The nation's shoppers -- taking advantage of deep discounts and expanded hours -- jammed stores over the last weekend before Christmas to try to grab a hard-to-find Wii or scoop up bargains on other items. But the spending surge may not be enough to offset what is shaping up to be a mediocre December for some retailers.

Based on early reports on Sunday, mall operators including Macerich Co. said they were pleased with the spending spree over the weekend, but they were still counting on Christmas Eve and post-Christmas business to meet holiday sales goals in what has turned out to be a nail biter of a season.

Meanwhile, even as shoppers continued to snap up flat-screen TVs, video game software and other gadgets, benefiting stores like Best Buy Co., the apparel business remains challenging, analysts said.

Ed Schmults, chief executive of toy merchant FAO Schwarz, which operates stores in Chicago and New York, said Sunday that pre-Christmas business is below expectations despite a sales surge this weekend.

"It's almost kind of worth waiting and shifting through the hustle and bustle," said Carly Moore, of Chicago, who was heading to Macy's on the city's State Street shopping corridor to scoop up some discounted clothing. But she was still frustrated that she couldn't find Nintendo's Wii game console, after trying at least five stores.

Valerie Glodowski of Stevens Point, Wis., who was with her boyfriend at Wisconsin's Wausau Center Mall, said she started holiday shopping two weeks ago and waited until the last weekend to finish out of sheer laziness.

"I am just winging it," she said.

Many merchants, which had struggled through a sluggish December after a strong start to the season, are counting even more on the final days before Christmas to make their holiday goals. With the three days prior to Christmas accounting for as much as 15 percent of holiday sales, there's a lot of business left on the table.

Macy's Inc. is keeping several of its stores in the New York metropolitan area, including its flagship store in Herald Square, open until 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve. About 1,000 of Sears Holdings Corp.'s 1,387 Kmart stores are open for 64 hours straight, beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday and ending at 10 p.m. on Dec. 24, for the first time since 2002.

With Christmas falling on a Tuesday, shoppers were enticed to wait even longer this season to finish their holiday shopping. A challenging economy -- higher gas prices and a housing slump -- also made some shoppers hold off until the final days before the holiday. Retailers routinely discount items deeper as Christmas draws nearer.

"The gas prices and car insurance ... is up. I would say I'm spending less and worrying more about it," said Sondra Newton, of Warren, Mich., who was at Oakland Mall in Troy, Mich., a suburb outside of Detroit on Friday. "I used to just take their (her children's) list and get the top ones on it. Now I have to think about 'what can I get at the best deal.'"

Nevertheless, Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at International Council of Shopping Centers, is sticking with his December forecast for a 1.5 percent gain in same-store sales, or sales at stores opened at least a year. That would mean same-stores sales for the November-December period would be up 2.5 percent from a year ago.

"I think when the dust settles, stores will have met expectations, though they are modest," said Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak RCT Corp., which tracks total sales at more than 50,000 retail outlets. He said he is still sticking with his 3.6 percent forecast for the November and December period, though he added, "some retailers will do OK, and others won't."

ShopperTrak is expected to release total sales for the week ended Saturday late on Monday.

Their lawyer, Mark Geragos, says he will refer the case to prosecutors for possible criminal charges against the insurer, Cigna HealthCare.

"All of the doctors there unanimously agreed that she needed and should have that liver transplant. And the only entity, if you will, who said no to that in the middle of that medical decision, was some piece of garbage who decided that making a couple of dollars, or saving them a couple of dollars, was worth more than the 65% chance over six months that she would survive," said Geragos.

"The only reason they approved it is because we had organized a protest in front of Cigna's corporate headquarters& and in the face of public pressure, they did it," he said.

By the time the approval came through Nataline had been on the liver transplant list for two weeks and her condition had deteriorated so badly that it was too late to have the procedure.

"I believe, the corporation knew, powers that be knew, that at that point approving the liver transplant was a 'gimme' because her condition deteriorated to the point where she couldn't receive the liver&she didn't have any chance of either, one, getting a liver or, number two, actually being able to receive it," he says.

Nataline, who was fighting leukemia, developed liver failure after complications from a bone marrow transplant she received from her brother last month.

Despite her already fragile health, Geragos says, "all of the doctors at the University of California Medical Center unanimously agreed that she needed and should have that liver transplant."

More than 6,000 liver transplants are performed in the United States every year, making it one of the most common organ transplants, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Front-running Democrat Hillary Clinton, a New York senator seeking to be the first female president, won an effusive welcome at a mainly black Baptist church in snowy Waterloo, Iowa, where she criticized the Bush administration for failing to expand health care coverage and alienating foreign allies.

"Do we take a leap of faith and once again bind the wounds of those who hurt, create a country that we're proud of, assume the leadership and moral authority of the world that we should or will we continue to just slowly but surely fall backwards?" she said, also touching on the upcoming Christmas holiday.

Religion plays a big role in politics in the United States, where levels of belief and church attendance are much higher than in Europe.

Other issues weighing on the minds of voters in the run-up to the November 2008 presidential election include health care, immigration, the war in Iraq and a mortgage crisis.

Clinton's main rival, Sen. Barack Obama, also toured Iowa, bolstered by a new poll showing him alongside her in New Hampshire -- another early contest in the state-by-state process to nominate both parties' candidates for president.

Republican hopeful Rudy Giuliani, a survivor of prostate cancer, returned to the campaign trail in New Hampshire after being hospitalized overnight last week with what he said was a "headache worse than I've ever had."

"I feel great now, I feel terrific. I've been tested out, everything came back 100 percent," Giuliani, a former New York mayor, said on ABC News' "This Week" program, adding his doctor would address the episode after Christmas.

"There's always the issue of cancer, so I'm going to have him put out a statement and then, you know, make everyone really comfortable that I'm OK."

Giuliani's battle with prostate cancer prompted him to drop out of the 2000 Senate race in New York against Clinton.

OBAMA SURGES, GIULIANI SLIPS

Giuliani, who plays heavily on his leadership in New York after the September 11 attacks in 2001, has led national polls of Republican voters but trails in New Hampshire and Iowa, which holds the nation's first nomination contest on January 3.

In New Hampshire's primary vote on January 8, Giuliani is fighting to keep up with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

The sale in small markets will leave News Corp. with 27 stations in major markets including New York, Boston and Los Angeles.

The media conglomerate, which owns the New York Post, a controlling stake in BSkyB satellite TV service, and 20th Century Fox movie studio, recently closed a $5.6 billion deal to buy the Wall Street Journal publisher, Dow Jones.

The sale will probably be completed in the third quarter, News Corp. said in a statement Saturday. The purchase will help Oak Hill, the buyout firm founded two years ago by Robert Bass, a Texas oil billionaire, create a broader U.S. network. In May it paid $575 million to acquire stations in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Arkansas from The New York Times Co.

"It is part of News Corp.'s strategic decision to shed low-growth, noncore assets," said Richard Dorfman, managing director of the investment firm Richard Alan.

Brenda White, 55, of Plaistow, N.H., won the $200,000 on a Massachusetts State Lottery $5 scratch ticket appropriately called "Bah Hum Bucks" during a Yankee swap party on Dec. 15 in Haverhill.

In a Yankee swap, participants have the option of either keeping a gift they choose, or swapping for a gift selected by someone who preceded them.

White swapped for the lottery ticket originally selected by Franco Sapia, 39, of Derry, N.H.

Before scratching the ticket, she promised to split any winnings with Sapia, according to a complaint Sapia filed in Essex Superior Court. She didn't, and Sapia is claiming half the jackpot in his lawsuit, saying there were several witnesses to the promise.

A judge has agreed to freeze the jackpot until the matter is resolved.

The company said it won a 1.15 billion dollar contract to build two semi-submersible floating drilling rigs by September 2010 for an unidentified Russian client.

Separately, clients in Africa and in the Americas ordered two oil drilling ships worth 1.26 billion dollars which will be delivered by May 2011, it said.

South Korea, home to seven of the world's top 10 shipyards, clinched record orders last year because of strong demand for crude carriers and offshore exploration equipment as oil prices remained high.

The trend continued in the first six months of this year, when local shipbuilders secured a record 33.2 billion dollars' worth of orders -- up 51.3 percent from a year earlier.