CIA analysts forced 30 flights to be cancelled and raised the US terror alert from yellow to orange because they thought that al-Qaida was sending hidden messages through the headlines of the Arabic television news channel al-Jazeera, it has been revealed

Giving gruesome details in a chilling, detached manner, Dennis Rader, 60, explained to a Kansas court how he would "troll" for his "projects" during his time off as a dog-catcher. Dressed in "hit clothes", he carried a "hit kit" which included ropes and other items. "I had project numbers," he said. "If one didn't work, I'd move on to another."

In Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, he describes the conditions that are necessary to transform Hush Puppies from the old school to new cool. "The world of the tipping point is a place where the unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more than a possibility," he argues. "It is - contrary to all our expectations - a certainty."

Killen, 80, showed no emotion as he was wheeled out of the courtroom in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in a yellow prison jumpsuit to spend the rest of his life behind bars after the judge delivered the maximum sentence. Before announcing his decision, Judge Marcus Gordon said: "You have to remember that I have a job to do, and I have to pass upon a sentence to a person who is 80 years old, a person who has suffered a serious injury."

When Billy Graham came to preach in New York in 1957 his trip was regarded as ambitious, verging on foolhardy.

For Buford Posey, a white man raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Second World War had a civilizing influence. “When I was coming up in Mississippi I never knew it was against the law to kill a black man,” he says. “I learned that when I went in the Army. I was 17 years old. When they told me, I thought they were joking.”

At stake was not just how Killen would spend his fading years, but whether Mississippi - a state Martin Luther King described as "sweltering in injustice" in his "I have a dream" speech - could, and should, address its segregationist past.

For the first few days it worked well with sweets changing hands in return for timely toilet visits. On the third or fourth day Levitt, 38, took Amanda to the toilet. She passed just a dribble and took the sweets. A few minutes later she was back on the toilet, passing yet another dribble and putting her hand out for yet more sweets. She'd rumbled the system. Levitt smiles.

"Someone asked me if I was sad today," said Simeon Wright, a cousin of Emmett's late mother as he waited at the grave site. "I was sad in 1955. My heart was broken then. But now I'm not sad. We are almost at the end of it."

Studies suggest BiDil, a drug designed to remedy heart failure, has a strong success rate among African-Americans - although critics argue such claims have not been proven by the maker, NitroMed.

The defendant, 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen, looked straight ahead and said nothing as he was taken by wheelchair into the red-brick courthouse in the main square of Philadelphia, Mississippi, where jury selection started yesterday morning.

The first official pictures since his court appearance last July were mute but a tribunal statement said he was being questioned about a 1982 massacre at a Shia village north of Baghdad, one of the cases expected to arise at his trial.

A former oil industry lobbyist has resigned as a White House aide after being accused of doctoring official US policy papers on global warming to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

As the trial of 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen begins today, the US will have to decide which pill it wants to swallow. Killen is charged with murdering three young civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - more than 40 years ago in the small town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. He will be tried by his peers but judged by history. He will be one of a slew of ageing white men that has been paraded down history's perp walk of shame - complete with orange jumpsuits and handcuffs - in recent times. Since 1989, 23 murders have been re-examined in the south resulting in 27 arrests, 21 convictions, two acquittals and one mistrial, according to Mark Potok of the Intelligence Project, a branch of the Southern Poverty Law Centre based in Montgomery, Alabama.

Of those 39 people, few had any connection to al-Qaida while the remaining 90% were acquitted or convicted of lesser crimes such as immigration violations or making false statements, the study shows.

As the sun set on the last century Mr Posey's assumption about the value of black life held true in his home town. And when Edgar Ray Killen goes on trial on Monday for the murder of three young civil rights activists more than 40 years ago, history will catch up with Philadelphia.

Graydon Carter was on his way back from honeymoon last Tuesday when his magazine revealed the identity of the most famous anonymous source in the world. The way the Vanity Fair editor tells it, the fact that he was sitting on the media scoop of the century, the identity of Deep Throat, had temporarily slipped his mind.

"Someone asked me if I was sad today," said Simeon Wright, a cousin of Emmett's late mother as he waited at the grave site on Wednesday. "I was sad in 1955. My heart was broken then. But now I'm not sad. We are almost at the end of it."

The first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong, is threatening to sue his barber for selling his hair to a collector for $3,000.

The French said non, the Dutch said nee, and despite eighteen other official languages to choose from the Eurocrats were rendered temporarily speechless. The rejection of the European Constitution in late May and early June referendums in France and the Netherlands was the most predictable shock in the history of European integration.