Bookshops have ordered more than 2m copies of Glorious Appearing - more than Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoir sold in its first six months - which has shot to No 4 in the Amazon internet book rankings the day before its release.

The challenge, which has been brought by a single father, has infuriated the whole of the United States Senate, President George Bush and the district court for eastern California.

When the radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh stayed in the Lincoln Room in 1992, the president of the time, George Bush, personally carried his bags into the White House. When Republicans won the House of Representatives for only the second time in 50 years in 1994, Limbaugh was made an honorary member of Congress.

"The two leaders said they both looked forward to working together, particularly on our shared commitment to fighting terrorism," the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said.

Scores of police and soldiers were sent to meet him when he landed in Jamaica yesterday after two weeks of exile in the Central African Republic. Mr Aristide insists he was "abducted" by the US and forced to leave Haiti. The US denies the accusation.

It is the latest development in a nationwide effort to place every aspect of hip-hop culture under state surveillance.

A novice of the Fellow Craft Club - an elite within the lodge - would sit while an older member fired a handgun loaded with blanks at him from 20 ft away, while another beat a rubbish bin like a drum. On Monday night something went horribly wrong.

Those who don't make it into the post office, it seems, get passed on to the Department of Motor Vehicles. And Manhattan is where they train them.

The tottering, and now toppled authority of the former Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has been well chronicled over the past month. The story of the psychological effect his departure had on the Haitian people has been less comprehensively observed. There is good reason for this. Despite the overthrow of the president and the outpouring of rebel supporters in the streets, the Haitian people are pretty much where they have been for the past 200 years - in a desperately impoverished country where political violence is sustained, if not encouraged, by foreign intervention and crushes any hope of reconciliation, democracy and economic prosperity.

As I raise my eyebrows, Blair senses a race to the punchline. "I'm not going to tell my bad joke," he says but, with the minimum of encouragement, he does: "Maybe my first fiction book could be a compilation of my last few New York Times stories."

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled on Sunday. Many did not emerge from their homes until Thursday, borrowing rice and maize from neighbours to keep going as gunfire exploded all around them.

"It looks like nothing's changed," he said.

"Mr President, with all due respect, the plane is 20 minutes away, I really need the letter," Mr Moreno said, meaning Mr Aristide's letter of resignation. Mr Aristide then pulled an envelope from his wife's purse, as she sat stonily by his side.

The family fear he was caught in the crossfire - one of the scores who died on Sunday when armed gangs supporting Mr Aristide were rapidly replaced by another group of armed gangs opposing him. Bystanders never stood a chance.

About 150 US marines arrived on Sunday night and remained at the airport awaiting orders to deploy into the city, with a further 200 expected later yesterday.

"It costs 300 Haitian dollars [£21]," said a resident, Jocelyn, as she spread disinfectant outside Christ the King secretarial college on Saturday morning, where a body had lain for two days. "I don't know who it is because they took all his money and papers."

A force of US marines was scheduled to arrive last night, with a French contingent of between 120 and 140 troops due to join them this morning.