Gainesville

CORNELIA, Ga. -- With the presidential race nearly over, President Bush is hitting his stride at last.Buoyed by a strong showing in the final presidential debate Monday and reassured by the warm embrace of enthusiasm in mostly Republican towns along his train ride yesterday through the South, Mr. Bush is scrambling to show he is still in the running."

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A 29-year-old tradesman allowed into a suburban town house to clean carpets stands accused of beating and choking to death two University of Florida coeds who lived there.Alan Robert Davis, of nearby Newberry, was jailed without bond on first-degree murder charges after he described how he killed the two women, police said yesterday.Investigators continued to maintain that there was no link between the killings Thursday of Eleanor Grace, 20, and Carla McKishnie, 22, and the grisly murders of five other college students last August in the same part of this university town.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- In a discovery that rocked a college town still recovering from horror and revulsion at a series of murders last year, the bodies of two female University of Florida students were found yesterday. Police said the two appeared to have been strangled -- within a one-mile radius of the five previous slayings.Officers stressed that they had found no apparent links to last August's killings, but they also said that they could not rule out a connection or the possibility of a copycat.