Yesterday it looked as if he might get his wish, after a referendum in the state looked likely to keep segregation-era wording, requiring separate schools for "white and coloured children" in its constitution as well as references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.

The settlement between the utility company Con Edison and the family of Jodie Lane came 10 months after the 30-year-old doctoral student died in the East Village after falling onto an electrified metal plate while walking her dogs.

"I passed through the stages of grief - denial, anger, pity, resignation and acceptance - in that order and pretty quickly," he said.

The US military promised an investigation into the shooting amid allegations that marines shot three other wounded insurgents execution-style.

"Art should have no boundaries," Nicole "ND" Durr, the company's founder, told Associated Press.

To write this off as the product of ignorance, poverty, underdevelopment or isolation would be both tempting and flawed. According to the US census, 40% of the residents of Cobb County have a bachelor's degree or higher, one in eight was born abroad, the poverty level is half the national average and the median family income is more than $67,000 (£36,000).

ODB, born Russell Jones, had complained of chest pains before collapsing outside his Manhattan studio and was dead by the time paramedics arrived. The cause of death was not immediately clear. Mr Jones had recently finished a prison sentence for drug possession and escaping a rehabilitation clinic but no drug paraphernalia was found at the scene. Today would have been his 36th birthday.

Half a century later, as a film into Mr Kinsey's life hit the screens on Friday, some in the field of sexual research in the US believe they are once again under threat .

In an upset brought about by local scandal, demographic evolution and personal chutzpah, Lupe Valdez, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant farm worker, became the first ever Democrat and woman to head the county's sole law enforcement office, which includes Texas' second largest city.

"He told me he was thinking about it," Steve Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic national committee, said on Monday. Mr Grossman backed Mr Dean during the former Vermont governor's failed nomination bid.

An Associated Press poll showed voters support, by a huge majority, cutting the country's enormous deficit rather than slashing taxes.

Atlanta's Cobb County school board, the second largest board in Georgia, added the sticker two years ago after a 2,300 strong petition attacked the presentation of "Darwinism unchallenged". Some parents wanted creationism - the theory that God created humans according to the Bible version - to be taught alongside evolution.

The state remained Mr Kerry's last chance to clinch the presidency on election night. President George Bush held a 130,650-vote lead in Ohio but Mr Kerry had clung to the hope that a sufficient number of uncounted provisional ballots could overturn Mr Bush's majority there.

The legal victory for the Republicans came in the early hours when federal judges ruled that the lower district courts had exaggerated the potential for intimidation.

Mr Obama, who delivered the most memorable keynote speech of the Democratic national convention in August, easily beat conservative Republican, Alan Keyes.

New England, where I started my journey, and west Texas, where I ended it five weeks later, could be in two entirely different nations. Not only had the topography, climate and architecture radically altered, but so had the people and their attitudes towards everything from religion and government to taxes and guns.

Despite a huge collapse in support compared to 2000 and little organisation on the ground, Mr Nader's meagre showing could still prove a decisive factor in a tight race.

The fact that the vote has already proved to be anything but free and fair means that Wednesday could look less like the end of Armageddon and more like the beginning of purgatory. Lawyers are accumulating in almost as great a number as the tales of voter suppression, intimidation and obstruction. In Florida's heavily Democratic Broward county, 60,000 absentee ballots have gone missing. In Georgia's Atkinson county, 78% of the registered Hispanic voters were summoned to the county courthouse on Thursday to defend their right to vote after allegations that they were not US citizens. The Board of Registrars there dismissed the complaint. "The challenges ... are legally insufficient because they are based solely on race," said the county attorney, Russ Gillis. "Those of you who are here because you were challenged, go to the polls Tuesday and vote."