After a long day following protesters and reporting on their clashes with police, I was exhausted. But just as I switched off the light in my hotel room I could hear the tell-tale sound of a Long Range Acoustic Device.

The police had been using the LRAD's high-pitched, piercing noise (along with "beanbag" projectiles and the good old-fashioned baton) all day. Sure enough, when I looked out the window I saw a few protesters had come to me for once, and were moving from Pitt University toward our hotel on Forbes Ave.

It was after midnight but I still went downstairs to check it out. I passed very few people on the street and a saw a couple of hundred students looking down from their dorm balcony, taking pictures. I wouldn't describe them as protesters -- it was just where they lived.

I moved into the side street and waited for a line of riot police to move on so I could check out reports that business windows has been smashed.

The police moved forward and the two on the end of the line turned towards me. One nudged the other who then sprayed pepper spray directly at me. When I started to run he threw a larger canister of pepper gas in my direction.

The Secret Service, which is coordinating security in Pittsburgh during the summit has taken exception to descriptions of the gas as "tear gas." Instead they said "CS vapor," which is similar to pepper spray, was used by police. I had my first unpleasant experience earlier in the day.

It gets in your eyes, nose and throat, stinging and making you cough so much you are nearly sick.

As the police passed the students on their dorm balcony they sprayed pepper gas up towards them, causing them all to run back into their dorm. Several other students told me they the police had indiscriminately sprayed them.

"We were just looking, then there were loud sirens and then it was hard to breath and I was coughing up a lung," said Pitt student Dustin DeMeglio, 19.

YouTube user pincus27 shot this video from the balcony.

Pincus27 wrote on the video caption: "As we were stupidly leaning over the balcony of our dorm, a riot was taking place and the police shot teargas up to get us off the ledge. This is not a bad reflection of the police, but rather evidence of our poor judgment."

UPDATE:

More video from Pitt dorms:

And when he showed his collection for spring and summer 2010 on Friday at New York Fashion Week, the industry elite -- including Vogue Editor Anna Wintour -- turned out in force for the show at the St. Regis hotel on Fifth Avenue.

Models paraded on a mirrored runway underneath enormous chandeliers, with some guests remarking that any number of the designs would be suited to the fashionable First Lady.

Here is a video from the show. Do you like his collection?

And here is what it is like for the photographers.....

A line stretched across several city blocks from the theater with fans chanting Jackson's name to passing tourist buses and singing his songs as they waited to see a 45-minute music and video tribute being repeated throughout the day.

Here's a look at fans inside the Apollo celebrating his life.

On the streets outside the Apollo Theater in Harlem, vendors were selling t-shirts, posters, badges, and music of Michael Jackson. And this little boy shows you are never too young to be a fan.

 "I'm trying to find something because I definitely want to come back here in the next couple of years," Rush told reporters backstage after winning the best actor in a play Tony Award on Sunday for his Broadway debut in "Exit The King."

He wants to create a link between Australian theaters and Broadway similar to the "pathway" he said exists between top London theaters and Broadway, which helps some British productions find their way to New York's Great White Way.

"I'd love to try and now help establish even a stronger bond for some of the great original work that's coming out of Australian theaters," said Oscar winner Rush.

"Billy Elliot The Musical," which won 10 Tony Awards including best musical, and "The Norman Conquests," which won best revival of a play, both came to Broadway from London.

A veteran theater actor in Australia, Rush received rave reviews for his Broadway debut in "Exit The King," which he and the play's director Neil Armfield adapted from Eugene Ionesco's 1962 play. The production, which played in Australia in 2007, finishes its three-month Broadway run on Sunday.

"I'm a very slow learner," Rush, 57, joked of his late Broadway debut. "It took me into my 40s to find the right time to be in film." 

"People have offered me roles before and I didn't really feel like plunging into being a guest on four-week rehearsal period on some kind of classic," he said. "I wanted to bring something out of our theatrical soil that we'd already tested."

(PHOTO: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

While Prejean, 21, hit the headlines last month for her opposition to gay marriage, it was the emergence of topless photos of the beauty queen that threw her reign into doubt.

At a packed news conference in New York City on Tuesday, Miss USA pageant owner Donald Trump said he had viewed the photos, some of which he described as beautiful and others as risque, and deemed them acceptable.

Prejean said some of the photos -- showing her topless but covering her breasts -- were taken by a friend for applications for modeling agencies and not for publication. Others that showed her baring her breasts were taken on a windy cliff when she was not aware that she was being photographed, she said.

It was Prejean's views on gay marriage, and the strident reaction to them, that threw her into the national spotlight in the midst of heated debates over same-sex weddings, which have recently been legalized in five U.S. states but banned in a California referendum in November.

Prejean expressed her opposition to gay marriage last month while answering a question from gay celebrity blogger and judge Perez Hilton at the Miss USA pageant where she came second. She said her answer cost her the Miss USA crown.

"I exercised my freedom of speech and I was punished for doing so. This should not happen in America. It undermines the constitutional rights for which my grandfather fought (in World War Two)," an emotional Prejean told reporters.

"I believe no one should be silenced if they are speaking from their heart. I am a model. I am a Christian," she said, adding that she forgave everyone who had attacked her for her anti-gay marriage opinions.

Prejean also said she had received an enormous amount of support for her views.

"For everyone out there listening, do not be silenced," Prejean said. "Take this story of mine and apply it to your own life. I hope I inspired others to maintain compassion, civility respect and tolerance while staying true to your convictions."

Should Miss California have kept her crown? What do you think about her views on gay marriage?

"Of the billions of women on this planet, only 19, we believe, could start wars," Vanity Fair said on its web site. 

"These modern-day Helens of Troy come from both hemispheres and include legends and ingenues, a Queen (Rania of Jordan) and a first Lady (Carla Bruni of France), and at least two bedmates of Leonardo DiCaprio (Bundchen and Bar Refaeli)," it said. 

Actress Halle Berry came in third place with 4 percent of the vote.

She released a picture through Reuters on Monday of her holding a sleeping four-year-old Malawian girl named Mercy James, whom she still hopes to adopt despite a court ruling in the southern African country preventing her from doing so.

The photo was first published in Malawi's Nation on Sunday newspaper. Madonna has lodged an appeal against a High Court decision earlier this month that said she could not adopt Mercy because she was not a resident of Malawi.

Malawi's government came under fire after Madonna adopted a 13-month-old David Banda in 2006, with critics accusing it of giving the star special treatment by skirting laws that ban non-residents from adopting children.

"I want to provide Mercy with a home, a loving family environment and the best education and healthcare possible. And it's my hope that she like David, will one day return to Malawi and help the people of their country," Madonna told the Nation on Sunday newspaper.