The supreme court refused Sustainable Shetland leave to appeal to the European court, but the campaigners said they would review their legal options.
Nostalgia was bittersweet in Roddy Doyle's The Guts (Jonathan Cape), which caught up with the music-mad hero of The Commitments, weighed down by illness and middle age, while Elizabeth Jane Howard, now 90, added a final volume, All Change (Mantle), to her upper-class family saga the Cazalet chronicles – still comfort reading supreme.
He urges Conservative high command to "smoke out" plausible candidates and get on with choosing one so that he or she can "at least have a fighting chance" when autumn comes.
Sanders also repeated his determination to overturn the 2010 Citizens United supreme court decision, which gave rise to unrestrained spending on elections.
The two supreme court justices thought likely to cast the deciding votes, Anthony Kennedy and the chief justice, John Roberts, appeared deeply sceptical of the government's contention that healthcare regulation is a special case that gives Congress the power to oblige individuals to obtain insurance.
Hill's attorney, Brian Kammer, issued a statement after the stay: "All the doctors who have examined Mr Hill are unanimous in their diagnosis of mental retardation, so there is no question that his execution would have been in violation of the US supreme court's 2002 ruling in Atkins v Virginia.
"It will take us a lot longer to get a good Supreme Court decision if the Court has to overrule itself".
Whether the action's beneficiaries in the streets below appreciated the reference to the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling was not recorded, but in a press release, activists did claim that a woman who had been trying to collect money for a bus ride was able to pay her fare with the free money.
"In connection with the completion of the routine springtime training phase for troops that involved their deployment to training grounds in the Rostov, Belgorod and Bryansk regions, among others, the president of Russia gave the command to the defence minister to return the troops taking part in the exercises to their home bases," the Kremlin said.
Related: Republicans drop abortion vote after revolt by female House members Supporters of the bill had hoped it would be passed on Thursday to coincide with the March for Life, a huge anti-abortion gathering held on the Mall each year to mark the anniversary of the supreme court's 1973 ruling to legalise abortion, Roe v Wade.
Sadr's popularity among Shias far exceeds that of that Dawa Party which Maliki leads, or the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) of his ally, Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, which has its own militia, the Badr Brigades.
