Sites is the journalist who captured the moment when a young U.S. Army Marine shot an equally young insurgent inside a mosque in Fallujah in November of last year. Sites' video, broadcast around the world, caused a storm. For some it showed an American soldier executing an insurgent, proof of the brutality of war, of the U.S. Army and of its soldiers. For others, it highlighted the perils faced by U.S. troops, from booby-trapped insurgents taking cover in mosques to the threat of an embedded liberal media.

For Sites, it posed other questions: of how to reconcile the need for truth and honesty with the sense of responsibility to the troops around him, of how to honor his duty to minimize harm through his reporting.

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The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fueled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac's alter ego. "Kerouac wrote the play in one night when he returned to his home in Florida after the publication of 'On the Road,'" said Kerouac's biographer and family friend, Gerald Nicosia. "He was getting a lot of attention, being put on TV talk shows after 'On the Road,' and an off-Broadway theater producer named Leo Gavin said he wanted a play from him."

Although the play was never published or performed, the third act became the basis for a film, "Pull My Daisy," starring Allen Ginsberg.

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The strangers were led by John Gertz. In 1920, Gertz's father had bought the rights to the Zorro character from the author of the original dime novel. Together with Disney, he had developed the multiple incarnations of the masked man -- TV series, comic book, feature film -- before Gertz Jr. bought back the rights.

It had occurred to Gertz that Zorro had appeared in films, TV shows, comics -- everything except serious literature. So the search began for a writer for hire, someone to fill in the back story of Zorro, the early years; someone who, like Zorro, knew California well and could think in Spanish; someone with a track record in historical research; someone who could bring a Latin sensibility to the myth of the Mexican-American do-gooder. And so they knocked on Allende's door.

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Outside the courthouse camera crews and fans jostle for position; at the rear of the court buildings retirees bowl, seemingly unaware that the "trial of the century" is unfolding just 100 meters away.

Each day the jury has heard allegations that the defendant was a classic predatory pedophile, grooming, abusing and abandoning his victims. At least that was the prosecution's plan when the court case started on Feb. 28. But several of its 80-plus witnesses have been turned by a skillful defense into aiding the 46-year-old singer, while others have needed little help to compromise the prosecution's case.

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Schwarzenegger's mistake was to take on nurses, teachers, police officers and firefighters -- all at the same time. He couldn't have picked a more revered assembly. But the governor strode ahead regardless, convinced by his previous successes that he could overcome any obstacle. The polls said otherwise, and last week, in a rare public reversal, Schwarzenegger withdrew many of the proposals that had infuriated some voters and given ammunition to his political opponents.

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Speaking in a quiet, occasionally hesitant voice, the boy told how 46-year-old Jackson had initially invited him to his home when he was receiving cancer treatment but subsequently seemed to drop him. But that changed, said the boy, when Martin Bashir was making his documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson." "Before that I hadn't talked to Michael in a very long time," the boy told the court.

After being introduced to Bashir at the singer's Neverland ranch, Jackson took the boy to another room. The boy said: "He was telling me, 'Hey, you want to be an actor, right? I'm going to put you in movies and this is your audition. I want you to go in there and tell them how I helped you, that you call me Daddy Michael.' He told me that he wanted me to say that he helped me and that he pretty much cured my cancer."

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On the first day of evidence, the prosecution claimed Jackson manipulated the boy, and that one of his employees told the child his mother could be killed. Opening the prosecution's case, Santa Barbara district attorney Tom Sneddon described how the 46-year-old's world was "rocked" by the broadcast in the U.K. in 2003 of Martin Bashir's documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson."

Saying how one Jackson advisor had described the documentary as "a train wreck," Sneddon said: "In February 2003, Michael Jackson's world was rocked, not in a musical sense but in a real-life sense, and it was rocked by the broadcast of the Bashir documentary." In the documentary the star is seen holding hands with the boy and saying he allows children to sleep in his bed.

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The documentary, broadcast two years ago, showed the entertainer holding hands with the then 13-year-old boy who has since accused him of sexual molestation. In it, Jackson also explained his belief that sharing your bed with somebody was the most loving thing you could do.

The disclosures eventually resulted in charges being brought against Jackson, now 46, in April last year. The charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty, are of molestation of a 13-year-old boy, of giving the boy alcohol and of conspiring to keep him and his family from leaving Jackson's Neverland ranch near Santa Maria, three hours north of Los Angeles.

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"I thought you meant a part of my body," she gasps, trying to catch her breath. "That's a good opener: The thing that stands out about you are your globes. Well, thank you so much. I'm old; nobody says that anymore."

The globes in question -- though not in my question -- were at one time the subject of their own not inconsiderable celebrity. An appearance in a 1993 episode of "Seinfeld" featured Jerry and Elaine debating at some length whether Hatcher's breasts were surgically enhanced. Her exit line -- "They're real, and they're spectacular" -- has stayed with her ever since, although nowadays she insists that two and a half years of breast-feeding have taken their toll. Tabloid speculation that other parts of her anatomy have been artificially enhanced has been met with a less nuanced dismissal.

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But a mile or so before the roadside settlement of Wasco, a cluster of large, sandy-colored buildings pops up out of the landscape. There, the eye can pick out blue towers placed at regular intervals around the group of buildings, like water towers or sentries. And then, visible across the muddy furrows, a chain-link fence. Around the fence, nests of spotlights peer down from gangly metal stalks.

This is Wasco State Prison. Little more than 100 miles from Neverland, it might as well be in another universe. For this is where the defendant in the case of the People of the State of California vs. Michael Joe Jackson will be sent should he be found guilty by a jury of his peers and sentenced by Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville in a trial that starts Monday.

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The program reportedly conducts operations in friendly and unfriendly states where conventional war might not even be a distant prospect. It deploys intelligence officers, including linguists, technical specialists and interrogators, alongside secret Special Forces in countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, the Philippines and Georgia, the Washington Post said.

The deployment of the unit further muddies the issue of accountability for covert and clandestine intelligence operations in the "war on terror." The program was established by diverting existing Pentagon funds, thus freeing it from any congressional oversight.

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The report lists a litany of errors on the part of the United States. "Their strategic assessments of Iraq were wrong," it says. "They were fundamentally wrong about how the Iraqi people would view the United States invasion. They were wrong about the problems in establishing effective governance, and they underestimated the difficulties in creating a new government that was legitimate in Iraqi eyes.

"They greatly exaggerated the relevance and influence of Iraqi exiles, and greatly underestimated the scale of Iraq's economic, ethnic, and demographic problems."

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Wolfe, 74, best known for his novel "Bonfire of the Vanities" and for his eccentric dress -- he normally wears a white suit and carries a cane -- was given the Bad Sex Award by the Literary Review last month for his novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons," the story of a naive country girl who attends an Ivy League college. To research the novel, Wolfe, a former journalist, spent a lot of time interviewing students and observing campus life.

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Although the charge was initially denied by the Pentagon, Rumsfeld issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging the practice and promising to halt it. "While I have not individually signed each one, in the interest of ensuring expeditious contact with grieving family members, I have directed that in the future I sign each letter," Rumsfeld said in the statement.

Hackworth also reported allegations by relatives of deceased soldiers that letters they had received from the president had been signed by a machine. Ted Smith, whose son Eric was one of the first 100 U.S. soldiers to die in Iraq, told Hackworth that the letter he received "from the commander in chief was signed with a thick, green marking pen. I thought it was stamped then and do even now. He had time for golf and the ranch but not enough to sign a decent signature with a pen for his beloved hero soldiers." Rejecting the charges, White House spokesman Allen Abney told the armed forces newspaper Stars and Stripes that the president did personally sign all condolence letters.

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"Summer Crossing," the story of a young socialite's summer in New York, was thought to have been abandoned by the then 20-year-old author in 1944, when he started to write the novel that would make his name, "Other Voices, Other Rooms." But the manuscript for sale this week is a completed work, running to 200 pages with an additional 89 pages of corrections and additional material.

"It's kind of a pre-'Breakfast at Tiffany's,'" Sotheby's vice president for books and manuscripts, Julian Caldwell, told the Associated Press. Calling the surfacing of the novel "a remarkable literary discovery," he added: "It will undoubtedly provide invaluable insights into this major writer's formative years, as work on the novel occupied Capote both before and after his first published novel."

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In the dining room Flynt is parked in his gold-plated wheelchair, staring out the window, possibly at the view of the city stretched out before him. He is a curious sight, his hair and skin almost matching his peach-colored polo shirt. On his wrist he wears a delicately inlaid watch; his elaborate rings sit on surprisingly long puffy fingers, their length accentuated by manicured nails.

"What did she say?" he croaks in his nearly inaudible high-pitched wheeze, heavily laced with the wide-open twang of his native Kentucky.

Hal, Flynt's bodyguard and wheelchair wheeler, approaches. "Nothing," he says. "Don't worry about it. It's a man and wife thing."

"Why wasn't she ready? Did she say she didn't know?"

"I told you, don't worry about it. I'm not getting involved," says Hal.

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"Look at my eyes," said Sosscún Niño, one of a small crowd reading the headlines at a newspaper kiosk in central Caracas. "I've been up all night waiting for the result. Now I'm going home."

Niño had been at the Miraflores Palace, Chávez's official residence, to hear the 50-year-old president claim victory in the referendum on whether he should be recalled -- sacked. "This was spectacular. There's no other word for it -- spectacular," he said. "You have to be a little cautious, but this was a sincere expression of the will of the people. It was magnificent."

Dressed in a bedraggled red T-shirt bearing the "no" slogan of the Chávez campaign, José Tuarez Serpa was hopping with excitement. "This shows those bastards," he said. "This was a day for the country, for peace." Chávez's victory speech, he said, was "fantastic ... beautiful."

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Around 80 percent of the country's 14 million registered voters took part in the referendum to decide whether to recall President Hugo Chávez. By midday both sides were privately claiming victory, but a decision to keep polling stations open for an extra four hours meant an official announcement was not expected until the morning.

Chávez will step down immediately and new elections will be held within 30 days if those who answer yes in the referendum gain more votes than he won when he was elected in 1998, and also win a majority on the day. If the no votes gain the majority, Chávez has promised he will invite his opponents to lunch at the presidential palace.

Shortly before 3 p.m. the president of the national election council, Francisco Carrasquero, appeared on television to play a faked recording of his own voice announcing that Chávez had been defeated and was stepping down with immediate effect. Calling the recording a "flagrant crime" that "pretends to make fun of the will of the people," he announced the launch of an investigation.

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The popularity of the movie star turned republican politician and his larger-than-life political style  his favourite meeting spot is a tent erected outside his Sacramento office to allow him to puff on cigars in defiance of the building's smoking ban  suggested that he could fulfil his promise to do away with the internecine fighting of politics as usual.

But all that has come unstuck with his first real political test since being elected governor. Despite his pledges to foster a non-partisan spirit in the state capital, Sacramento, and to make local government work more efficiently, Schwarzenegger has been unable to win approval for his $103bn state budget.

As California limps into its third week without a budget Schwarzenegger turned his ire on the Democrat politicians he accuses of holding up the budget, accusing them of working for "special interests: the unions, the trial lawyers  I call them girlie men. They should get back to the table, and they should finish the budget."

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The Ventura County farmer looks around him, at the 70-year-old trees laden with lemons large and small, green and yellow, at the clear blue sky, at the dry yellow earth, and loses himself in a moment of reverie.

"This is like old-style California. This is what Los Angeles was 100 years ago. If this was a conventional farm," he says, gesturing at the ground between the rows of trees, "this would be like a parking lot." Instead, the ground is covered in grass, and what he refers to as a "cover crop", a cereal that can be seen poking up from the earth here and there, its purpose to keep the weeds in check.

Wise is not a conventional farmer, he is an organic farmer, and his farm is one of many caught in a battle between the interests of small farmers and consumers concerned about the purity of their food, and government and agribusiness bent on maxi-mising the growth and earning potential of a burgeoning sector of the US economy, thought to be worth $13bn a year.

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