Along the way, the smell of damp in Mobile, Ala., turns to the stench of death from the Gulf Coast. The radio dial flits from call-in shows fielding requests from beleaguered mayors of small hamlets for generators and ice to Baptist preachers promising God's wrath. But for many here, it seems as though his will has already been done.

The entrance to Pascagoula reveals crushed homes and dilapidated stores alongside queues for gas and food.

"I've got enough supplies for another two days, but I don't know what I'm going to do after that," said Sarah Jackson as she entered her second hour in a queue outside Wal-Mart. "I keep telling myself I'm lucky because it could have been worse, but with each day I feel less and less lucky."

Officials on the Gulf Coast say the emphasis has moved from search and rescue to bag and tag as emergency rescue workers cut their way through to Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., to find the death toll rising steadily.

"This is far worse than any of the worst-case scenarios we thought we would ever have to deal with," said one law enforcement official.

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When it comes to a duel between DePaul University political science professor Norman Finkelstein and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz over Finkelstein's upcoming book, "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," gigantic bombast feels like an understatement. It is a row that has spilled onto the pages of most of the nation's prominent newspapers and gone all the way to the desk of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Over the past 30 years the American South, characterized by grainy footage of policemen with hoses and billy clubs beating schoolchildren and churchmen as they tried to vote, has sought to rebrand itself as a region that conquered its own history. For reasons ranging from social progress to foreign investment and local economic development, Southerners have been keen to show the world, including the rest of the United States, that they have dealt with their past.

This was apparent in the closing arguments of the trial, when both the prosecution and the defense let slip how far the verdict went beyond the guilt or innocence of one man. "When justice is done here, [the victims' families] will go back to New York or Oregon, or wherever they came from, give them the bad news, and we'll have to live with this trial," said the defense lawyer, James McIntyre.

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"I completely forgot about it," he says. "I was in a small airport in the Caribbean, and I called the office to check in." His colleagues told him that the story had broken and the media was world buzzing with intrigue. The Washington Post's Watergate duo, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, had refused to confirm or deny that the former FBI No. 2, Mark Felt, was Deep Throat. For the time being, Vanity Fair was on its own. The story was out -- but Carter was still not completely confident it was right.

"We fact-checked this thing through alternate and overlapping sources. The chief fact checker had been through it dozens and dozens of times to fill in the gaps. But the ultimate confirmation could come from only two sources." But calling Woodward, or Bernstein, who is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, was out of the question.

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"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 June 1. "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 murder of Emmett Till has been seared into the collective memory of most African-Americans. It was the subject of the first play by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, of a poem by Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes and of a song by Bob Dylan. It was also a huge galvanizing event for the civil rights movement. Just three months after the murder, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Ala., sparking the bus boycott that would kick-start the civil rights era, she said Till was on her mind.

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A 16-page report produced by an internal committee of 19, including editors, reporters, a copy editor and a photographer, Monday delivered its conclusions on how the Times could maintain its credibility as a news organization when public confidence in the media is in decline.

"In part because the Times's editorial page is clearly liberal, the news pages do need to make more effort not to seem monolithic," says the report. "We should seek talented journalists who happen to have military experience, who know rural America first hand, who are at home in different faiths."

A recent study by the independent Pew Research Center found that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing of what they read in their paper. When particular papers were cited, the Times was considered about average. But over the past two years its credibility has been undermined by its reporting of the run-up to the Iraq war, for which it later published an apology, and the Jayson Blair scandal, in which a young reporter plagiarized and fabricated quotes over six months without being detected. The latter scandal led to the two top editors resigning in 2003.

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To the consumer, the difference between a packet of Apple Dippers and, say, the M&M McFlurry is little more than a few calories. As the picture of Ronald McDonald jogging on the packet suggests, it might also mark a subtle shift in the eating habits of an increasingly obese nation. But to the apple growers of Yakima and elsewhere in Washington state -- the most extensive apple-producing region in the United States -- it could mean a whole lot more.

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In the two days since 16-year-old Jeff Weise took his grandfather's gun, shot him and his woman friend, and drove his grandfather's police car to Red Lake High School, where he killed seven people before turning the gun on himself, it has become clear how far that intrusion has gone.

As you approach the reservation, a large sign says: "Homeland of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, where sovereignty, traditions and heritage are preserved." On the other side of the road another says: "Red Lake Nation is a sovereign nation."

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It was the deadliest school shooting since April 20, 1999, when two students at Colorado's Columbine High School killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves. The scale of the violence overwhelmed the emergency services in the remote community, forcing the evacuation of some of the more seriously wounded. "We've never dealt with anything like this before," Sherri Binkeland, spokeswoman for North County Regional Hospital, told reporters.

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In this mythic terrain Fred Phelps, of Topeka (population 122,377), Kan., fits in and stands out. He fits in because he is a homophobe who, like most of the country, including the Bush administration, uses the Bible as the source of his bigotry. He stands out because, unlike most of the country, he pursues his agenda with a vicious zeal and animus that not even the White House could match. When Phelps attended the funeral of Matthew Shephard, a young man beaten to a pulp in a homophobic attack, or those of prominent AIDS sufferers, he took his "God hates fags" picket signs with him.

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Then he turns his critical eye on his suite, which up until then looked pretty fancy. "The chairs are a bit stuffy and '30s-looking," he says. "They've mixed in these teak lamps ... The sofa is neither an elegant sofa nor a comfortable sofa; and the table isn't quite right." He pauses. "The carpet isn't bad. The room's quiet and it has a lovely view, but there's no theme. It's a cross between a gentleman's club and simple minimalism. But it doesn't quite work."

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Humphrey was disabled and could walk only with the assistance of two sticks. Neighbors told the Chicago Tribune that they had seen Lefkow run into the street screaming after discovering the bodies.

Chicago police warned against rushing to conclusions about the motive for the murders or identity of the killer, but attention inevitably focused on the white supremacist movement. Within the past two weeks, federal agents in Chicago received a bulletin saying the Aryan Brotherhood might be planning to harm "law enforcement and their families." Monday was the 12th anniversary of the raid on the cult compound in Waco, Texas, which has become a rallying point for right-wing militia groups, and the Lefkows have long been targets.

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"Michelin is not a household name in America," said John Schaefer, executive chef at the Gramercy Tavern. "Your foodies are aware of it, but for most people it will be a whole new deal. It's got to be a positive thing."

The book, going on sale in November, will rate 500 restaurants in New York's five boroughs according to Michelin's star ratings. One star means worth "a visit," two mean worthy of "a detour," and three are reserved for those that merit a "special trip."

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Abovitz attended an off-the-record panel in Davos on Jan. 28 addressed by, among others, CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, that was filmed. During the discussion, Jordan reportedly claimed that he knew of 12 journalists in Iraq whom the U.S. military had deliberately targeted and killed. The Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, who was also on the panel, asked him if CNN had reported this. Jordan said no. Abovitz asked him if he had any objective and clear evidence to back up these claims because "if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park." Jordan appeared to backtrack. The debate continued and then moved on.

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"The findings are striking, and a wake-up call to the prevention community," Laura Bogart, a behavioral scientist who coauthored the study, told the Washington Post. "The prevention community has not addressed conspiracy beliefs in the context of prevention. I think that a lot of people involved in prevention may not be from the community where they are trying to prevent HIV."

African-Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 50 percent of new HIV infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. African-American women constituted 73 percent of new female HIV cases in 2003.

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According to the Los Angeles Times, at least six of America's largest pharmaceutical firms have issued internal notices to their workforces warning them to be on the lookout for "a scruffy guy in a baseball cap" who asks too many questions. Rotund and amiable he may seem, but this could be Moore, digging for dirt for his new movie, provisionally titled "Sicko."

Having watched the Bush administration and the gun lobby come a cropper in Moore's last two works, the pharma giants are not taking any risks. "We ran a story in our online newspaper saying Moore is embarking on a documentary -- and if you see a scruffy guy in a baseball cap, you'll know who it is," Stephen Lederer, a spokesman for Pfizer Global Research and Development, told the Los Angeles Times.

Five other big companies have told employees that any approach by Moore should be rebuffed and referred to the company's corporate communications department. "Moore's past work has been marked by negativity, so we can only assume it won't be a fair and balanced portrayal," said Rachel Bloom, executive director of corporate communications at AstraZeneca, based in Delaware. "His movies resemble docudramas more than documentaries."

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A congressional analysis of more than a dozen federally funded "abstinence-only programs" unveiled a litany of "false, misleading and distorted information" in teaching materials after reviewing curriculums designed to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

There are more than 100 abstinence programs, involving several million children ages 9 to 18, and running in 25 states since 1999. They are funded by the federal government to the tune of $170 million, twice the amount being spent when George W. Bush first came to power.

The money goes to religious, civic and medical organizations as grants. To qualify, the programs may talk about types of contraception only in terms of their failure rates, not in terms of how to use them or the possible benefits.

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Monday it looked as if he might get his wish, after a referendum in the state appeared likely to keep segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" in its Constitution as well as references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks. A narrow margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million, or 0.13 percent, in a referendum on Nov. 2 meant the state was obliged to hold a recount, which started Monday. The recount may not be complete until next week, but with no accusations of electoral fraud or any other irregularities, nobody Monday night expected the result to change.

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In an upset brought about by local scandal, demographic evolution and personal chutzpah, Lupe Valdez, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant farmworker, became the first-ever Democrat and woman to head the county's sole law enforcement office, which includes Texas' second largest city. "Since I won, every time I go to a Democratic meeting, they go crazy," Valdez, 57, told the New York Times.

Despite the fact that she had little in the way of money and a campaign led by novices, Valdez won comfortably. "We fought like we were losing," said Valdez, a former prison guard, who had no idea how she was faring until the votes were counted because she could not afford the $12,000 for a poll. Her Republican rival, Danny Chandler, is a 29-year veteran of the department who hired a P.R. company to guide his campaign. But the Republicans were dogged by controversy from the outset.

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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 as related in the Bible -- to be taught alongside evolution.

Shortly after the stickers were put on the books, six parents launched a legal challenge, with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union. It started Monday. "I'm a strong advocate for the separation of church and state," one of the parents, Jeffrey Selman, told the Associated Press. "I have no problem with anybody's religious beliefs. I just want an adequate educational system."

The board says the stickers were motivated by a desire to establish a greater understanding of different viewpoints. "They improve the curriculum, while also promoting an attitude of tolerance for those with different religious beliefs," said Linwood Gunn, a lawyer for Cobb County schools.

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