Cleared by a Florida jury, George Zimmerman walked free from criminal charges in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin but was still under fire from civil rights leaders and critics who were dismayed by the verdict.

Civil rights leaders in the US have demanded the arrest of a neighbourhood watch helper who went free after shooting dead an unarmed black teenager.

An ultra-conservative “tea party” group has defended as satire its depiction of President Barack Obama as a skunk, following accusations of racism by the leader of a civil rights group.

Supporters of American death row inmate Troy Davis in the US and Europe tried just about anything to spare him from lethal injection tonight for killing a Georgia policeman, a crime he and others have insisted for years that he did not commit.

A US woman who was arrested after her four-year-old son was struck and killed by a van as they were walking across a busy street has been spared a prison sentence following an outcry over her prosecution.

The Obama administration has defended its decision to force out a black Agriculture Department employee over racially-tinged remarks at a banquet, despite evidence that they were misconstrued.

A US swimming pool was at the centre of a 1960s-style race row today after its members allegedly turned away black and Hispanic youngsters and pulled their own children out of the water.

A national US civil rights organisation is planning protests in dozens of US cities over the New York Post cartoon that critics say likened a violent chimpanzee to President Barack Obama.

The head of America’s National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People said today a newspaper’s controversial dead chimp cartoon was an invitation to assassinate US President Barack Obama and urged readers to boycott the tabloid.

Voting problems surfaced in several areas today as electors turned out in droves to be confronted with long queues and malfunctioning machines.

A likely record presidential election voter turnout has polling officials across the United States braced for problems.

MORE than 12 million early voters have already made their voices heard and the majority have backed Barack Obama.

Democrat Barack Obama is an “impressive fellow” whose success as the first black US presidential candidate for a major party should make every American proud, his Republican rival John McCain said today.

David Bowie has donated $10,000 to a legal defence fund for six black teenagers charged in an alleged attack on a white classmate in the tiny central Louisiana town of Jena.

Bono was presented with the Chairman's Award at the prestigious 38th NAACP Image Awards in Los Angeles at the weekend.

Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson kept her winning streak alive and Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington claimed a best actor prize at the annual Image Awards.

City leaders in Arizona have apologised after a cable TV programme showed a white police officer telling two black men that they could avoid a litter ticket by rapping.

It is time for the African-American community “to face the fact that Aids has become a black disease” and find ways to defeat it, said the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People at the international Aids summit in Toronto, Canada, yesterday.

A Missouri radio station sacked a newly-appointed talk show host for a racial slur as he talked about secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

Gangster Stanley Tookie Williams will be killed by lethal injection today after California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to block his execution.

NEARLY 50 years ago, Rosa Parks made a simple decision that sparked a revolution. When a white man demanded she give up her seat on an Alabama, bus, the then 42-year-old seamstress said no.

Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern US civil rights movement, died at age 92.

For weeks Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has generated controversy while deciding how voters in this crucial swing state can go about choosing a president.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, taking advantage of a spat between the United States’ oldest human rights group and the White House, accused US President George Bush today of dividing America by race and wealth, and promised as president to represent “all of the people”.

In a victory for the US firearms industry, a federal jury cleared 45 handgun manufacturers and distributors of allegations that their marketing practices have stoked violence in black and Hispanic neighbourhoods.

A black-owned luxury resort in Miami Beach, Florida, opens for business next month, the product of a plan drafted by activists, city officials and lodging executives that ended a black tourist boycott.

Cincinnati’s mayor has declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew amid the worst outbreak of racial violence in the Ohio city since the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968.