About 60 people, led by a contingent from the New Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, met at the Lamar County Courthouse on Monday to bring attention to the death of Brandon McClelland. The groups later returned with about 200 protesters. Afterward, dozens of people chanting "No justice, no peace!" marched to a nearby church for a meeting.

Authorities say two white suspects purposely ran over McClelland, who is black, following an argument on the way home from a late-night beer run in September. McClelland's body was torn apart as it was dragged some 70 feet beneath a pickup truck near Paris, a city about 95 miles northeast of Dallas with a history of tense relations between blacks and whites.

The death came 10 years after James Byrd was killed in Jasper, another eastern Texas town. Byrd was chained to the back of a pickup by three white men and dragged for three miles.

"How do we get justice for Brandon McClelland?" cried Anthony Bond, founder of the Irving chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Ad spending and ad placement data obtained from Democratic and Republican operatives show that in the closing days of the campaign the Republican voice has grown louder in states such as Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

For instance, Obama had been scheduled to buy about $2.5 million in Florida ads for the last week of the campaign. McCain is now set to spend about $1.6 million and the Republican National Committee added $1.5 million to their buy in the state this week. Obama appears to have added more weight to his ads since.

The ad war is especially noticeable in Florida's central corridor, which includes Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach.

Those near-parity levels in crucial states come with a price. McCain has had to trim back his ads in Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, giving Obama even greater edges there.

A map of the states where McCain and the RNC are spending their money also illustrates the defensive nature of their 11th hour strategy. Except for Pennsylvania, the McCain-GOP focus was on trying to hold states that President Bush won in 2004.

Under an agreement reached by Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, librarians and the public will have an easier time tracking down millions of out-of-print books. At the same time, Google and the book business will have greater opportunities for online sales.

"We're trying to create a new structure where there will be more access to out-of-print books, with benefits both to readers and researchers and to the rights holders of those books — authors and publishers," Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the publishers association, said Tuesday in an interview.

"This is an extraordinary accomplishment," Paul N. Courant, university librarian for the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "It will now be possible, even easy, for anyone to access these great collections from anywhere in the United States."

With a week to go before the American presidential elections, the Iraqi decision could delay the key agreement that provides the legal basis for the U.S. to operate in Iraq past the end of the year.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said members of the Cabinet proposed unspecified "essential" amendments and gave them to al-Maliki to offer to American negotiators.

Parliament must approve the agreement and al-Maliki is reluctant to submit the draft unless he is confident it will pass by an overwhelming majority.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the Bush administration hasn't seen the Iraqis amendments yet, so "it's not possible to say at this point" whether U.S. officials would be willing to re-open talks. But officials have said previously that the agreement represented Washington's last offer, and that its success now rests with the complex Iraqi political system — a signal that the White House would likely be unwilling to engage in additional negotiations.

"The federal rescue package is not a bailout of Wall Street tycoons - it is a lifeboat for millions of Americans whose life savings, businesses, retirement plans and jobs are at stake," Schwarzenegger said.

California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer issued a statement a day earlier saying because of the national financial crisis, California "has been locked out of credit markets for the past 10 days."

"Absent a clear resolution to this financial crisis that restores confidence and liquidity to the credit markets, California and other states may be unable to obtain the necessary level of financing to maintain government operations and may be forced to turn to the Federal Treasury for short-term financing," Schwarzenegger wrote.

California's governor warned that a number of states are facing the same cash flow crunch this month, but his state is "so large that our short-term cash flow needs exceed the entire budget of some states."

Schwarzenegger said his state would attempt to sell "$7 billion in Revenue Anticipation Notes for short term cash flow purposes in a matter of days."

Lockyer said that unless the national economic crisis subsides and California can secure private short-term loans "the State's cash reserves would be exhausted near the end of October."