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NPR's Neal Conan has the season-ender in his Play-by-Play series: reflections on what's it's like to broadcast baseball games. Neal talks about how hard it is to muster enthusiasm for a losing team. The Aberdeen Arsenal concludes its first minor league season at home, Thomas Run Park in Bel Air, Maryland over the next four days.

NPR's Joanne Silberner watched the struggles of Tyler Handerson and his family as they waited for the restart of an experimental medical study. Tyler has a cancer that affects nerve cells and the brain. The study aims to use a new kind of "gene therapy" to cure the cancer. But the trial was one of many put on hold last year after the death of a Pennsylvania teenager.

The first American to win a gold medal in weightlifting in 40 years hardly fits the sport's image. She's a 105-pound former gymnast named Tara Nott. As NPR's reports, Nott was awarded the gold when it was stripped from a Bulgarian lifter who tested positive for a banned diuretic. In other Olympic action, Americans won twin gold medals today when they tied in swimming's mad dash, the 50 meters, breaking a run of victories by Dutchman Pieter van den Hoogenband.

French President Jaques Chirac is angrily denying charges that he was involved in unscrupulous fundraising for his party, and kickbacks to construction companies, while he was Mayor of Paris in the 1980's. The allegations come from a videotaped interview with a man who was an aide to Chirac during those years -- but has since died. Robert talks to John Henley, Correspondent for the Guardian newspaper in Paris about the story.

President Clinton has authorized the release of thirty-million barrels of oil from the nation's emergency reserves. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson made the announcement this afternoon. He denied that the move was political -- but instead said it was aimed at ensuring enough supply heading into the winter heating season. Linda talks to NPR's Pam Fessler about the news.

A British court ruled today that a pair of conjoined twins must be separated. Separating them will kill one of the twins. They only have one heart. The parents of the twins are devout Roman Catholics and oppose separating them, they may appeal to the House of Lords or the European Court of Human Rights. We hear a report from the BBC's John Duce.

NPR's Michael Sullivan reports that yesterday India announced that it would pull its contingent out of a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone. India, with the second-largest contingent of troops is pulling out at a time when the United Nations is attempting to increase the number of peacekeepers in the embattled West African nation.

Karen Schaefer from member station WCPN in Cleveland reports on the opening of a National Underground Railroad exhibit. Some two-thousand people will gather to celebrate and preserve a chapter in America's struggle for civil rights.

Kenneth Turan, film critics for the Los Angeles Times reviews Cameron Crowe's new film Almost Famous.

Joshua Levs reports from Sydney on that most Australian of delicacy: vegemite. The thick, yeast extract spread has been a long-time favorite of aussies for generations...still, many admit it's an acquired taste.