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dia trackers confirmed the Republican's campaign was expanding its television advertising into Minnesota.
• The economy was to play prominently in the presidential contest Friday.
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East Coast preps for pre-Halloween 'Frankenstorm': high wind, flooding, $1B potential damage
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The pre-Halloween hybrid weather monster that federal forecasters call "Frankenstorm" is looking more ominous by the hour for the East Coast, and utilities and local governments are getting ready.
• Meteorologists expect a natural horror show of high wind, heavy rain, extreme tides and maybe snow to the west beginning early Sunday, peaking with the arrival of Hurricane Sandy on Tuesday and lingering past Halloween on Wednesday.
• With a rare mix of three big merging weather systems over a densely populated region, experts predict at least $1 billion in damage.
• The stage is set as Hurricane Sandy, having blown through Haiti and Cuba, continues to barrel north. A wintry storm is chugging across the country from the west. And frigid air is streaming south from Canada.
• And if they meet Tuesday morning around New York or New Jersey, as forecasters predict, they could create a big, wet mess that settles over the nation's most heavily populated corridor and reaches as far west as Ohio.
• ___
Economists think US remains stuck in sluggish recovery, unable to generate robust job growth
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government's snapshot Friday of the U.S. economy's growth will be its last before Americans choose a president in 11 days.
• It probably won't sway many undecided voters.
• The first of three estimates of growth for the July-September quarter will likely sketch a picture that's been familiar all year: The economy is growing at a tepid rate, slowed by high unemployment, corporate anxiety over an unresolved budget crisis and a global economic slowdown.
• Economists' consensus forecast is that the government will estimate that the economy grew at an annual rate of 1.8 percent last quarter. That would exceed the 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter. But it would be too slight to signal robust job creation, which is what the economy needs most.
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