Kurt Vonnegut, Novelist Who Caught the Imagination of His Age, Is Dead at 84  —  Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan.

Bush aides' use of GOP e-mail probed  —  WASHINGTON - The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Imus Now Off MSNBC  —  NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — MSNBC has announced the cable network will no longer carry the "Imus in the Morning" radio show.  —  NBC News released a statement Wednesday night that detailed Imus's dismissal.  —  "Effective immediately, MSNBC will no longer simulcast …

Suing a Blogger  —  Big, powerful law firms like Nashville's King & Ballow really ought to hire someone with journalistic and new media experience to advise them on how to handle clients who complain about things published by bloggers.  Then they wouldn't do stupid things like issue threats …

McCain campaign to cut back on staff  —  WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record)'s troubled presidential campaign is eliminating some non-senior staff positions and cutting some consultants' contracts.  —  The Arizona senator's campaign characterized the moves as …

BLAST IN THE GREEN ZONE: EXPLOSION AT IRAQI PARLIAMENT KILLS 3 MPS  —  It was a suicide bomber.  (al-Jazeera)  —  Sunnis targeted? the list of wounded in local media show that most of the wounded were Sunnis, PJM Baghdad editor Mohammed Fadhil reports.  —  More details on fatalities …

In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud  —  Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

All lacrosse charges dropped  —  RALEIGH - State Attorney General Roy Cooper said today he would dismiss sexual assault and kidnapping charges against three former Duke University lacrosse players, declaring them "innocent of these charges" and accusing Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong of overreaching.

Blair blames spate of murders on black culture  —  Patrick Wintour and Vikram Dodd  —  Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture.  His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance …

The Real Surge Story  —  Sen. John McCain[" The War You're Not Reading About," op-ed, April 8] is right to warn about the consequences of failure in Iraq.  But he is fundamentally wrong when he argues that those potential consequences require us to stick with a failing strategy.