In a week that saw Bush withdraw his supreme court nominee, Harriet Miers, and that followed a week in which Tom DeLay, the Republican house leader, was arrested for money laundering and conspiracy, liberals were gorging themselves on a festival of alleged corruption, criminality and incompetence prepared and served by conservatives.

Ms Parks, who died on Monday, aged 92, will be only the second African American to receive this distinction, allowing visitors to the capital to file past her casket tomorrow as they did for Ronald Reagan's last year.

America's art museums are poised to put up for auction huge amounts of artwork by some of the world's most revered painters next week, prompting accusations from critics that they are neglecting their role as cultural custodians in search of short-term financial gains.

Two gave up their places so a white man could sit down.

"I understand their emotions," Mr Bloomberg said of families who had successfully petitioned against the proposed International Freedom Centre at the site. "But that scared away some of the donors ... and certainly changed what you can do on the site."

The New York Times continued to implode under the weight of internal criticism yesterday as the public clamour for one its most prominent reporters, Judith Miller, to be removed from her job gained pace.

The body was flown to a laboratory in California still packed in ice. It was found by climbers last weekend. As the body thaws forensic pathologists are building a picture of a fair-haired man in an army uniform who was wearing his military parachute when he perished.

The cups will carry a religious quote from the Rev Rick Warren, the author of the blockbuster self-help book The Purpose-Driven Life. Mr Warren said he had had the idea after seeing a quote on one of the store's cups on evolution by the paleontologist Louise Leakey.

The Powerball jackpot skyrocketed after 20 straight draws in which no one won the grand prize. "It's a lot of money to win for just playing a dollar," 18-year-old construction worker Danny Loudin told CNN after buying his ticket at the C&L Super Serve in Hurricane West Virginia.

The bludgeoned corpse of Lisa Parisi, 24, was unidentified for more than a day before her fingerprints were matched with an arrest in July for allegedly attacking her boyfriend with a knife.

Take Martha Stewart and Lil' Kim. Stewart is the domestic diva whose name is her brand and whose brand means all that is blissful, serene and homely - fabulous. Lil' Kim is the hip-hop diva whose outfits left little to the imagination and whose lyrics filled whatever gaps were left - ghetto-fabulous. Stewart will tell you all you want to know about how to use flowers to decorate your table; Kim will show you everything you want to see about how flowers can adorn a naked breast.

At Juniors cheesecake emporium in Brooklyn the request to switch channels from the New York Yankees in the World Series playoffs to Good Morning America reporting live from Windsor Castle was greeted more with bemusement than belligerence.

Christina Brazier, 17, pleaded guilty to possession of drugs, a crime which carries up to 10 years in jail and a $10,000 (£5,700) fine. District judge Lauri Blake, who sits in Sherman, 65 miles north of Dallas, ruled that to avoid jail Ms Brazier "shall not have sexual intercourse while enrolled in school and living with parents".

Two and a half thousand miles away, 12 jurors trooped back into a Los Angeles courtroom. Anise Ascherbach, a 60-year-old white woman, smiled - something no one in court had seen her do in nine months. Defence lawyer Carl Douglas turned to his client and whispered, "We won."

In a week when John Roberts was confirmed as supreme court justice and Tom DeLay, House of Representatives leader, was indicted, this passes for front-page news in Utah. Here, in the home of Mormonism, no city employee is allowed to pay for alcohol with public funds when entertaining. "I truly feel like we're in the middle of a Kafka novel sometimes," says Anderson, who was unaware of the no-alcohol policy, and rescinded it on Thursday. "With a little bit of Taliban thrown in."

Back in early 2003, as Democrats discussed setting up a liberal talk radio station to counter the right's supremacy in the culture wars, there was concern that progressive values were inherently unsuited to a popular format. "Progressives have this problem: they sound too erudite, it's like eggheads talking at you," Thomas Athans, co-founder of Democracy Radio, Inc, told the New York Times. "Most liberal talkshows are so, you know, milquetoast, who would want to listen to them?" said Harry Thomason, a Hollywood producer close to Bill Clinton. "Conservatives are all fire and brimstone."