint electors while court-ordered recounts are under way.

NPR's Jackie Northam reports on the Immigration and Naturalization Service proposal to consider domestic abuse a legal basis for seeking asylum in the US. If the rules take effect after the comment period, battered women will be considered members of a "social group" being persecuted. Women trying to leave their home countries, as well as women in the US seeking to stay permanently, will be eligible. Critics of the rule say it could trigger thousands of asylum claims.

NPR's Howard Berkes reports on tough talk from a White House anti-doping task force about the dangerous role doping plays in American athletics. Drug Czar Barry McCaffery wants a cleaner Olympics when Salt Lake City hosts the winter games in two years. But international critics doubt how committed officials are to sacrificing player performance to sobriety.

NPR's Tom Gjelten reports that the electoral predicament in which United States finds itself today, while unprecedented in the U.S., is familiar in many other nations around the world. Other governments have found ways of dealing with this sort of split electoral results, often with U.S. counsel and assistance. There are election lessons that even Americans could learn.