For Democrats, Iowa Still Up for Grabs  —  The top three Democratic presidential contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key issues, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared …

Giuliani beats Clinton in new poll  —  Republican Rudy Giuliani, shown here campaigning yesterday at the NASCAR Nextel Cup Ford 400 race in Homestead, is the most popular presidential candidate in Florida, with 57 percent of voters willing to consider voting for him, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll.

Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves  —  Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic  —  Population With Virus Overstated by Millions  —  The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade …

Iraqis Joining Insurgency Less for Cause Than Cash  —  MOSUL, Iraq — Abu Nawall, a captured al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, said he didn't join the Sunni insurgent group here to kill Americans or to form a Muslim caliphate.  He signed up for the cash.  —  "I was out of work and needed the money …

DMV Stifles L.I. Man's 'Get Osama' Campaign  —  Hauppauge Resident Prepared To Fight For 'Free Speech'  —  There's a $25 million reward out for his capture, so it's no secret the United States government wants to get Osama Bin Laden.  But when a Long Island man wanted to express that thought …

A myth in the unmaking  —  Fox News's status as a politically impartial channel is at last being exposed as a fiction  —  Britons may be familiar with Rupert Murdoch, but I don't think the UK has a beast quite like the American Fox News Channel.  Celebrating its 11th year on the air, Fox is a breathtaking institution.

Collateral Damage  —  Casualties are definitely down.  Other places suddenly seem to need more urgent attention.  News coverage is shrinking, as is public interest.  All of which may help explain the breath of optimism one can now detect in Washington, and even in other places, about the war in Iraq.

STONEWALL GOV MUM ON LAWYER  —  Gov. Spitzer is stonewalling questions on whether he's hired a criminal defense lawyer to help him prepare to testify before a state commission and, possibly, an Albany grand jury on the Dirty Tricks Scandal.  —  Spitzer's communications director …

Effectiveness of D.C. gun ban still a mystery  —  WASHINGTON - Three decades ago, at the dawn of municipal self-government in the District of Columbia, the city's first elected mayor and council enacted one of the country's toughest gun-control measures, a ban on handgun ownership that opponents …