Author JK Rowling has won her legal battle in a New York court to get an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia banned from publication.

Judge Robert Patterson said in a ruling Ms Rowling, 43, had proven Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon would cause her irreparable harm as a writer.

Ms Rowling sued Michigan based publishers RDR Books last year to stop publication of Mr Vander Ark's book.

He wrote the book after running a popular Potter fansite.

Following the ruling, Ms Rowling said her legal action had aimed "to uphold the right of authors everywhere to protect their own original work".

She said: "The proposed book took an enormous amount of my work and added virtually no original commentary of its own."

The statement added: "Many books have been published which offer original insights into the world of Harry Potter. The Lexicon just is not one of them."

'Gone too far'

The book had been originally due for publication on 28 November 2007, but legal proceedings prevented it from being released.

Ms Rowling had originally supported the Lexicon website, but she said there was a difference between fans publishing information for free on the internet, and selling it in the form of a book.

Making his ruling, Judge Patterson said reference materials could help readers, but Vander Ark had gone too far in this case.

He said: "While the Lexicon, in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon's purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled."

He said he had made his decision because: "Lexicon appropriates too much of Rowling's creative work for its purposes as a reference guide".

'Not about money'

In April Rowling gave evidence in court and said the encyclopaedia amounted to "wholesale theft".

The author has always denied the case was about money.

She had been planning to write her own definitive encyclopaedia, the proceeds of which she had intended to donate to charity.

However, she told the court in April she is not sure if she has "the will or the heart" to do it after all.

At the time RDR Books argued that it is little different than any other novel reference guide and should be allowed to go to press without interference. >>>>

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the world's most powerful woman for the third straight year, topping Forbes magazine's 2008 list of the top 100 women based on their career, economic impact and media coverage.

Sonia Gandhi, president of the Indian National Congress Party, is ranked No. 21.

Sheila Bair, who chairs the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp that insures bank deposits, debuts at No. 2 due to her increased prominence amid a stumbling U.S. economy.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the only other government official in the top 10, although she dropped three spots from last year to No. 7 as the Bush administration prepares to leave office in January after the U.S. election in November.

The rest of the top 10 is made up of the chief executives of PepsiCo, WellPoint, Anglo American, Kraft Foods, Temasek Holdings, Areva and Xerox.

"It's inspiring to look at what some of these women have done and to listen to some of their life stories," Chana Schoenberger, Forbes' associate editor, said in an interview.

There are 54 business executives and 23 politicians on the list, with media personalities and heads of non-profit organizations rounding out the top 100. Forbes said 45 percent of the women are based outside the United States.

One third of the women are new to the list, including Argentina's first popularly elected president Cristina Fernandez and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"A lot of the women who dropped off the list this year were for job-related reasons," Schoenberger said. "In some cases it's simply a matter of the woman still has a powerful position but other women are relatively more powerful and pushed her down and off the list."

Among the women to drop off the list this year are Zoe Cruz, former president of Morgan Stanley, Patricia Russo, former head of Alcatel Lucent and Meg Whitman, who stepped down as eBay's chief executive.

Democratic U.S. senator and former presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton dropped three spots to No. 28 but gained the most media attention of any woman on the list this year.

"Certainly had she been the Democratic nominee that probably would have catapulted her higher," said Schoenberger. "She's still an incredibly powerful force, she's way more powerful than any other female senator."

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, came in at No. 35, French Minister for Economy, Finance and Employment Christine Lagarde nabbed No. 14 and Queen Rania of Jordan is No. 96.

Gail Kelly, head of Australian bank Westpac, lands at No. 11 as Westpac is making a $15.6 billion takeover of St George Bank in Australia's biggest-ever bank deal. Yahoo President Susan Decker is No. 50 and talk show host Oprah Winfrey comes in at No. 36.

Michelle Nichols

Lesbian activist Del Martin, at the forefront of the battle for same-sex marriage in California, died Wednesday in San Francisco. She was 87.

Martin's partner of 55 years, Phyllis Lyon, was by her side at the UCSF hospice, the National Center for Lesbian Rights said.

Martin and Lyon, 84, tied the knot June 16 in a ceremony officiated by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

"Ever since I met Del 55 years ago, I could never imagine a day would come when she wouldn't be by my side. I am so lucky to have known her, loved her and been her partner in all things," Lyon said. "I also never imagined there would be a day that we would actually be able to get married.

"I am devastated, but I take some solace in knowing we were able to enjoy the ultimate rite of love and commitment before she passed."

Long before Massachusetts and then California legalized same-sex marriage, Lyon and Martin were integral parts of the early movement for lesbian and gay rights. They met in 1950 in Seattle, Washington, where they worked as editors of construction trade publications. They fell in love, moving in together on Valentine's Day 1953.

Martin fought to have the American Psychological Society declare that homosexuality is not a mental illnesses and advocated on behalf of battered women.

In 1955, the couple founded the nation's first lesbian organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, and launched the first lesbian publication, The Ladder.

In the 1960s, they tried to get California lawmakers to introduce anti-discrimination bills and persuaded some police officers to stop harassing gays and lesbians at bars as part of a group Martin co-founded called the Council on Religion and the Homosexual.

Martin was also a founding member of several other organizations, including the Lesbian Mother's Union, the San Francisco Women's Centers and the Bay Area Women's Coalition. She and Lyon were co-founders of the first gay political group in the United States, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, named for author Gertrude Stein's long-time partner.

After she and Lyon were the first lesbians to join the National Organization for Women with the couples' membership rate, Martin was the first open lesbian to be elected to NOW's board of directors. From that spot, she was instrumental in guiding the organization to pass a resolution recognizing lesbian issues as feminist issues.

Martin and Lyon were delegates to the White House Conference on Aging in 1991, named to it by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, both of California.

Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called Martin "a real hero."

"For all of Del's life, she was an activist and organizer even before we knew what those terms meant," Kendell said. "Her last act of public activism was her most personal: marrying the love of her life after 55 years.

"In the wake of losing her, we recognize with heightened clarity the most poignant and responsible way to honor her legacy is to preserve the right of marriage for same-sex couples, thereby providing the dignity and respect that Del and Phyllis' love deserved."

In 2003, lesbian filmmaker Joan E. Biren released "No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon," a 57-minute documentary focusing on the couple's activism and relationship.

That year, the couple spoke to The Noe Valley Voice, a newspaper covering their San Francisco neighborhood, about the film and their drive to advance the rights of lesbians.

"We wanted our full rights and responsibilities," Martin told the Voice.

Lyon said she and Martin had no particular secret on how to keep a relationship going for decades.

"If we had a secret, we would have written a book and made a million dollars," Lyon told the Voice. "We love each other; we have similar interests. Our lives were very similar even before we met."

In 2004, San Francisco officials allowed gay couples in the city to wed, prompting a flood of applicants to the City Hall clerk's office. The officials chose Lyon, then 80, and Martin, then 83, to take the first vows.

The state Supreme Court voided those unions. Lyon and Martin, however, joined more than 20 other couples as plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the state's marriage laws.

On My 15, the California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, paving the way for Lyon and Martin and other same-sex couples to marry in the state.

A standing-room only crowd at San Francisco's City Hall on June 16 saw Lyon and Martin, in a wheelchair, take their vows.

"This is an extraordinary moment in history," Newsom said. "I think today, marriage as an institution has been strengthened."

Del Martin identified her own legacy in 1984 when she said that her most important contribution was "being able to help make changes in the way lesbians and gay men view themselves and how the larger society views lesbians and gay men."

In addition to Lyon, Martin is survived by daughter Kendra Mon, son-in-law Eugene Lane, granddaughter Lorraine Mon, grandson Kevin Mon and sister-in-law Patricia Lyon. >>>>

During Michael Phelps' races, camera shots of his mother Debbie were a fixture on NBC. The network showed endless replays of her falling to her seat after that memorable 100 butterfly finish. She even watched one race on camera with Cris Collinsworth, squeezing his knee the entire time. And after her son won his eighth gold medal, Debbie was all over NBC getting interviewed by Bob Costas, Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera. Michael's sisters, Hilary and Whitney were also in Beijing cheering on their little brother. All this coverage of the Phelps family led to one obvious question from our readers: Where was Dad?

It's been well-documented that Debbie and Fred Phelps divorced when Michael was 9. Beyond that, little else has been publicized about Michael Phelps' father. Enter: Fourth-Place Medal's Investigative Unit. Today the FPMIU looks into the mystery of the whereabouts of Michael Phelps' father.

Fred Phelps is a retired Maryland State Trooper, lives in a suburb of Baltimore and has remarried since divorcing Debbie Phelps in 1993. According to the Baltimore Sun, he watched the Olympics from his home, saying he was "on pins and needles" every time Michael dove into the pool. But, the New York Post reported that Fred has yet to call his son to congratulate him on his Olympic accomplishments.

Following the divorce, Fred Phelps had little contact with his son. Prior to the 2004 Olympics, Michael told a reporter that his father hadn't even called to congratulate him when he set his first world record. However, the two reconciled prior to the Athens Games and Fred even made the trip to watch his son win six golds and two bronzes. Since then, however, the relationship has reportedly fractured.

Fred Phelps declines most interview requests, citing a desire to have the focus remain on his son.

Mystery: solved.

Chris Chase

A woman who grew to be 7 feet, 7 inches tall and was recognized as the world's tallest female died Wednesday, a friend said. She was 53.

Sandy Allen, who used her height to inspire schoolchildren to accept those who are different, died at a nursing home in her hometown of Shelbyville, family friend Rita Rose said.

The cause of death was not yet known. Allen had been hospitalized in recent months as she suffered from a recurring blood infection, along with diabetes, breathing troubles and kidney failure, Rose said.

In London, Guinness World Records spokesman Damian Field confirmed Wednesday that Allen was still listed as the tallest woman. Some Web sites cite a 7-foot-9 woman from China.

Coincidentally, Allen lived in the same nursing home, Heritage House Convalescent Center, as 115-year-old Edna Parker, whom Guinness has recognized as the world's oldest person since August 2007.

Allen said a tumor caused her pituitary gland to produce too much growth hormone. She underwent an operation in 1977 to stop further growth.

But she was proud of her height, Rose said. "She embraced it," she said. "She used it as a tool to educate people."

Allen appeared on television shows and spoke to church and school groups to bring youngsters her message that it was all right to be different.

After Allen was listed by Guinness as the world's tallest woman, she won a role in Federico Fellini's 1976 film "Casanova," appearing as "Angelina the Giantess." She was featured in the 1981 Canadian documentary "Being Different." She also appeared in a TV movie called "Side Show" in 1981.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said he met Allen twice.

"Then, and from a distance, I admired very much the way she handled a uniquely difficult situation with uncomplaining grace," he said.

Allen weighed 6-1/2 pounds when she was born in June 1955. By the age of 10 she had grown to be 6-foot-3, and by age 16 she was 7-1.

She wrote to Guinness World Records in 1974, saying she would like to get to know someone her own height.

"It is needless to say my social life is practically nil and perhaps the publicity from your book may brighten my life," she wrote.

The recognition as the world's tallest woman helped Allen accept her height and become less shy, Rose said.

"It kind of brought her out of her shell," Rose said. "She got to the point where she could joke about it."

In the 1980s, she appeared for several years at the Guinness Museum of World Records in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

"I'll never forget the old Japanese man who couldn't speak English, so he decided to feel for himself if I was real," she recalled with a chuckle when she moved back to Indiana in 1987.

"At Guinness there were days when I felt like I was doing a freak show," she said. "When that feeling came too often, I knew I had to come back home."

Difficulty with mobility had forced Allen to curtail her public speaking in recent years, Rose said. She had suffered from diabetes and other ailments and used a wheelchair to get around.

A scholarship fund has been set up in Allen's name through the Blue River Community Foundation, Rose said, with proceeds going to Shelbyville High School.

"She loved talking to kids because they would ask more honest questions," Rose said. "Adults would kind of stand back and stare and not know how to approach her."

DEANNA MARTIN

Mahmoud Darwish Lauded as 'Symbol'

Seventeen-year-old Irjwan Assi never met Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, but she was in mourning all the same Wednesday as she craned her neck to watch his flag-draped coffin pass through the center of this West Bank city.

"We lost a very important symbol of our nationalism and our cultural heritage," she said. "We will never have more poets like Mahmoud Darwish."

Assi then recited a few lines from one of Darwish's most famous poems, written 40 years ago when he was serving time in an Israeli jail.

I long for my mother's bread,

And my mother's coffee,

And her touch.

The poem represents the yearning for a homeland that all Palestinians feel, Assi said, adding that she believes Darwish was even more important to Palestinians than former leader Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004. Darwish, 67, died in a Houston hospital Saturday from complications of open-heart surgery.

Like Arafat's, Darwish's funeral was organized by the Palestinian Authority and attended by thousands of people. The coffin was driven through the streets of Ramallah to a hill on the outskirts of the city near the Cultural Palace, where Darwish had read some of his poems just last month.

As the coffin was laid in the ground, the crowd chanted, "O Mahmoud, O Darwish, in our hearts you will live."

Adel Manna, an Arab citizen of Israel and a historian, grew up near Darwish's boyhood village in what is now northern Israel and knew the poet well. Darwish "liberated the old Arabic poetry from its constraints and made it accessible to a big audience," Manna said.

Many of Darwish's poems have been set to music. Dib Abdul Gafur, a water resources engineer, had a popular recording of one of them by the Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife as a ring tone on his cellphone.

"His poetry talks about the suffering of the Palestinian people caused by the Israeli occupation," Gafur said. "When you read his poetry, you feel something touches you inside and helps you fight the occupation and work toward independence."

Darwish was born in the upper Galilee village of al-Birweh in 1941. When Israel was created in 1948, his family fled to Lebanon, later returning to Israel. He graduated high school in Israel and moved to the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Haifa.

Darwish spent most of his adult life abroad -- in Cairo, Tunis, Paris and Moscow -- before settling in Ramallah in 1995. He crafted the 1988 Declaration of Independence that was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization. In recent months, he had denounced factional fighting among Palestinians, especially between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Abbas's Fatah, which dominates the West Bank.

In Ramallah on Wednesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was among dozens of dignitaries on hand to receive Darwish's body at the authority's headquarters.

"He was the master of the word and wisdom, the symbol who expressed our national feeling, our human condition, our declaration of independence," Abbas said.

Mohammed Batrawi, an author and a friend of Darwish's, said the poet had tried, through his verses, to give Palestinians wings to fly to a better reality.

"His poems were not the wings of a butterfly, but of a bee," he said. "Like a bee, the poems go to the flower to make honey. But he also knew how to sting when he was attacked. He wrote resistance poetry, but with a very human approach."

Linda Gradstein

Everyone at the Luda Kuca bar remembers Dragan David Dabic. The white-whiskered doctor lived in a block of flats around the corner and the local kids called him "Santa Claus".

The man unmasked on Monday as Europe's most wanted fugitive, Radovan Karadzic, was a regular at the bar. He would stop in every few days for a glass of red wine and pass a couple of hours reading and writing.

In retrospect, it is hardly surprising it was his favourite pub. The walls and bar of the Luda Kuca (the name means madhouse) are adorned with the Serb pantheon - Slobodan Milosevic, Vojislav Seselj, Ratko Mladic and of course, Radovan Karadzic - each one a nationalist hero. For the hardline clientele, the fact that they also shared the distinction of having been charged by The Hague war crimes tribunal only enhanced their status as warriors.

There were many stories being told yesterday about the man the locals knew as Doctor David, psychiatrist holistic health guru and mystic. But one winter's night in particular was passing speedily into folklore.

That night, there was a jamming session on the gusle, the one-string fiddle played across the Balkans to accompany epic poetry. Dabic turned up to listen and was eventually persuaded to join in. Those present that night shook their heads yesterday in disbelief at the memory. There was Radovan Karadzic, their hero and icon, playing the gusle for them under his own portrait, and no one had a clue who he was. It was the stuff of legend.

Raso Vucinic, a young Serb nationalist who had been playing the gusle that night, was burnishing a tale he would one day tell his grandchildren.

"He was wearing a black hat and a black coat and he was standing at the threshold, listening," Vucinic said.

"'You young players are the greatest treasure of the Serbian people,' he told me. 'Sing with and through the gusle. Speak about the Serb traditions. Hold the banner of our glory high.' And he would write down the lyrics of our songs about the war in Bosnia."

Then the white-haired old man was finally persuaded to pick up the gusle and play. He refused to sing, but the regulars insist he played beautifully. They held the instrument up for photographs yesterday. It was carved from elm with a large eagle at its head, and portraits of national heroes on its body, including one of Vuk Karadzic, a 19th-century champion of the Serb language and one of Radovan's forefathers. In the Madhouse bar, it was fast acquiring the attributes of a priceless relic.

Luda Kuca is a tiny place, but it is a social hub in the neighbourhood, a forest of concrete tower blocks in New Belgrade known simply as Block 45.

In the heyday of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia, Block 45 was a coveted address. It is near the Sava River and the blocks were interspersed with gardens. But the last three decades have been unkind to the district, since Serbia was cut off from the rest of Europe for its embrace of Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic. The gardens of Block 45 are now unkempt and dusty, it has become a no-go area for the police at night, and graffiti is engulfing the buildings like a disease.

Dragan David Dabic lived in a tower 50 metres from Luda Kuca. His flat, number 19, is on the third floor, and the name on the door is Maksimovic, the name of his landlord who was reported yesterday to be in "protective custody". Through the spy-hole a table lamp was visible, an old-fashioned tape recorder and a wooden bookshelf.

Dabic had lived alone for about 18 months, as far as his neighbours could remember, but had been joined in the last eight weeks or so by a woman known as Mila, quickly dubbed by as Mysterious Mila in the Belgrade tabloids.

Dragan Graovac, who lived on the sixth floor, said: "She would always say hello. She gave the impression of being an educated lady, well dressed."

As for Dabic, the bearded mystic on the third floor, he said: "He was always good with the kids, and he would always take time to talk to them, and they called him Santa Claus. I would see him buying a bottle of wine or two in the shop. It never crossed my mind it could be Karadzic."

Dabic's colleagues in the world of alternative medicine were equally stunned yesterday.

"I still can't believe it. The person I knew was good person, easy to talk to," said Maja Djelic, an acupuncturist who was one of Dabic's closest friends. Returning from a conference one day last October, Djelic had had a headache and Dabic had made it disappear by touching her temples with his hands.

"The people dealing with this stuff are usually charlatans, but not him. You could feel he had good bio-energy," she said. He told her he had learned his skills in the United States, where he had left behind an ex-wife and family.

The last time Djelic had heard from him, a few weeks ago, he sent her an email pondering the properties of the "magic number 11". He had promised to teach her the secrets of transmitting bio-energy, but would not now be able to do so.

"I'm sorry I can't stay a friend to the man I knew," she said. "I still believe in three days they're going to come back and say it's not him."

At the Luda Kuca, his old bar-room friends were just as wistful. "Some might say he looked like a weirdo, but I looked at him as a living saint, and I didn't even know who it was," Vucinic, the gusle player, said. "There was something special about him, an aura or charisma. He had the appearance of a saint, a prophet, a magus," said the Madhouse's owner, Tomas Kovijanic, known to his customers as Misko.

Yesterday, he stood outside his bar with a glass of red wine, regaling the throng of visitors with his memories.

"Every day I saw him and not even remotely would I have recognised him," he said. One day, prompted by the picture on the wall, the two of them got to talking about Karadzic. Kovijanic was bragging to the old man about how he was born just less than a mile away from Karadzic and how his family knew Karadzic's family. "He was listening but said nothing or made not even a single gesture that gave away he knew the places I was talking about," the bar owner said.

On one occasion last summer, a swarm of bees had descended on a tree above the Luda Kuca and made a hive which grew so heavy it fell to the pavement. As Kovijanic remembered the incident: "People got worried about being attacked and somebody brought some insecticide, but Dr David - Radovan - said: 'Don't kill the bees. Bees are blessed, living beings and deserve to be saved.'

"He brought a box and led the rescue effort. A friend of mine was a beekeeper and he came to take them away. Radovan wouldn't leave until they picked up every last bee."

Kovijanic felt no bitterness over Karadzic's deception, only pride at the memory of having shared his company in the Luda Kuca.

"I am proud that he was here, that he felt safe and secure here," he said.

"I am just sad because of what has happened and that he is going to a dungeon in The Hague."

Julian Borger

The birth of Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby, hit headlines around the globe three decades ago -- but the married mother-of-one wants to keep her 30th birthday Friday low-key by contrast.

Brown -- who lives in Bristol, south-west England, with husband Wesley Mullinder and 18-month-old son Cameron, working as a shipping company administrator -- remains reluctantly in the public eye despite her modest lifestyle.

Although her birth opened the door for millions of infertile couples worldwide to give birth to IVF (in vitro fertilisation) or test tube babies, Brown has no big plans to celebrate the landmark date.

"I'm not really thinking of it as my 30th," she said. "I'm just carrying on as if this is a normal birthday.

"I might go out with my friends or I might have a meal with the family. I'm planning on having a quiet one."

Louise Joy Brown was born on July 25, 1978 at Oldham and District General Hospital in north-west England by Caesarean section, weighing five pounds 12 ounces (2.61 kilograms).

Her parents, Lesley and John, had been trying to have children for nine years but could not because Lesley Brown's fallopian tubes were blocked.

The couple's breakthrough came when they heard about research being carried out by Cambridge University physiologist Robert Edwards and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and signed up with them for fertility treatment.

Researchers created a fertilised embryo from the couple's egg and sperm in a laboratory and then implanted in Lesley Brown's womb.

The baby it created was Louise, who was told about her unusual conception by her parents just before she started school.

"Mum and Dad showed me the video of when I was born and tried to explain it to a four-year-old," she said.

"I think it was just in case children at school knew, because children can be quite cruel...the children used to ask questions like 'how did you fit in a test tube?' and things like that".

Brown insists she had a normal childhood, "the same as any other child". She was not unusual in her own family, at least -- her younger sister Natalie, born four years later, was also an IVF baby, the 40th in the world.

Natalie Brown later went on to become the first IVF baby herself to give birth -- naturally -- in 1999.

Louise Brown soon caught up. She married Mullinder, a nightclub doorman, in 2004 and had baby Cameron in 2006, also after a natural conception.

Despite her shyness over being the world's first test-tube baby, Brown remains close to Robert Edwards, the eminent researcher whose work helped bring about her birth.

His colleague Steptoe died in 1988, but Edwards has kept in touch with the Brown family, even attending Louise Brown's wedding.

They were reunited again earlier this month at a ceremony celebrating 30 years of IVF at the Bourn Hall Clinic, a conception centre in eastern England co-founded by Edwards and Steptoe.

"Bob is really busy all the time but we really like to see him," Brown said.

"It's nice to have a close relationship. He's like a grandad to me."

Katherine Haddon

The archaeologists were delighted to at last find the remains of George Washington's boyhood home but got stumped when they looked for evidence of the cherry tree and rusty hatchet. "This was the setting for many important events in Washington's life," David Muraca, director of archaeology for The George Washington Foundation, announced Wednesday.

Most biographies offer little detail of the first president's youth, so the discovery may provide insight into Washington's childhood, he said. The site is located at Ferry Farm, just across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, Va., about 50 miles south of Washington.

Philip Levy, associate professor of history at the University of South Florida, found evidence that the house was a one-and-a-half-story residence perched on a bluff overlooking the river.

"If George Washington did indeed chop down a cherry tree, as generations of Americans have believed, this is where it happened," said Levy. The researchers said the artifacts they have recovered did not include a hatchet.

"There is little actual documentary evidence of Washington's formative years. What we see at this site is the best available window into the setting that nurtured the father of our country," Levy said.

Three likely locations were excavated over seven years. The site where the foundations of Washington's home were discovered was built during the first part of the 18th century — Washington was born in 1732 — fit the type of house in which Washington would have lived and also yielded artifacts likely linked to his family.

"Now that we have identified the home, we can begin understanding Washington's childhood," Muraca said, as well as dispel some of the folklore surrounding the president's life. For instance, the tale of Washington's chopping down the cherry tree with a hatchet and confessing to his father has never been proven.

"We see a county-level gentry home," he said. Washington's father "was wealthy within the county ... not on the colonial level but locally important, and we see a home befitting that status." The house measured about 53-feet by 37-feet, with a central hallway and two rooms on each side of the hallway.

The eventual goal, Muraca said, is to rebuild the home as it was in the 1740s.

Levy and Muraca spoke at a teleconference organized by the National Geographic Society, which helped fund the work. Research at the location has continued for seven seasons.

The 113-acre Ferry Farm — itself a National Historic Landmark — was known as the former home of the Washington family, but previous attempts to locate the house itself had been unsuccessful.

Most of the wood from the home was reused by builders on other structures or was damaged in the Civil War, and part of the foundation eroded away, the researchers said.

But after digging through layers of dirt the archaeologists found two chimney bases and stone-lined cellars and root cellars.

The cellars held a large number of artifacts including pieces of the house's ceilings and painted walls, fragments of 18th century pottery and other ceramics, glass shards, wig curlers and toothbrush handles made of bone.

Muraca said they also recovered larger objects such as pieces of a tea set that probably belonged to George's mother, Mary Ball Washington; wine bottles, knives, forks and 10 pieces of a group of small figurines that might have stood on a mantel.

They also discovered a well-used pipe bowl, blackened from smoking, that was marked with a Masonic crest. Washington joined the Fredericksburg Lodge of the Masons in 1753.

"While we can't say that this was George Washington's pipe, we can wonder about it," Levy said.

And there were burned remains of a fire at the farm on Christmas Eve, 1740, which Washington mentioned in letters. During the Civil War the farm served as a staging site for Union soldiers attacking Fredericksburg.

Washington was known to swim in the Rappahannock and to take the ferry to Fredericksburg and grew to adulthood at the farm. But he spent less time there as he got older.

He eventually moved to his half-brother's estate at Little Hunting Creek, south of Alexandria, Va., later renamed Mount Vernon.

In addition to National Geographic, the research is funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, The Dominion Foundation, the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation and many individuals.

RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

President Bush and new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stood united Monday on issues like Iran and North Korea. But for all their handshakes and smiles, it is clear that thorny issues like missile defense are in a holding pattern until a new U.S. president takes office.

In their first sit down as heads of state, Bush called Medvedev a "smart" guy who is well versed in foreign policy. Medvedev casually referred to Bush as "George." Yet they inched no closer on the missile defense issue during their more than hour-long discussion on the sidelines of a summit here.

A Kremlin aide described the private meeting as open and constructive, but "at times critical."

The public comments by the two presidents only glossed over Russia's anger over missile defense. And they both brushed off the fact that their official relationship will expire in fewer than 200 days when the Bush presidency ends.

"We will build on the relationship with the new American administration," said Medvedev. "But we still have six months with the effective administration and we'll try to intensify our dialogue with this administration."

The Russian leader said he and Bush agreed on curtailing the nuclear weapon capability of Iran and North Korea.

"But then certainly there are others with respect to European affairs and missile defense where we have differences," Medvedev said. "We would like to agree on these matters, as well, and we also feel very comfortable in our dealings with George."

Like former Russian President Vladimir Putin, still the top powerbroker in Moscow, Medvedev remains critical of the West, in particular the United States. He has shown no sign of softening opposition to U.S. plans for missile defense facilities in Europe or to NATO's promise to eventually invite Georgia and Ukraine in.

Personal relations between the two appear warm, but Bush didn't go as far as to repeat what he said about Putin when he first met him in June 2001. Then, Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and "was able to get a sense of his soul."

"I'm not going to sit here and psychoanalyze the man, but I will tell you that he's very comfortable, he's confident, and that I believe that when he tells me something, he means it," Bush said.

The two, however, are at opposite ends of their political lives. Bush is on his way out and Medvedev just took office in May. This is Bush's eighth and final G-8. This is Medvedev's freshman year at the summit.

"I reminded him that yes I'm leaving, but not until six months, and I'm sprinting to the finish," Bush said. "So we can get a lot done together, and you know there are a lot of important issues like Iran. There's an area where Russia and the United States have worked closely in the past and will continue to work closely to convince the regime to give up its desire to enrich uranium."

The two leaders, who also are also are united in their fight against international terrorism and want to see a Middle East peace accord and a future for Afghanistan, talked on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations. Japan is hosting the event at a heavily guarded luxury resort atop Poromoi Mountain in Hokkaido, an island in northern Japan.

From there, visitors normally can see the doughnut-shaped Lake Toya, formed in a crater of a collapsed volcano. Not Monday. Sheets of rain pelted the scenic mountain and the weather offered a metaphor for the contentious U.S.-Russia discussions on missile defense: Fogged in.

U.S. and Polish officials are negotiating to base American missiles in Poland for a future missile shield against Iran. Still, there is no guarantee the shield will ever be built or would work as advertised. Negotiations over the 10 missile interceptors are proving more contentious than the U.S. had anticipated.

The site would be linked to a missile-tracking radar that Washington wants to place in the Czech Republic. The Czech government has agreed in principle to the plan, but parliament's approval is still needed.

Russia is staunchly against the U.S. plans, arguing that U.S. military installations in former Soviet satellites so close to its borders would pose a threat Russian security. Moscow has threatened to aim its own missiles at any eventual base in Poland or the Czech Republic.

The U.S. maintains that the plan poses no threat to the Kremlin's vast nuclear arsenal.

After the talks, a Kremlin aide accentuated the positive in U.S.-Russian relations, but said Bush and Medvedev made no progress on the missile-defense issue — the major point of disagreement between them.

Sergei Prikhodko said the talks were "exclusively well-intentioned, constructive, and open, but at times critical."

Prikhodko said Russia is not yet satisfied with transparency measures the United States has offered to take in order to ease Moscow's concerns the system would be aimed at weakening Russia's defenses.

Medvedev also expressed serious concern about media reports that the U.S. has discussed the possibility of deploying interceptors in Lithuania, if its first choice of basing them in Poland doesn't work out.

"This is absolutely unacceptable for the Russian Federation," Prikhodko said of the Lithuanian plan.

Bush and Medvedev met on the opening day of the summit, a day focused on aid to Africa and on whether the world's economic powers were providing enough financial assistance to fight disease and improve health care.

Bush, who also attended summit sessions with several African nations, is calling on G-8 nations to write checks to make good on their pledges to help battle HIV-AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

DEB RIECHMANN