Centre-left claims Italy victory  —  Italy's centre-left opposition has won a narrow victory in the lower house of parliament, official results say.  —  It won 49.8% of the vote against 49.7% for the centre-right, according to interior ministry figures.  —  The head of the centre-left coalition …

Lawyer: No DNA Match in Duke Gang Rape Case  —  DURHAM, N.C. — DNA testing failed to connect any members of the Duke University lacrosse team to the alleged rape of a stripper, attorneys for the athletes said Monday.  —  Citing DNA test results delivered by the state crime lab to police …

Wowie Zahawie  —  Sorry everyone, but Iraq did go uranium shopping in Niger.  —  In the late 1980s, the Iraqi representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq's senior public envoy for nuclear matters, in effect—was a man named Wissam al-Zahawie.

Immigrants Rally in Scores of Cities for Legal Status  —  WASHINGTON, April 10 — Waving American flags and blue banners that read "We Are America," throngs of cheering, chanting immigrants and their supporters converged on the nation's capital and in scores of other cities on Monday calling …

Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House  —  WASHINGTON - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

Immigration Advocates Rally Across U.S.  —  Crowds of immigrants and their supporters predicted to total in the hundreds of thousands marched today in more than 100 cities throughout the country, casting off the old fears of their illegal status to assert that they have a right to a humane life in this country.

France scraps youth job law  —  PARIS (Reuters) - French President Jacques Chirac bowed to weeks of angry protests on Monday and scrapped a youth job law in a climb-down that undermined his prime minister and handed victory to opponents of the law.  —  Chirac's decision was a personal blow …

Annex Mexico?  —  One difference between the demonstrations in France and the demonstrations in America: The French are demonstrating for the right not to work hard, while the demonstrators in America mostly want to work.  —  And most of them, I think, really want that.

It's that Time of the Month  —  It's time for me to do my update on Iraq based on the Iraq Index from the Brookings Report.  I was on vacation last week, so its one week late.  —  First off, US soldiers killed in Iraq continues to fall.  This is the 5th straight month:

Facing Down Iran  —  Our lives depend on it.  —  Most Westerners read the map of the world like a Broadway marquee: north is top of the bill—America, Britain, Europe, Russia—and the rest dribbles away into a mass of supporting players punctuated by occasional Star Guests: India, China, Australia.

Arrival of aliens ousts U.S. workers  —  An Alabama employment agency that sent 70 laborers and construction workers to job sites in that state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina says the men were sent home after just two weeks on the job by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for less.

Murray Waas Is the Woodward of Now  —  It should be obvious from the work who the Woodward of Now is.  And if it isn't Greg Sargent can explain things to you over at the American Prospect.  —  The guy's name is Murray Waas; he's an independent journalist who recently went to work …

Dean Is Mum, but Brother Backs a Lieberman Rival  —  HARTFORD, April 10 — At the Connecticut Democratic Party's annual Jefferson Jackson Bailey fund-raising dinner last month, James H. Dean was among the guests invited to sit at the table of Ned Lamont, a Greenwich cable television executive …