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School began in most districts across the country today. Many high schools start at 7:30 AM....but in Minneapolis, high schools have, for the fourth year, begun their day later...at 8:40AM. The dramatic change is the result of years of sleep research on adolescents...which finds they naturally fall asleep later, around 11:30PM. And what's more...they need about nine and a half hours of sleep each night. So without the later start times..teens are perpetually in what researchers call "sleep debt." NPR's Michelle Trudeau reports.

Commentator Amy Dickinson tries to find out the recipe for the "secret" sauce that's powered the Methodist barbecue that's been held every summer weekend since 1949 in her hometown in upstate New York. The secret is: there is no secret after all. It's a myth.

NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that environmentalists in Russia are going to court over Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's restructuring of the country's environmental protection system. Activists fear that the new system is really a cover for a plan to open up long protected nature reserves to commercial usage, to bring in badly needed cash to the central overnment. Kelemen visited a reserve in southern Siberia where rangers are worried about their future and the protection of the reserve.

One of the issues most often mentioned by voters this election year is education. The presidential candidates Al Gore andGeorge W. Bush are responding. Both men have made schools and education reform a top priority on the campaign trail. But as NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports, what can the president of the United States really do to improve the nation's schools?

Congressional lawmakers return to Capitol Hill faced with a long list of issues as Election Day draws near. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.

Noah speaks with Craig Dremann, co-owner of the Redwood City Seed Company, about the Indian Military's claim that the world's hottest chili pepper is grown in Assam. He says it's the hottest domesticated pepper, but the hottest is a wild pepper called the Pepper Tepin, which grows in the dry desert mountains of Northern Mexico. His company sells old fashioned vegetable and herb seeds from all over the world, including Assam. For the chili seeds, he's had to developed his own testing system, which is similar to the scoville scale at the turn of the century.

NPR's Elaine Korry reports on the protest over the Labor Day weekend, in which dairy farmers around the country dumped more than two million gallons of milk to protest low prices. Dairy farmers are asking the government to raise the federal price support for raw milk because, they say, they're losing money, despite relatively high retail prices.

President Clinton is among 150 heads of state gathered in New York City for the UN Millennium Summit. It's the largest gathering of world leaders in history. NPR's Ann Garrels reports.

Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr wonders why George W. Bush is hesitant to engage Al Gore in presidential debates.

Jon Miller reports from Lima that the government of Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has engaged in talks with the political opposition on democratic reforms. The two sides are considering ways to restructure institutions throughout the government, from the military and intelligence services to the judiciary. Fujimori agreed to the talks under intense international criticism of the country's last election, which returned him to office for a third term. His immediate obstacle is convincing opponents that with his record, he can become a champion of democracy.