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.
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.
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.
On Monday, the US supreme court will hear oral arguments in the Sheehan case, to decide whether and how disabilities regulations apply to police policies and procedures during arrests.
4. The US supreme court in 2002 banned executions for prisoners who are "mentally retarded" – in other words, those with learning difficulties.
"In the past few years, Mr Rafsanjani has always talked about a letter he wrote in 1988 to Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini [supreme leader until his death in 1989] in which he beseeched the founder of the Islamic Revolution to solve the problem of Iran's relations with the US during his lifetime, arguing that no one else would be able to do so after his death.
