TED KENNEDY DIES

US Senator Edward Kennedy has died after a 15-month battle with brain cancer. He was 77.
Kennedy, the senior Democratic senator, was diagnosed in May 2008 and underwent successful surgery two weeks later.
He survived much longer than doctors expected, though he was unable to attend the Senate in recent months, or even go to the funeral of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, earlier this month.
Kennedy was a towering figure in American politics, entering the Senate in 1962 in a special election in which he replaced his brother John, who was then President.
With the assassinations of John in 1963, and later his Presidential candidate brother Robert in 1968, he became the most prominent member of the powerful Kennedy clan.
He was the third-longest serving senator in history.
Born the youngest of nine children of Irish-American Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, he had a privileged upbringing, receiving his First Communion from Pope Pius XII in the Vatican, and attending Harvard University.
He met his first wife, Joan, while he was in law school and they were married by Cardinal Francis Spellman in 1958.
They had three children, Kara, 49, Edward, 47/48, and Patrick, 44, the Democratic congressman for Rhode Island.
In 1960 he managed his brother John's run for the presidency, an historic event because he was the first Catholic elected.
In 1964 he was seriously injured in a plane crash, and the months he spent in hospital inspired an interest in health care which led him to campaign for universal health coverage.
His interest intensified when his son Edward lost a leg to cancer and Patrick was diagnosed with sever asthma.
He held a number of different political offices, including chief majority whip, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman of the Senate committee on Labour and Human Resource, and Chairman of the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions, a role he held when he died.
By the late 1960s his womanising and his wife's drinking were causing strains in their marriage.
In 1969 Kennedy hit the headlines when a car he was driving ran off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, died.
He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a two-month suspended sentence.
He took an interest in the troubles in Northern Ireland, saying in 1971: “Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam.”
His call for a united Ireland angered the British, but he forged an alliance with Social Democratic and Labour Party founder John Hume.
In 1980 he ran for president, losing the nomination to incumbent Jimmy Carter.
In 1981 he and Joan, who had gone through several visits to rehab and had been arrested for drunk driving, announced they were divorcing amicably.
During the late 1980s he was instrumental in working on the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed in 1990.
But his private life overshadowed his political career, notably in the 1991 incident in which his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was accused of rape after a night drinking with him in Palm Beach, Florida.
The same year he met divorced mother of two Virginia Reggie, and they married in a civil ceremony the following year.
He publicly acknowledged that he had been going off the rails, saying: “I am painfully aware that the criticism directed at me in recent months involves far more than disagreements with my positions.
“I recognise my own shortcomings – the faults in the conduct of my private life. I realise that I alone am responsible for them.”
Reggie was credited with stabilising his personal life and helping him recover his status as a serious and senior politician.
In March 2009 he was given an honorary knighthood in recognition of his work on the Northern Ireland peace process.