Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin defended John McCain as a reform-minded maverick while Democratic rival Joe Biden sought to tie his longtime Senate colleague to unpopular Bush administration policies during their first face-to-face encounter and only debate.

LAS VEGAS–The collectibles broker who arranged the confrontation between O.J. Simpson and two sports memorabilia dealers predicts the Nevada jury judging the armed robbery and kidnapping case against the former football star won't convict him.

WASHINGTON–Barack Obama has surged to a seven-point lead over John McCain one month before the presidential election, lifted by voters who think the Democrat is better suited to lead the nation through its sudden financial crisis, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that underscores the mounting concerns of some McCain backers.

The University of Mississippi was the venue for the first of three scheduled debates with less than six weeks remaining until Election Day for people to decide on either Obama or Mcain. For the inaugural debate the main arguments were surrounding the war in Iraq and taxes.

As first-time registered older voters, two women said they had not been voting all along because their parents claimed that their Cherokee Indian culture forbade women to vote.

INDIANOLA, Miss.–Veterans of the historic Mississippi Freedom Summers of the early 1960s gathered for their fourth Sunflower County Civil Rights Reunion in this small Delta town in September. Their hair now beginning to gray, most of the three dozen alumni were teenagers when they answered the call, putting their very lives on the line to face what became the most brutal legal and extra-legal resistance to Black advancement out of serfdom and subservience in the 20th century.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama walks into the Congressional Black Caucus banquet with his wife, Michelle, in Washington Sept. 27. Barack Obama delivered the keynote address.

WASHINGTON–Every 30 seconds someone in the United States dies from heart disease. According to Clyde Yancy, incoming president of the American Heart Association, 60 percent of attendees at the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference forum, Heart Matters, will die from some form of cardiovascular failure.