After four months of poring over 19 volumes of classified material used by the White House to justify its case for war, senior members of the committee concluded that there were "significant deficiencies" in the community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq. They said it had to rely on past assessments, dating to when UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, and on "some new 'piecemeal' intelligence", both of which "were not challenged as a routine matter".

There is the Manhattan most people know and the one that actually exists. The one they know stops at 96th Street, parallel to the tip of the Jackie Onassis reservoir in Central Park. The one that exists extends north through Spanish and black Harlem, and then on into Washington Heights, where the traffic and the wallets are thinner.

Plimpton, a best-selling author who wrote about sports from a participant's point of view and edited the Paris Review literary journal, died in his sleep at his New York apartment on Thursday night, according to his lawyer, James Goodale.

He said he would confront President Putin about Russia's determination to push ahead with the $800m (£500m) deal to build a nuclear power reactor in Iran.

In a speech delivered shortly before George Bush addressed the UN general assembly on Tuesday, Mr Annan declared that the Iraq crisis brought the UN to a "fork in the road" as decisive as 1945 when the world body was formally established.

In a separate incident in Baghdad, at least one Iraqi civilian died and 18 others were injured in the blast from a roadside bomb aimed at a passing US military patrol.

Showing no contrition for defying the world body in March or the declining security situation in Iraq, the US president called for the world to set aside past differences and help rebuild the country: "Now the nation of Iraq needs and deserves our aid - and all nations of goodwill should step forward and provide that support," he said.

On the face of it their positions seem to have hardened. "In an open world, no one can isolate themselves, no one can act alone in the name of all, and no one can accept the anarchy of a society without rules," said the French president, Jacques Chirac, in one of his most explicit attacks to date. "There is no alternative to the United Nations."

In a speech to be delivered shortly before George Bush addresses the UN general assembly, Mr Annan will declare that the Iraq crisis brought the UN to a "fork in the road" as decisive as 1945 when the world body was formally established.

It's not difficult to see why American generals have made reluctant electoral warriors in recent times. They are more used to giving than taking orders and to direct lines of command rather than the unruly insubordination that is public opinion. Dwight Eisenhower, the one exception of the last century, won the New Hampshire primary for the Republican nomination before he had even formally entered the race, and went on to a two-term presidency.

Hurricane Isabel pummelled America's eastern seaboard yesterday, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of people, causing flooding, uprooting trees, threatening tornadoes and paralysing government in Washington as it headed north.

In Surf City residents woke to clear blue skies, the banging of plywood against beach house windows, and the latest radar from the Weather Channel telling them that Isabel was moving north-northwest at a fairly steady nine miles an hour - and heading straight for them.

The east coast of the United States was bracing itself last night for one of the fiercest hurricanes for decades as 105mph winds made their way up the Atlantic, bringing large sea swells towards North Carolina.

Parents dropping their children off at one of America's finest universities were stuck in traffic for close to an hour.

With the economy haemorrhaging jobs and little sign of victory in Iraq, the CNN/USA Today poll gave Mr Bush an overall approval rating of 52%, compared with 55% in an ABC/Washington Post poll taken between September 6 and 9 2001.

After several delays, due to French threats of a veto unless Libya increased compensation for a separate airliner bombing, the deal was agreed with 13 votes in favour, none against, and two abstentions from France and the US.

At ground zero 200 children and young adults, each of whom had lost a relative in the attacks, read out the names of 2,792 people who died two years ago. At the Pentagon the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, presided over a ceremony, while church bells rang out across Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania, the site closest to the crash of hijacked flight UA93.

In myriad subtle ways the daily lives of the residents of Muncie, Indiana, have changed a lot since September 11 2001. This 70,000-strong town of many churches and increasingly little industry gained fame in the 20s as the subject of academic survey of the American heartlands called Middletown. Since then sociologists and pollsters have returned periodically to gauge the mood of Middle America. Geographically, it's slightly more than 600 miles from the recently renovated storefronts of its main street to the hollowed pit of Manhattan's ground zero. Culturally, it is like a different country.

A 12-year-old girl in New York, a professor at Yale University and an elderly man in Texas who rarely uses his computer have been included in the first wave of civil actions against people accused of illegally sharing songs on the internet.

Intense last-minute talks in closed session looked set to give French families until the weekend to conclude protracted negotiations with the Libyan government over increased payments for the victims in the 1989 bombing of a UTA airliner which exploded over sub-Saharan Africa.

A 12-year-old girl in New York, a professor at Yale University and an elderly man in Texas who rarely uses his computer have been included in the first civil actions against people accused of illegally sharing songs on the internet.

Before she left the island she was given orientation classes to prepare her for life in Britain. They told her to wear flannelette pyjamas and a woollen hat. They said nothing about people shouting abuse at you in the street.

The draft resolution calls for a security council mandate for a multinational military force, under a unified command and with American commanders ultimately in charge.

Paul Hill, 49, a former Presbyterian minister, was the first person in the US to be executed for anti-abortion violence, as clinics braced themselves for a violent backlash.

Paul Hill is due to be executed by lethal injection for shooting dead the doctor, John Britton, and his driver, James Barrett, outside a clinic in Pensacola, Florida, in 1994. Hill, 49, has since become a hero of anti-abortion extremists.

In October, mayor Michael Bloomberg boycotted the Italian-American Columbus Day parade after organisers barred two of his guests - Lorraine Bracco and Dominic Chianese, otherwise known as Dr Melfi and Uncle Junior of The Sopranos. The organisers had banned all Sopranos actors for casting Italian-Americans in a negative light. More serious has been the ongoing dispute over the exclusion of lesbians and gays from the St Patrick's Day parade. Despite protests, Bloomberg attended the segregated parade in March.

With the December 22 deadline for applications fast approaching, only 1,240 death claims have been filed - a far cry from the 3,016 people known to have died in the attacks on the World Trade centre and the Pentagon, and in the Pennsylvania crash.

The resistance to relying on DNA evidence is being replicated in other states where prosecutors believe scientific data is being relied upon to the exclusion of other evidence and letting the guilty walk free.

Four Taliban insurgents were killed and an American soldier injured as a US combat patrol came under fire, a US military official said.