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to retailers seeking to have the right mix of toys at the right prices. The holiday season can account for about 40 percent of a toy seller's annual profit.
• Last year, U.S. retail sales of toys fell 2 percent to $21.18 billion, according to research firm NPD Group.
• This year, Toys R Us, is introducing a "hot toy" reservation program. Starting Wednesday, the Wayne, N.J.-based retailer will let customers reserve the 50 toys on its list. The reservation system will run through the end of October. Toys must be reserved in stores and customers have to put down 20 percent of the toys' cost.
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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans are feeling markedly better about the country's future and about Barack Obama's job performance, but the president's re-election race against Republican Mitt Romney remains a neck-and-neck proposition as Election Day creeps ever closer, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
• Buoyed by good mojo coming out of last month's national political conventions, Obama's approval rating is back above 50 percent for the first time since May, and the share of Americans who think the country is moving in the right direction is at its highest level since just after the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
• Romney, his campaign knocked off-stride in recent weeks, has lost his pre-convention edge on the top issue of the campaign -- the economy.

• The poll results vividly underscore the importance that turnout will play in determining the victor in Campaign 2012: Among all adults, Obama has a commanding lead, favored by 52 percent of Americans to just 37 percent for Romney. Yet among those most likely to vote, the race is drum tight.
• Obama is supported by 47 percent of likely voters and Romney by 46 percent, promising an all-out fight to the finish by the two campaigns to gin up enthusiasm among core supporters and dominate get-out-the-vote operations. That's an area where Obama claimed a strong advantage in 2008 and Republicans reigned four years earlier.
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• TOKYO (AP) -- One is a former prime minister known for his nationalistic views. A second is a hawkish former defense chief. And a third is the son of Tokyo's out

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