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John Ydstie talks with Wall Street Journal sportswriter Stefan Fatsis about slow sales for sports tickets and how basketball, hockey and baseball teams are trying to respond. The New York Knicks recently ended a 20-year streak of playing before sellout crowds at Madison Square Garden. Tickets for National Hockey League games barely edged up this season and several teams are having difficulty filling their arenas.

It's dark, rain is falling hard, and the roads are filled with evening traffic. You might think that using a crosswalk would be the safest way to get across the street. But a new study focusing on elderly pedestrians has come up with some unnerving findings. NPR's Joseph Shapiro reports.

Accused sniper John Lee Malvo, 17, is ordered held without bail after a hearing Friday in Fairfax County, Va. A preliminary hearing was held earlier in the day in Prince William County, Va., for 41-year-old John Allen Muhammad, the other suspect in a string of killings in the Washington, D.C. area and the Deep South. NPR's Andrea Seabrook talks with NPR's John Ydtsie.

Two papers in the journal Nature shed new light on the relationship between wildfires and the environment. Major fires in Indonesia in the late 1990s spewed large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. NPR's Christopher Joyce reports.

The City Council in Charlotte, N.C., is getting ready to vote on a deal that could bring pro basketball back to town. The Hornets left for New Orleans this summer after a deal for a new stadium fell through. Commentator Andrea Cooper says that her city is trying to improve its image through sports -- just like a lot of other smaller cities. She's been in favor of growth through pro sports for many years, but now she's beginning to wonder.

Satirists Bruce Kluger and David Slavin imagine that Hollywood is rushing to catch up to current events as the U.N. resolution on Iraq has passed today. They fashion of movie "trailer" of a film, Iraqi Two, in which Sylvester Stallone plays George W, Bush and Burgess Meredith is his father, as the younger president sets out to fight Saddam Hussein in a cinematic showdown. (2:45)

John Ydstie goes to a club called the Birchmere in Alexandria, Va., to hear the opening act, Mary Gauthier. Gauthier was an adopted child, a troubled teen, then a philosophy student, and later a restaurant owner. Now she writes and sings songs. Mary Gauthier talks about songwriting and how it relates to philosophy. (12:30) Mary Gauthier's new CD is called Filth and Fire It's on the Signature Sounds label.

The son of a military veteran convinces Hallmark to "care enough to send the very best."

Beyond the glamour of Hollywood and the romance of the Golden Gate Bridge, there is another California -- and it's home to the greatest garden in the world. The 400-mile-long Central Valley supplies fully one-quarter of the food America eats. Now the region faces huge changes. NPR's John McChesney and Richard Gonzales begin a four-part series focusing on the future of California's Central Valley.

Czech writer Arnost Lustig is considered one of the country's most prominent writers. His new novel, Lovely Green Eyes, is the story of a 15-year-old girl in Auschwitz and the compromises she makes in order to stay alive. Lustig himself survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps. His family died in the gas chambers. Lustig teaches at American University in Washington, D.C. He is also featured in the new documentary Fighter, in which he and long-time friend Jan Wiener retrace wartime memories.