Iraq Report: The search, Kurds attacked, SCIRI, Sunni moves  —  The search is on for the 3 missing soldiers who are believed to have been captured after a complex assualt on a U.S. Army patrol on the outskirts of Mahmudiyah Saturday morning.  Over 4,000 troops, along with aerial and satellite surveillance …

Bloomy tops Rudy in battle of the titans  —  Daily News poll shows overwhelming support for billionaire  —  Michael Bloomberg is not only a better mayor of New York than Rudy Giuliani - he'd make a better President, too.  —  That's the result of a Daily News poll released today that asked …

Endgame at the World Bank  —  If the World Bank were a company, its share price would have fallen 25 percent amid the current leadership scandal.  The board of directors wouldn't care about the scandal's details; it would have replaced the beleaguered CEO with someone who could lead effectively.

Teachers fake gunman attack on sixth graders … MURFREESBORO, Tennessee (AP) — Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

Hagel Continues Flirtation With Independent Bid  —  For The Fix, watching Sen. Chuck Hagel's (R-Neb.) political hand-wringing is like looking at the sun — you know it's bad for you but you just can't resist.  —  During a remarkably politics-free weekend in Alabama, this blogger happened to tune into …

Ground Zero Illnesses Clouding Giuliani's Legacy  —  Anyone who watched Rudolph W. Giuliani preside over ground zero in the days after 9/11 glimpsed elements of his strength: decisiveness, determination, self-confidence.  —  Those qualities were also on display over the months he directed …

Sunshine for the Virtual Town Hall  —  These days we want "transparency" in all institutions, even private ones.  There's one massive exception — the Internet.  It is, we are told, a giant town hall.  Indeed, it has millions of people speaking out in millions of online forums.

What I learnt from my stay with a Muslim family  —  Last week, Tory leader David Cameron spent two days in Birmingham with the Rehmans  —  The challenges of cohesion and integration are among the greatest we face.  I wrote in these pages in January that we cannot bully people into feeling British: we have to inspire them.

Gingrich Says There Is a 'Great Possibility' He Will Run for President  —  The Former Speaker of the House Warns GOP Hillary Clinton Has a Good Chance of Becoming President  —  Newt Gingrich for president?  It could happen.  —  In an interview with Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America …

Is It the Woman Thing, or Is It Katie Couric?  —  The numbers are stark.  Eight months into Katie Couric's job as the first woman to anchor a network newscast on her own, her "CBS Evening News" has not only settled back into its long-held position of last among the evening news broadcasts …

Norm Coleman Live Blog  —  Just preparing for the live blog of Norm Coleman's speech at the University of Minnesota.  Stay tuned!  —  10:05 CT - Larry Jacobs introduces the series of speakers, talking about the U's open-government projects.  This is one of a series of events, and I'm going to try to make a few of these.

Follow-up from Last Week and A Few Related Tidbits  —  Good morning, all.  It's a gorgeous day in the nation's capital, I'm already hyper-caffeinated, so let's talk economics!  —  Specifically, there were a number of interesting pieces out today amplifying and challenging our discussion about where the economy might be headed.

Gas Prices Set New Record at the Pump  —  Gas Prices at the Pump Exceed Post-Katrina Record, While Futures Prices Slide  —  NEW YORK (AP) — Gasoline prices hit a new record at the pump on Monday, but gas futures prices fell on concerns that $3 gas will crimp demand.

Defense Skirts State in Reviving Iraqi Industry  —  Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense, has been called a Stalinist by U.S. diplomats in Iraq.  One has accused him of helping insurgents build better bombs.  The State Department has even taken the unusual step of enlisting …

Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals  —  Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions …

Introducing ... Lew Koch!  —  A few months ago, FDL friend Rick Perlstein (now blogging at The Big Con ) asked me to join him and a friend for lunch.  The friend turned out to be Lew Koch, an award winning investigative reporter.  As we chatted, I learned that Lew has been following …

Shock as Sarkozy woos anti-US leftwinger  —  Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing reformer who becomes French President on Wednesday, upset both the United States and his opponents yesterday by offering the job of Foreign Minister to a Socialist veteran with anti-American credentials.

Take Chrysler.  Please  —  LONDON -  —  In the end, DaimlerChrysler had to pay to have somebody take Chrysler off of its hands.  —  After spending $37 billion to buy the U.S. automaker in 1998, and billions more keeping it afloat, DaimlerChrysler (nyse: DCX - news - people ) …

Mosques Are Shaken by Ties to a Plot  —  On the southern wall of the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society here is a mural painted by local schoolchildren.  In 18 different languages — from Arabic to Swahili — it depicts the world's various ways of saying "love," "hope" and "peace."