SENATOR John Kerry has erased US President George W Bush’s modest lead and the two candidates head into election day tied at 49%-49%, a nationwide USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll shows, as an extraordinarily bitter and expensive campaign prepared to end.

Republicans are turning to conditions at home today after saluting President George Bush as a wartime president whose leadership is “rock solid”.

US TROOPS shot Syrian border guards when they launched an attack on a fleeing Iraqi convoy they believed may have contained senior members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, it was revealed yesterday.

US Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, a first-term Democrat, said yesterday he plans to run for the White House in 2004.

The US must decide whether the Iraqi people would benefit from any move to topple Saddam Hussein, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said today.

A debate is raging in Washington about the best way to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, with senior figures questioning what will happen when he is gone.

None of the men arrested at a New York airport were terrorists attempting a repeat of Tuesday’s hijackings, it was revealed today.