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January first marks the day when a number of new laws go nto effect around the nation. From tougher sentencing laws to far-reaching imitations on cigarette smoking, Adam Hochberg (HOCK-berg) reviews the stock of ew rules, some obviously significant, while others tease the line between eriousness and the absurd.

Ann Kimsey reports on a New Year's Eve tradition in the deep outh: fireball throwing.

Puzzlemaster Will Shortz provides the answer to his two-week listener hallenge, and gives a year-end names-in-the-news quiz. 7:58 This week's on-air player lives in Alexandria, Virginia and listens to WDCU, ashington,

Letters: We hear a few comments and letters from our listeners

A year ago today, Zapatista rebels began their uprising in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Since then, there has been an assisination, the economy nosedived and peso was dramatically devalued. Daniel talks to NPR's David Welna in Mexico City about one of the worst years in the country's history.

This is the first of four reports featured this half hour about what changes the country expects from the new Republican congress to be sworn in this week. In Boston, Anthony Brooks of member station WBUR examines the promises the new congress has made to reform welfare and what it may mean to people who now depend upon it.

A year end review of many of the voices in the news from 994.

In the first of a two part conversation, Liane Hansen talks ith jazz pianist and composer Keith Jarrett. In a rare interview at the usicians' home in rural southern New Jersey, Jarrett talks about his latest ive jazz trio album, "AT THE DEER HEAD INN" (ECM 1531).

Daniel talks with author Jayne Anne Phillips about her latest novel "Shelter," which takes place at a summer camp in West Virginia. Phillips writes vividly and poetically about the experiences of adolescent girls at the camp ... a place of seeming innocence but one in which passion, danger and perversity all emerge to change their young lives forever.

During the mid-term elections there was a great outcry for less government in people's lives. NPR's John Burnett talks to small business owners in Texas, who hope the new Republican-majority Congress will mean less red tape.