Mr Lazio had strode across to Mrs Clinton's podium and demanded she sign an agreement banning so-called "soft money" - unregulated corporate contributions - from their campaigns.Although she refused to concede the point then, Mrs Clinton signed just such an agreement a few days later. The whole thing has backfired on Mr Lazio, because of a television advertisement sponsored by Republican Party soft money that he was forced to withdraw last week.Mrs Clinton, quoting an editorial in The New York Times, accused Mr Lazio of breaking his word, and turned all the accusations hurled at her about dishonesty and lack of integrity back at him. "Last month Mr Lazio said that this was an issue of trust and character," she crowed, with barely concealed triumph "He was right. And if New Yorkers can't trust him to keep his word for 10 days, how can they trust him for six years [in the Senate]?"On Mr Lazio's legislative record, Mrs Clinton laid into his carefully cultivated image as a moderate and claimed he had voted consistently with the Republican leadership in Congress and toned down his positions only on returning home to New York. "Time and time again, my opponent only tells you half the story," she said.Mr Lazio made unconvincing attempts to call his opponent "extreme" on abortion issues, and to make political capital out of her failure to introduce universal health care in the first term of her husband's presidency.Arguably the toughest challenge Mrs Clinton faced was a question about her marriage, inspired by viewers of CBS television, which sponsored the debate. Why, she was asked, had she stayed with her husband?Revealingly, Mrs Clinton alluded to the right of every woman to make her own choices, and talked of the importance of her daughter, Chelsea, who was in the television studio audience. In her answer, however, she did not refer directly to Bill Clinton at all, and made only one vague reference to the importance of her "family".* George W Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, is now just two percentage points behind his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Al Gore, according to the latest daily tracking poll from Reuters and MSNBC television yesterday.

The poll put Mr Bush on 42 per cent of the vote against Mr Gore's 44 per cent.. George W Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, is closing the gap on his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Al Gore and now stands just two percentage points behind, according to the latest daily tracking poll issued by Reuters and MSNBC television yesterday. George W Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, is closing the gap on his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Al Gore and now stands just two percentage points behind, according to the latest daily tracking poll issued by Reuters and MSNBC television yesterday. The poll, which put Mr Bush on 42 per cent of the vote against Mr Gore's 44 per cent - a statistically insignificant gap - suggested that the Vice-President had been damaged by widely publicised allegations that he had elaborated or fabricated some of the anecdotes he used in last Tuesday's presidential debate.Although Mr Gore was deemed to have won that debate when it came to the issues, the Republicans have successfully focused attention in the past few days on details like Mr Gore's purported visit to the scene of devastating wildfires in Texas (in fact, he went to the state on another occasion after a flood) and his mention of a Florida schoolgirl forced to stand in an overcrowded classroom (in fact, she stood for one day while new computers were being unpacked).Over the weekend, Mr Gore sought to make up some of the lost ground by accusing Mr Bush of inexactitudes of his own.He responded to two claims made by Mr Bush: that Mr Gore has outspent him on the campaign, and that Mr Gore's spending plans would increase the government employee payroll by 20,000 people.The Vice-President called these claims the kind of mistake Mr Bush "makes on a regular basis".Mr Bush, meanwhile, got tangled up in the details of his ambitious tax-cutting plan, while on the stump in Florida.Having accused his opponent of "fuzzy math" during the debate, he had to admit getting trapped in some fuzzy math of his own - an episode seized on by the Gore camp as further evidence of his shaky grip on his own campaign issues.. Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, Israel's chief army chaplain, today instructed soldiers serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip not to fast this Yom Kippur They may need all their strength for other challenges. Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, Israel's chief army chaplain, today instructed soldiers serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip not to fast this Yom Kippur.

They may need all their strength for other challenges. The echoes of another Yom Kippur War are sounding for every Israeli old enough to remember the surprise attack, launched jointly by Egypt and Syria on October 6, 1973. You hear it on the streets, you see it on national television and read it in newspapers.The 10 days between Jewish New Year and the most solemn fast in the Hebrew calendar are traditionally a time for searching souls. There is more of it around this year than most: on the left there is despair that the dream of peace is haemorrhaging with every gunshot and molotov cocktail, every tear gas grenade and every rock hurled in anger. On the right, there is the suppressed jubilation of "We told you so".While opinion polls show a rapid decline in confidence that the Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, is up to his job, Israelis' frustration is focusing more and more on Yasser Arafat and the Arab world. It is enhanced by dismay that Israel's Arab citizens have joined the 'enemy' ranks.Yesterday, the columnist Nahum Barnea in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot lamented:"Yom Kippur, 2000, is one link in a chain that is connected to Yom Kippur, 1973.

It seems as if the circle of Arab hostility was never broken."If the mayhem of the past 10 days degenerates into another Yom Kippur war, Israelis will face it with greater solidarity than they mustered during the 18-year war of attrition that ended with the evacuation of South Lebanon five months ago The mood is uncertain, but stoic. Only a lunatic fringe is thirsting for escalation.Dozens of placards on Jerusalem walls proclaim: "Kahane was right". The late rabble-rousing rabbi Meir Kahane advocated the expulsion of all Arabs from the Promised Land. But his handful of residual disciples, who stoned Arab homes at the weekend, were quickly locked up.Israel will have the benefit this time of foresight and, apart from the army's ban on fasting, all leave has been cancelled for troops serving in the occupied territories. Some specialist reserves have been called up.By contrast, in 1973, thousands of serving and reserve soldiers were praying in synagogues when the sirens sounded. The roads became clogged with men trying to get back to their units on the Golan Heights and in Sinai.One of them was Maurice Singer, a 28-year-old immigrant from Southgate, north London.