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US authorities have charged a man with providing material support to Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabab.
Zachary Adam Chesser, 20, was detained on 10 July as he tried to board a flight to Uganda.
He allegedly told federal agents he had twice tried to go to Somalia to join al-Shabab, which the State Department designated a terrorist group in 2008.
Al-Shabab has taken control of large parts of Somalia and claims to have links with al-Qaeda.

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond has written to the US senators who are calling for an inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted over the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people died, was released by the Scottish government in August 2009.
Mr Salmond said the Scottish government made the decision on “compassionate grounds” as Megrahi is terminally ill.
He said there were no representations from oil giant BP on the matter.
Libyan Megrahi is the only man to have been convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 on 21 December 1988.

A combination of favourable winds, helpful currents and the clean-up operation has meant that no fresh oil has reached these particular waters for five weeks. Other places have been hit instead.
It is a feature of this spill that the slicks are patchy and mobile, and only reach the shores occasionally.
For the pelicans we are watching, the conditions are still threatening.
Tom explains how, if oil coats the rocks, the birds can walk on it, try to clean it off and then ingest it with fatal consequences.
While we are talking, a shout goes up when one of the officials spots a pelican that is unusually dark. It is stained with oil: a victim.
It beats its wings to get airborne, but the oil weighs it down and we watch the pitiful sight of its failed attempt to fly.
The members of the rescue team debate the merits of trying to catch the bird; there's always the risk of causing more harm than good by disturbing other birds and nests.
In the end, a decision is taken to attempt a capture, and two boats manoeuvre close to the pelican. It tries to take off again.
Wildlife official Mike Pixley reaches out with a net but misses. But then, on a second go, he manages to scoop the stricken bird.
It is caged and taken at high speed to a treatment centre. It should survive, along with some 1,282 oiled birds rescued in all so far.
A further 969 have been found dead. These are the official figures up to 20 July.
The numbers may seem surprisingly low, given all the talk of catastrophe. They are certainly small compared to the hundreds of thousands of birds estimated to have died in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
So how serious is this BP spill?
Experts agree that it's too early to come to a definite conclusion – there's a lot of oil still out at sea. But they are divided on the impact so far.
Professor Paul Kemp of the Audubon Society, a leading conservation charity, believes the region is under threat anyway and that the leak's impact has been exaggerated.”The brown pelican population has taken a hit but we're not concerned about losing all of them,” he says.
“We had maybe 4-5 periods of a day or so in which we got oil in Louisiana. Most of time it's not coming ashore, it's not a continuous thing, and when it did come ashore it came as patches.”
Professor Christopher D'Elia of Louisiana State University sounds more alarmed.
“There are lot of unknowns. The geographical extent and the duration of this spill has been so long that it's very hard to say what's going to happen.
“It's so complex with dispersant used, things going on to the oil before it gets there, some good, some not so good.
“Will it get there as large gobs of heavier fractions? Or are there small droplets getting in and interfering with the food chain? We just don't know.”
Meanwhile the patient, uncertain work of hunting for the victims continues. I ask Tom Mackenzie how long that mission is likely to go on for.
“Who knows?” he says. “Months; maybe longer.”

Source:BBC

Thirty people were injured when a United Airlines jet hit “heavy turbulence” over Kansas.
The Boeing 777 was flying from Washington to Los Angeles at 34,000ft (10,000m) when it hit trouble.
A female passenger was jolted out of her seat so forcefully that she left a crack when she hit the side of the cabin, AP news agency reports.
Following the incident on Tuesday, flight 967 was diverted to Denver where it landed safely and was met by medics.
A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said 26 passengers and four crew members were injured, one of whom was critically hurt. He gave no further details.
The turbulence was “just a huge up and down,” according to passenger Kaoma Bechaz, a 19-year-old Australian.She told the Denver Post that the woman sitting next to her had hit her head on the side of the cabin, leaving a crack above the window, and a girl across the aisle flew into the air and hit the ceiling.
Ms Bechaz said she was not thrown around because her seat belt was tight.
The plane took off again from Denver later on Tuesday and completed its journey to Los Angeles International Airport, where relatives were waiting to greet the passengers.
It was the third time this year that passengers on a United Airlines flight were hurt because of turbulence.

Source:BBC

US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that the outlook for the US economy remains “unusually uncertain”.
In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr Bernanke said record low interest rates would still be needed to support economic recovery.
The Fed was also prepared to step in with “further policy actions” to boost the economy if needed, he added.
But he downplayed fears that the US could re-enter recession.
Some economists have questioned whether a withdrawal of economic stimulus measures could harm the US economy's recovery.
“Even as the Federal Reserve continues prudent planning for the ultimate withdrawal of monetary policy accommodation, we also recognise that the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain,” Mr Bernanke said, in prepared testimony.
“[But] rising demand from households and businesses should help sustain growth,” he added.
The head of the US central bank reiterated an earlier pledge to keep interest rates at their current historical lows for “an extended period”.
Interest rates have been held at between 0% and 0.25% – a move designed to boost lending and spending – since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008.
Inflation was less of a concern, Mr Bernanke also told the committee, with the Fed expecting inflation to remain “subdued over the next several years”.
The US economy grew at an annualised rate of 2.7% in the first quarter of the year, having emerged from recession last year.
But high unemployment and a slowdown in manufacturing have raised concerns that the recovery is faltering.
Mr Bernanke said that although the Fed would “review its options” if the recovery weakened further, no specific measures were currently being considered for the short-term.
“In short, it look likes our economy is in need of additional help,” remarked the head of the committee, Senator Chris Dodd.
Investors on Wall Street reacted negatively to the comments, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 1.3%.

Source:BBC

Share this page White House sorry for Shirley Sherrod 'racism' firing The White House has apologised to a black US official fired after a video clip appeared to show her making charged remarks about a white farmer.
Agriculture department official Shirley Sherrod was exonerated in the full video, which surfaced soon after she was sacked.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the apology reflected “the feelings” of President Barack Obama.
“Decisions were made based on an incomplete set of facts,” he said.
He said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was trying to telephone Mrs Sherrod to apologise.
In the edited video clip, Mrs Sherrod appears to say that in 1986 she did not give a Georgia farmer all the assistance she could to save his farm because black farmers were losing their land and he was white.
In Shirley Sherrod's bruising 24 hours at the heart of the frantic American news spin cycle, she found herself condemned by the black civil rights group which hosted the meeting where she spoke and then forced to resign by government officials who said they were acting on behalf of the White House.
No-one in government or in the civil rights movement bothered to ask what she'd actually said or ask for her side of the story.
If they had, they would have found in Shirley Sherrod a woman who had risen above personal tragedy to work for black and white farmers alike.
Whatever happens to Mrs Sherrod the case demonstrates that in Obama's America the issue of race isn't getting any less sensitive.
More importantly, it catches politicians in a moment of slavish and ill-considered over-reaction to the demands of the age of continuous news.
Mrs Sherrod said the video, first posted on a conservative website, lacked context and was part of a larger story about learning from her mistakes and racial reconciliation, not racism.
She also complained the department fired her without listening to her explanation.
Mrs Sherrod was videoed giving a speech in March at a dinner of a Georgia chapter of the NAACP, a prominent civil rights group.
The clip was picked up on by conservatives as evidence of anti-white racism in President Barack Obama's government and within the NAACP, an organisation seen as Democratic-leaning.
Mrs Sherrod was promptly sacked, her remarks condemned by the administration and the NAACP.
'Backlash'
But the video of her full speech, which surfaced on Tuesday evening, shows her explaining she learned from the incident that poverty, not race, is the key factor in rural development. She also said she ultimately worked hard to save the farmer's land.
“Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who haven't,” she told the NAACP in March.
“They could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realise then that I needed to help poor people – those who don't have access the way others have.”
The NAACP said the organisation had been “duped” by conservative groups.
“We have come to the conclusion we were snookered … into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias,” President Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement.
“It makes me feel better that the apology is finally coming,” Mrs Sherrod said after the White House apologised. “I accept their apology.”
In interviews on Tuesday Mrs Sherrod complained that government officials would not heed her explanation and accused them of ousting her because they were afraid of a conservative media backlash.

Source:BBC

Share this page Obama signs sweeping US financial reform into law President Barack Obama has signed into law the biggest overhaul of American financial regulation in decades.
The president said the law will ensure “that everyone follows the same set of rules, so that firms compete on price and quality, not tricks and traps”.
The law is a major victory for Mr Obama and the Democrats, who passed it with little Republican support after months of political wrangling.
It was vehemently opposed by the financial services industry.
The law tightens mortgage and consumer lending rules, improves disclosure for student borrowers and average investors and establishes a new consumer protection agency, among other provisions.
Almost every Congressional Republican opposed the bill, saying its new regulations would prove burdensome to businesses trying to create jobs.
The bill “fails to address the root causes of the kind of crisis it's meant to prevent”, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said last week.
“This is a bill that creates a vast new and unaccountable bureaucracy that, if past experience is any guide, will lead to countless burdensome, unintended consequences for individuals and small businesses, that will constrict credit and stifle growth in the middle of the worst economic period in memory.”
Several provisions are intended to eliminate government bailouts by dealing with an issue known as “too big to fail”, where a financial firm cannot be allowed to collapse because of the wider damage it would do.
There are provisions to enable regulators to shut down a failing large firm in an orderly manner and others intended to curtail their size in the first place.
These and other measures probably do reduce the risks of bailouts being needed, but in the end, future governments will most likely come to the rescue if the danger to the wider economy seems great.
For critics, the big omission is the two housing finance companies, known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were rescued by the government and which had some role in the crisis. The administration plans to reform them later.
But Mr Obama described the bill as a necessary measure to prevent future economic disaster, saying world's current economic troubles were caused in large part by “a breakdown in our financial system” and “a failure of responsibility from certain corners of Wall Street to the halls of power in Washington”.
“Our financial system only works – our markets are only free – when there are clear rules and basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excess, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system,” Mr Obama said at the White House.
In a note of irony, Obama signed the bill with great fanfare in the massive Ronald Reagan Building, named after a president who championed deregulation.
To a burst of applause, the president said: “Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes.”

Source:BBC

Share this page US reviewing dismissal of Shirley Sherrod for 'racism' A black US official fired after a video clip appeared to show her making racially-tinged remarks about a white farmer may be reinstated.
Agriculture department official Shirley Sherrod appears to be exonerated in the full video, which surfaced soon after she was sacked.
On Wednesday morning, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he would reconsider the decision to oust her.
Mr Vilsack said he was willing to review “additional facts”.
Mrs Sherrod said the video first posted on a conservative website lacked context and was part of a larger story about learning from her mistakes and racial reconciliation, not racism.
In Shirley Sherrod's bruising 24 hours at the heart of the frantic American news spin cycle, she found herself condemned by the black civil rights group which hosted the meeting where she spoke and then forced to resign by government officials who said they were acting on behalf of the White House.
No-one in government or in the civil rights movement bothered to ask what she'd actually said or ask for her side of the story.
If they had, they would have found in Shirley Sherrod a woman who had risen above personal tragedy to work for black and white farmers alike.
Whatever happens to Mrs Sherrod the case demonstrates that in Obama's America the issue of race isn't getting any less sensitive.
More importantly, it catches politicians in a moment of slavish and ill-considered over-reaction to the demands of the age of continuous news.
She also complained the department fired her without listening to her explanation.
In the edited video clip, Mrs Sherrod appears to say that in 1986 she did not give a Georgia farmer all the assistance she could to save his farm because black farmers were losing their land and he was white.
She was speaking at a March dinner of a Georgia chapter of the NAACP, a prominent civil rights group.
The clip was seen by conservatives as evidence of anti-white racism in President Barack Obama's government and within the NAACP, an organisation seen as Democratic-leaning.
Mrs Sherrod was promptly sacked, her remarks condemned by the administration and the NAACP.
In interviews on Tuesday Mrs Sherrod complained that government officials would not heed her explanation and accused them of ousting her because they were afraid of a conservative media backlash.
The video of her full speech, which surfaced on Tuesday evening, shows her explaining she learned from the incident that poverty, not race, is the key factor in rural development. She also said she ultimately worked hard to save the farmer's land.
“Working with him made me see that it's really about those who have versus those who haven't,” she told the NAACP in March.
“They could be black, they could be white, they could be Hispanic. And it made me realise then that I needed to help poor people – those who don't have access the way others have.”
The NAACP said the organisation had been “duped” by conservative groups.
“We have come to the conclusion we were snookered … into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias,” President Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement.

Source:BBC

Coca-Cola has reported strong second-quarter profits, beating market expectations, thanks to rising international sales.
Total profits were 2.37bn (1.56bn), up 16% from a year ago and narrowly above forecasts of 2.3bn.
The beverage maker's share price jumped 2.3% in the first 15 minutes of New York trading.
Revenues were up 4.8% to 8.67bn, thanks to rapid sales growth in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia.
Among the best growth markets were Brazil, where sales volumes were up 13%, and India, up 22% since last year.
The producer of Fanta, Sprite and Vitamin Water also reported a pick-up in growth – albeit at a more sedate 2% pace – in its home market of North America.
In Europe, however, sales were down 1%.

Source:BBC

Share this page Tributes to Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan A Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan on Tuesday has been hailed as remarkable and dedicated.
Sapper Brian Collier, 24, was killed in an IED attack near Kandahar.
“The bravery and remarkable commitment of Canadians like Sapper Collier are bringing safety and stability to the people of Afghanistan,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said
He had recently been wounded in a mine blast, and was the 151st Canadian to die in Afghanistan since 2002.
Collier, a combat engineer from Bradford, Ontario, was killed while on a foot patrol about 15km southwest of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, the Canadian department of national defence said in a statement.
“Sapper Brian Collier was a remarkable Canadian and a dedicated soldier,” defence minister Peter MacKay said in a statement. “He made the ultimate sacrifice for our country and has earned the recognition and the respect of us all.”
Collier had recently been wounded in another IED attack, but “fought hard to overcome his injury in order to get back to doing his job with his comrades”, Brig Gen Jonathan Vance, commander of Task Force Kandahar told reporters.

Source:BBC

A US judge has ordered Canadian-born tycoon Conrad Black to be released from prison on bail, pending an appeal against his fraud conviction.
Black, a British peer, is being freed on a 2m (1.3m) bond more than two years into a six-and-a-half year term.
The newspaper mogul will have to appear in a Chicago court before being freed.
Black and three other former executives of Hollinger International were convicted in 2007 of defrauding shareholders of 6.1m.
The peer was held in a minimum security prison in Coleman, Florida.

Share this page Lindsay Lohan feeds 'insatiable' media demand Lindsay Lohan has become the latest Hollywood star to have her private life played out in the public spotlight.
Yet the blanket media coverage of her recent travails is a far cry from Hollywood's so-called 'Golden Age', when stars were venerated and their indiscretions overlooked.
Silent movie star Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle not only survived charges that he killed a young starlet but was in the process of rebuilding his career at the time of his death.
Being accused of raping two teenage girls, meanwhile, did not prevent Errol Flynn bouncing back and becoming more popular than ever.
“For a long time agents and publicists wielded great power,” says Professor Leo Braudy, cultural historian and author of The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History.

The BBC and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reveal the truth about asbestos use across four continents, and a global network of industry groups that has spent millions of dollars to promote it.

US bank Morgan Stanley saw a stronger than expected profit in the three months to the end of June, despite weakness elsewhere in the sector.
The Wall Street giant made a net profit of 1.4bn (917m) compared with a loss of 138m in the same period last year.
Its shares were up 2.7% in pre-market trading on the results.
On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs disappointed investors after reporting a sharp fall in profits after being hit by the UK's bonus tax, a US fine and poor trading.
Morgan Stanley said employee compensation for the quarter – which included the bonus pool – was 3.9bn.
But it said it had set aside 361m to cover the cost of a one-off tax on bonuses paid to UK employees.
Meanwhile, another Wall Street stalwart, Wells Fargo, reported its quarterly net profit fell slightly to 3.1bn from 3.2bn a year earlier.

Source:BBC

Two men have been charged with stealing a customs form from Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
Prosecutors say the pair then attempted to sell the document, which contained Mr Armstrong's address, birth date, and signature, on an auction website.
A complaint filed in US district court in Boston, Massachusetts said one of the men was working at a Boston airport in March when Armstrong passed through.
The man allegedly helped Mr Armstrong, but did not properly file the form.
Mr Armstrong recently returned from a trip overseas to boost morale and support of US troops serving abroad.
The complaint said the bidding began in May for Mr Armstrong's signature with an offer of 200 (131) and topped 1,026 before the online company stopped the bidding in response to a bidder's concerns.
If the men, who are from the US state of Massachusetts, are convicted, they could both face up to 10 years in prison and a 250,000 fine.
Tuesday marked the 41st anniversary of Mr Armstrong becoming the first man to walk on the moon.

Source:BBC

A painting by a graffiti artist was among the official gifts to Barack Obama from David Cameron on his first trip to Washington as prime minister.
The work, Twenty First Century City, is by Ben Eine, said to be one of the PM's wife Samantha's favourite artists.
The 39-year-old artist recently sprayed the entire alphabet on shop shutters in a London street.
Mr Obama continued the art theme by presenting the Camerons with a signed lithograph by pop artist Ed Ruscha.
The piece, Column with Speed Lines, was chosen for its red, white and blue colours matching the British and American flags.
Writing on his website, Ben Eine said it had been a “weird day” because “David Cameron has given one of my paintings to President Obama in an art swap”.
The artist, who has worked with Banksy, began his career by “tagging” his name on buildings and trains around east London, examples of which are featured on his website under the heading “vandalism”.
In recent years he has been asked to decorate shutters in cities as far afield as Tokyo and New York.
Other gifts from the Camerons to the Obamas included two pairs of Hunter Wellington boots, one in pink and one in purple, for the first family's two daughters.
For Michelle Obama, there were candles made by London-based perfumer Miller Harris.Mr Cameron's six-year-old daughter Nancy was given a silver charm necklace, and his son Elwen, four, was a given a DC United football shirt.
Samantha Cameron, who is expecting a child in September, received a gift basket including a baby blanket.
When Mr Cameron met President Obama at the G8 summit in Tokyo last month, they exchanged bottles of beer, following a bet on England's World Cup clash with the US, which ended in a 1-1 draw.
The US president presented Mr Cameron with a bottle of Goose Island 312 from his home city of Chicago, while Mr Cameron gave Obama a bottle of Hobgoblin, made by the Wychwood brewery in his Oxfordshire constituency.
Swapping notes on the beers at a White House news conference on Tuesday, Mr Obama said the British bitter was excellent but confessed: “I did drink it cold.”
Mr Cameron joked that the American beer “was obviously very effective” because he had ended up cheering on Germany against Argentina while drinking it, “something that's a big admission for a British person”.
Mr Obama was criticised for lack of thought when he presented previous prime minister Gordon Brown with a set of 25 DVDs of classic American films, when Mr Brown visited Washington.
Mr Brown gave the US president a pen holder made from the timbers of a Victorian anti-slavery ship.

Source:BBC

Hope is rising that the ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well may be sealed for good in weeks after it was announced a relief well was nearly complete.
US crisis manager Adm Thad Allen said the tunnelling should finally reach BP's broken well by the weekend and he was “pleased with the progress”.
After fears for the stability of a cap BP put on the well, he said the risk of a new blowout now seemed minimal.
Seepage detected from the sea floor was traced back to a different well.
The cap applied last Thursday stopped oil leaking from the well for the first time since the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on 20 April which caused the disaster.
Eleven workers on the BP-leased rig were killed and the oil caused one of America's worst environmental crises.
Vast amounts of oil have entered the Gulf and BP says the cost of dealing with the spill has now reached nearly 4bn (2.6bn).
BP has moved to sell assets in Texas, Canada and Egypt in order to meet part of the clean-up bill.
BP vice-president Kent Wells said crews hoped to drill sideways into the blown-out well and intercept it at the end of July.
The relief well being drilled towards the damaged Macondo well is necessary to plug it permanently. A second well is being drilled as a back-up measure.
BP vice-president Kent Wells said the relief well was on schedule for completion.
“The relief well is exactly where we want it, pointed in the right direction,” he said.
“The intercept of the Macondo well is still for the end of July.”
At one point, Adm Allen had wanted to relieve pressure in the ruptured well by opening up BP's cap on the blowout preventer (BOP) and piping oil up to ships on the surface, but he relented.
Opening the cap would have required allowing millions of gallons oil to gush into the sea again for a few days while the pipe was attached.
Mr Wells added that experts were also considering a “static kill” whereby drilling mud would be injected downwards into the BOP, as well as sideways through the relief well, in order to seal Macondo.

Source:BBC

In modern politics perception is everything and armies of diplomats and press officers are engaged to make sure that we perceive what we are meant to perceive.
When former Prime Minister Gordon Brown last came to Washington the trip was held to be a disaster.
He was portrayed as a kind of foreign-policy Norman Wisdom, reeling and stumbling from one humiliation to another.
There was no state dinner. He presented President Barack Obama with a fabulous gift carved from the wood of an old slaving ship and received in return just a couple of DVDs. And finally their brief joint press conference was conducted sitting in easy chairs, rather than standing at lecterns.

“But until they change direction, the United States stands firmly on behalf of the people and government of the Republic of Korea, where we provide a stalwart defence along with our allies and partners.”
The warship dispute has led to heightened tensions between North and South Korea in recent months.
On Tuesday, the nominee to be US director of national intelligence warned that the incident might herald a “dangerous new period”.
James Clapper told a Senate hearing that Pyongyang might seek “to advance its internal and external political goals through direct attacks”.
Mr Gates said there were signs Pyongyang was becoming more provocative as it prepared for its ailing leader, Kim Jong-il, to hand over power.
“I think it is something that we have to look at very closely, we have to keep it in mind and be very vigilant,” he said.
Mr Gates said the US was taking steps to “further strengthen deterrence and also demonstrate our determination not to be intimidated”.
But our correspondent says Pyongyang is unlikely to heed the warnings from Washington – it has already dismissed upcoming US-South Korean naval exercises as “dangerous sabre-rattling”.
The first manoeuvres, in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) for four days from Sunday, will involve the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington and 20 other ships and submarines, as well as 100 aircraft and 8,000 personnel. Later exercises will take place in the Yellow Sea.
China has objected to any foreign military operations in the Yellow Sea, which is on the western side of the Korean Peninsula.
On Wednesday, China expressed “deep concern” over the plans.
“We urge relevant parties to remain calm and exercise restraint and not do anything to exacerbate regional tensions,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.
North and South Korea technically remain at war because their three-year conflict ended in an armistice in 1953 and no peace treaty was signed. The US has since stationed thousands of troops in South Korea.

Source:BBC

A group of US senators has repeated calls for an inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber, following a meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron.
Claims have been made that BP lobbied for the release, but Mr Cameron said it was the Scottish government that was responsible for freeing Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand said justice had not been served.
Mr Cameron has asked the UK's top civil servant to review government papers, but he has rejected US demands for an inquiry.

Share this page Lesbian receives 35,000 payout over cancelled prom A lesbian student in the US who was banned from bringing her girlfriend to her high school prom is to receive a 35,000 (23,000) payout to settle a discrimination lawsuit.
The school district in rural Mississippi cancelled the prom rather than let the lesbian couple attend.
The student, Constance McMillen, 18, became a minor celebrity because of the row, which led to heavy media coverage.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the suit on her behalf.
As part of the settlement, the Itawamba County school district agreed to implement a policy that would protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
The school district also agreed to pay Ms McMillen's legal fees.
However, officials said in their settlement offer that they did not believe they had violated Ms McMillen's rights and that a non-discrimination policy was already in place.