In a ruling that ended five years of legal wrangling the judge, Ronald Lew, ordered toymaker Mattel to pay $1.8m (£1m) in legal costs after he threw out a copyright infringement suit filed by the company against a photographer who posed Barbie dolls naked in suggestive positions in or around household appliances.

Keith Maupin of Batavia, Ohio, was captured in April during an ambush on a convoy west of Baghdad. The Arab satellite station aired a video showing a blindfolded man sitting on the ground but did not show the killing.

On these strips of Americana, which serve as both pit stops for the long-distance traveller and shopping centres for local people, you could be anywhere in the country. Only the weather suggests that you are in Akron rather than Anchorage or Arizona.

"Kill dem battybwoys haffi dead, gun shots pon dem ... who want to see dem dead put up his hand" (Kill them, the queers have to die, gun shots in their head ... put up your hand if you want to see them dead.)

Hope Clarke, 32, was camping at Yellowstone last year when she failed to pack away a bag of marshmallows and was fined for "improper food storage at a national park" under a law to stop people enticing animals with food.

On Monday night they waited to snatch the first autographed copies of the memoirs of the former Democratic president Bill Clinton.

The article was written by Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who exposed the abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib. It is sourced primarily to unnamed former and current intelligence officials in Israel, the United States and Turkey.

More than 2,000 delegates from 25 cities arrived for the four-day conference in Newark, New Jersey, wearing everything from smart bow ties to the low-slung baggy trousers - the style convicts wear because they are not allowed to wear belts in prison.

These are the moments baseball fans dream of: a chance to to take home a ball. What happened next turned Nick into a national hero. And another spectator, Matt Starr, became a pariah.

Now, plans by an American company to salvage them and keep half the precious metals they carried have prompted accusations of modern-day piracy by critics in Jamaica who blame the government for selling off their national heritage.

However, her attempt to cut queues outside women's loos through the restroom equality bill is meeting resistance.

On November 3 1979 five Communist Worker party members were killed and 10 other people wounded at a demonstration against the Ku Klux Klan in Greensboro. Four television stations caught Klan and American Nazi party members removing guns from the boots of their cars but two trials, with all-white juries, ended in acquittals.

The N-word should not be spoken in polite liberal company. Once his name has been uttered all camaraderie and bonhomie evaporate as readily as if the miscreant had confessed to relieving himself in the host's sink. There is a ready-made vocabulary Democrats use to describe how they feel about George Bush. When it comes to Nader, and by association those who voted for him, words fail them.

The poll, which shows that views on the Iraq war represent a divide between Republicans and Democrats, reveals that 53% of voters say that the situation in Iraq did not merit the war, while 43% say it did. When the question was asked by the same pollsters in November and March the figures were reversed.

What began as a personal tragedy for Mr Kurtz has turned into what many believe is, at best, an overreaction prompted by 9/11 paranoia and, at worst, a politically motivated attempt to silence a radical artist.

US officials said investigators were assessing the credibility of the alleged plot against Crown Prince Abdullah described by an American Muslim and a Libyan intelligence officer.

But while Mr Kerry has extended his lead nationally, a regional poll conducted simultaneously shows that the electoral battleground remains evenly divided in the key swing states, which he must win if he is to become president in November.

But the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has vowed to make sure that those who do want to get their head down are not prevented by barking dogs, blaring traffic and pounding music.

The letter was posted on Friday, a day before Ronald Reagan died from the disease, and made public yesterday. Signed by 58 of the 100 senators, it told Mr Bush his policy provided "difficult challenges" to those seeking a cure for Alzheimer's.

But in an elaborate scam, Mr Roberts, who lives in upstate New York, created an entire lineage of a fake Native American clan spanning eight generations.

They are using every possible legal means to deny voters the chance of voting for Mr Nader, including advising Democrats not to sign his petitions to get on the ballot, challenging the signatures he does get, and showing ads attacking his candidacy.