News of Note
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Making the Mark - Saddam trial resumes
Baghdad District Calm After Gunbattles
Violence puts billions in U.S. projects at risk
Blame flies over Iraqi leadership stalemate

Operation Enduring Freedom
Soldiers Kill 5 Afghan Militants

Homeland Security / War on Terror
Doctor: Moussaoui Delusional- Video: Terror on Trial
Yemen jails Islamists for plot to kidnap Americans

Troops on Trial
General can testify in abuse case trial

Immigration
Citizenship Requests Spike Among Immigrants
Brutal life for immigrants in Mexico
A lesson in immigration (How a 'guest worker' program worked - or rather, didn't - in Germany)

Hamas Rising
U.S. Warns Israel to Think Twice Before Retaliation
Hamas denies storing weapons in Jordan
Bombing in Israel gets mixed reaction

Worldwide Wackos
Iran unlikely to meet UN nuclear demands: Straw
US envoy says sanctions debated against Iran
Agents say Iran seeking US arms

Politics
Bush Taps New OMB Chief, Says Rumsfeld Should Stay
Video: Bush Defends Rumsfeld
Rumsfeld: I won't quit
Bush Signals More White House Changes

Oddities
There once was a very small city
Sex expert says German cannibal had no urge to kill
Mr. Twinkie used to sleep here
Trashed wallet holding $900 returned by homeless man
Easter Bunny accused of socking customer
Changing traffic signals put man in police spotlight
Georgia county to repay inmates charged jail room, board

Other News of Note
Paper Chase (Duke lacrosse incident)
FBI wants columnist's reporting materials
Germany favors opening WWII archives detailing Nazi atrocities
Children aren't harmed by fillings that have mercury, 2 new studies say

Fox News
Detention of Holloway Suspect Extended
Commuters Trapped for Hours on NYC Tramway
Nepalese Police Arrest 250 Protesting Professors
Dow Ends Up 195 Points
Peru Bus Accident Kills 25
Chinese Leader Visits U.S.
Mo. Gunman Kills Three, Self
NEW! Small Business Page
NEW! Cybersecurity Center

Reuters: Top News
Hu brings deals and promises to wary US
China's Hu promotes closer ties on US trip - Video
Safeguards for refugees under threat: UN agency
After 50 years, Alabama pardons Rosa Parks
Google to search inside business software programs
China software still a pirate's game
Global sex survey shows men get more satisfaction
Skin cancer epidemic underway in the US
Baby girl for Holmes and Cruise
Bahrain label says Michael Jackson plans new album
Pfizer profit jumps on lower costs
Coca-Cola Q1 profit rises
Home loan demand down as rates hit new highs
Pfizer profit jumps on lower costs
User numbers to boost China Mobile Q1 profit
Yahoo results meet expectations, ads seen solid
Wall St. seen higher on techs, ongoing Fed relief
UK's Vectura signs inhaler drug deal, shares jump
Nikkei up as US rate hike fears ease, Canon up
Stocks end nearly 2 percent higher
Motorola phones sales impress, networks disappoint
One for the smokestacks
Oil set to hit new peaks this year

AP World News
Chinese Leader Dines With Bill Gates
Lay Gives Skilling Good Reviews at Trial
Clippers Earn Home-Court Edge in 1st Round
Final-Night Shake-Up Jumbles NHL Matchups
IBM 1Q Earnings Up 22 Percent to $1.71B
Experts Suggest Spacing Pregnancies
Devils Capture Atlantic Division Title
Flyers Beat Isles, Take 5th Seed in East
AP: 'No Child' Law Raises Segregation Fear (Connecticut)
Trainer May Have to Testify About Bonds

The Seattle Times
Solving the nation's math problem
San Francisco pays tribute to triumph over 1906 quake
Fungus spreads among contact wearers
Government will make rain to clear air after storm (China)

Chicago Sun-Times
Foreperson didn't reveal past (Ryan trial)
Rejected, 'So they started their own'
Dalai Lama quietly drops by
Hispanics press Daley for clerk job
Novak: I owe success to U. of I.
City hopes gift cards will get guns turned in
Daley: 'No qualms' about Holy Land trip
Epilepsy benefit will honor activist
Feds: Trucker going too fast in I-90 toll plaza crash
Menu same, staff different as Berghoff Cafe reopens
Panel: Toll plazas can be deadly
1,000 protest not-guilty verdict for Milwaukee cops
6 months later, Cancun back to normal

Boston Globe: World
Death squads said to target youths(Guatemala)
Away from spotlight, pope sets his own course

Military.com
Hospital Ship to Visit Tsunami Areas
Rumsfeld Won't Be Called in Prison Case
Marines Seek Lighter Body Armor
Military Probes Drugs in Kuwait

CENTCOM: News Releases
AFGHAN-LED FORCES DETAIN INSURGENTS IN KANDAHAR

Department of Defense
Rumsfeld Pays Tribute to America’s Spirit - Story - Doolittle Raid Web Special
Pace: Military, Civilian Collaboration is Critical - Story
U.S. Central Command Shows Progress - Story
Americans in Horn of Africa Use New Weapon in War
Cheney Thanks Airmen for War Support - Story

IRAQIS TAKE THE LEAD
Iraqi Army Assumes Control in Salah al Din - Story

REBUILDING IRAQ
Iraqi Police Recruits Finish Training, Graduate - Story

ON THE GROUND
Afghan-Led Forces Detain Insurgents - Story

IN IRAQ
Air Force F-15s Save Army Ground Troops
Company C Aid Station Soldiers On Call 24/7

IN AFGHANISTAN
Aviators Make Historic Return to Bagram
Construction Program Improves Afghan Lives
Task Force Tiger Soldiers Aid Afghan School

FACE OF DEFENSE
Former Golf Pro Fulfills Dream - Story

AMERICA SUPPORTS YOU
Kids' Sacrifices Not Forgotten - Story - Letter

TOP NEWS
IRAQ
Iraq, Coalition Foil Terror Attacks
Marines Killed in Anbar Province
Operation Cowpens Concludes
Rice: Early Departure a Mistake
Fact Sheet: Progress and Work Ahead
Report: Strategy for Victory in Iraq
Iraq Daily Update
This Week in Iraq (PDF)
Multinational Force Iraq
State Dept. Weekly Iraq Report (PDF)
'Boots on the Ground' Audio Archive
Iraq Reconstruction
Maps

AFGHANISTAN
Coalition Responds to Casualties
Hospital Delivers Improved Care
Coalition Launches 'Mountain Lion'
Afghanistan Update
Maps

WAR ON TERRORISM
War on Terror Stakes Are High
Critical Views Not Widespread
'Faces of the Fallen' Extends Date
Ops Target Terrorists, Insurgents
Task Force Provides Gulf Security
Fact Sheet: Budget Request
Fact Sheet: War on Terror
Fact Sheet: Terror Plots Disrupted
Waging and Winning the War on Terror
Terrorism Timeline
Terrorism Knowledge Base

MILITARY NEWS
Reports of Attack Are Wrong
Web Site Offers Help for Stress
Interrogation Battalion Activates
Pass Program to Refresh Troops
National Guard, Reserve Update

Weather
Iraq
Al Azamiyah Al Basrah Al Hillah Al Karkh Al Kazimiyah
An Nasiriyah Baghdad Baqubah Mosul Najaf Nineveh Tall Kayf

Afghanistan
Bost/Laskar Ghurian Herat Kabul Qandahar

Gitmo

Today in History
0607 - Comet 1P/607 H1 (Halley) approaches within 0.0898 astronomical units (AUs) of Earth
1451 - Alam Shah of Delhi resigns throne
1524 - Pope Clemens VII fires Netherlands inquisitor-General French Van de Holly
1529 - 2nd Parliament of Spiers bans Lutheranism
1539 - Charles, protestant German monarch, signs Treaty of Frankrfurt
1552 - Mauritius of Saksen captures Karel
1587 - Sir Frances Drake sails into Cadiz, Spain & sinks Spanish fleet
1591 - Chartres surrenders to king Henri IV in France
1713 - Emperor Karel VI ends Pragmatic Sanctions
1770 - Captain James Cook 1st sees Australia
1775 - Minutemen Captain John Parker orders not to fire unless fired upon; Revolution begins-Lexington Common, shot "heard round the world"
1782 - Netherlands recognizes US
1825 - 33 patriotic exiles return to Uruguay
1839 - Treaty of London constitutes Belgium an independent kingdom and Luxembourg a Grand Duchy
1853 - Netherlands Van Hall government forms
1861 - Baltimore riots - 4 soldiers, 9 civilians killed; Lincoln orders blockade of Confederate ports
1863 - Union troops/fleet occupy Fort Huger, VA
1864 - Naval Engagement at Cherbourg, USS Kearsage vs CSS Alabama
1874 - Barracks on Alcatraz Island destroyed in fire
1890 - Henry Morton Stanley is inaugurated in Brussels
1904 - Much of Toronto destroyed by fire
1906 - Belgian naval education ship Comte The Stain de Naeyer sets sail
1916 - Italian troops conquer Colonel di Lana at Merano
1919 - French assembly decides on 8 hour work day
1921 - Funeral of last German Emperoress, Augusta Victoria
1923 - New Egyptian law allows suffrage for men, except soldiers
1928 - Japanese troops occupies Sjantung-schiereiland
1932 - President Herbert Hoover suggests 5 day work week
1933 - FDR announces US will leave the gold standard
1936 - Anti-Jewish riots break out in Palestine
1939 - Connecticut finally approves Bill of Rights (148 years late)
1940 - Dutch prime minister De Geer declares state of siege
1941 - Bulgarian troops invade Macedonia; Milk rationed in Holland
1943 - Jews attack Nazi occupation forces at Warsaw Ghetto under Mordechai Anielewicz
1944 - Allied fleet attack Sabang Sumatra
1945 - US aircraft carrier Franklin is heavily damaged in Japanese air raid
1947 - French ship explodes in Texas City harbor, kills about 522
1948 - ABC-TV network begins; Chiang Kai-shek elected President of Nationalist China
1951 - General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career
1956 - US actress Grace Kelly marries Monaco's Prince Rainier III (civil ceremony)
1959 - Uprising in La Paz Bolivia, fails
1960 - Baseball uniforms begin displaying player's names on their backs
1962 - NASA civilian pilot Joseph A. Walker takes X-15 to an altitude of 6,900 meter
1964 - Rightist coup in Laos, Suvanna Phuma remains premier
1965 - 1st all news radio station (WINS 1010 AM in NYC) begins operating; At a cost of $20,000, the outer Astrodome ceiling is painted because of sun's glare, this causes the grass to die and eventually led to the installation of Astroturf
1966 - Roberta Bignay becomes the 1st woman to run in the Boston Marathon
1967 - US Surveyor III lands on Moon
1971 - Sierra Leone becomes a republic (National Day); USSR Salyut 1 launched; 1st manned lab in orbit; Charles Manson sentenced to life (Sharon Tate murder)
1972 - Bangladesh becomes a member of British Commonwealth; Hungary revises constitution
1975 - India launches 1st satellite with help of USSR
1978 - Yitzhak Navron elected 5th President of Israel
1982 - Sally Ride announced as 1st woman astronaut; USSR Salyut 7 space station put into orbit; Guinon Bluford announced as 1st Black astronaut
1984 - Nemesis, death star of dinosaurs 1st appears in print (Nature magazine)
1985 - 16th Space Shuttle Mission (51-D)-Discovery 4 returns to Earth
1987 - Last wild condor captured on California wildlife reserve
1989 - Republic Day in Sierra Leone; Gun turret explodes on USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors
1990 - Contra guerrillas, leftist Sandinistas & incoming government agree to truce in Nicaragua's civil war
1993 - Branch Dividians/FBI 51 day standoff in Waco TX ends with the deaths of 4 FBI Agents and numerous deaths from suicide of the cult members; Fire in psychiatric institute in South Korea, kills 40
1994 - Inkatha ends boycott of South African multi-racial election; Rodney King award $3,800,000 in compensation of police beating; Supreme Court outlaws excluding people from juries because of gender
1995 - Truck bomb outside Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, kills 168 & injures 500

Birthdays
1320 - Pedro I, King of Portugal (1357-67)
1721 - Roger Sherman, signer of Declaration of Independence, Constitution; Thomas McKean, attorney (signed Declaration of Independence) [or 3/19]
1821 - Mortimer Dormer Leggett, Union Major General
1832 - José Echegaray y Eizaguirre, mathematician/dramatist (Nobel 1904); Lucretia Rudolph Garfield US First Lady (1881-1885)
1866 - Henri Deterding, Dutch oil magnate (Royal Oil, Shell)
1876 - Hendrik, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin/king of Netherlands
1877 - Ole Evinrude, inventor (outboard marine engine)
1883 - Getúlio Vargas President of Brazil (1930-45, 1951-54), modernizer
1905 - John S. "Jimmy" Thach, US pilot/Admiral (WWII)
1910 - Andrew Gilchrist, historian/diplomat
1912 - Glenn T. Seaborg, head of Atomic Energy Commission/chemist/discovered Plutonium/Nobel 1951
1922 - Erich Hartmann, German WWII pilot (downed 352 Russian aircrafts)
1931 - Denis Henry, British high court judge
1931 - Hendrick J. "Kobie" Coetsee, South Africa minister of Defense/Justice
1936 - Wilfried Martens, Premier (Belgium, 1979-81, 1981-92)
1939 - E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (Representative-FL)
1946 - Viktor Viktorovich Zabolotsky, Russian cosmonaut (BST-02)
1947 - Frits Castricum, journalist/Dutch MP (PvdA)

Passings
0843 - Judith, French Empress/2nd wife of Louis de Vrome
1044 - Gothelo, Duke of Netherlands-Lotharingen
1054 - Leo IX [Bruno von Egesheim und Dagsburg], Pope (1049-54), dies at 51
1390 - Robert II, King of Scotland
1645 - Anton van Diemen, Governor-General (Netherlands East Indies), dies at about 51
1658 - Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick English Lord High Admiral, dies at 70
1689 - Christina Queen of Sweden (1644-54)
1813 - Benjamin Rush, physician/abolitionist (signed Declaration of Independence), dies at 67
1862 - Louis Powell Harvey, Governor of Wisconsin, drowns
1881 - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl (Beaconsfield)/novelist
1882 - Charles Robert Darwin, evolutionist (Origin of Species)
1906 - Pierre Curie, French physicist/chemist (Nobel 1903)
1943 - Alexander Schmorell, Kurt Huber, Willy Graf, German resistance fighters, beheaded
1945 - J. P. Heyboer, resistance fighter, executed
1956 - Léon N. H. Jungschlaeger, head military intelligence Netherlands-Indies, dies at 52
1956 - Lionel K. P. "Buster" Crabb, British diver (WWII), dies at 47
1957 - Charles Funk, Encylopediest (Funk & Wagnalls), dies at 76; Johan W. Albarda, 1st Dutch SDAP minister (1939-45), dies at 79
1966 - Väinö A. Tanner, Finnish premier (1926-27)/minister, dies at 85
1967 - Conrad Adenauer, West Germany chancellor (1949-63), dies at 91
1980 - Alfred [Joseph] Hitchcock, from renal failure at 80
1987 - Maxwell D. Taylor, US commander 101st airborne (WWII), dies at 85
1990 - Vladislav Ivanovich Gulyayev, Russian cosmonaut, dies at 52
1993 - David Koresh [Vernon Howell], cult leader (Davidians)
1993 - George Mickelson, Governor of South Dakota, & 7 others, die in a plane crash

Reported Missing in Action
1961
Baker, Leo, ANG (AL); B26 shot down in Bay of Pigs (flight engineer, w/Ray), captured / shot (KIC), buried

Ray, Thomas "Pete", ANG (AL); B26 shot down in Bay of Pigs (pilot, w/Baker), captured / shot (KIC) - remains returned 1979

1966
Adams, Lee A., USAF (CA); F105D crashed on bombing run, Killed / body not recovered

Brown, Joseph O., USAF (CT); O1F shot down - remains returned, ID'd December, 1998

Robbins, Richard J., USAF (OH); A1E shot down - remains returned September, 1996

1967
Hamilton, John S., USAF (NM); A1E shot down - remains returned October, 1997

Madison, Thomas M., USAF (AL); F105F shot down (pilot, w/Sterling), released by DRV March, 1973 - retired as a Colonel - alive and well as of 1998

Sterling, Thomas James, USAF (TX); F105F shot down (w/Madison), released by DRV March, 1973 - retired as a Colonel - alive and well as of 1998

1968
The following US Army personnel reported MIA after their helicopters were shot down while making supply runs in the A Shau Valley of South Vietnam:
From a CH47A:
Blodgett, Douglas R. (VA); crewman

Dennis, William R. (PA); flight engineer

Gonzalez, Jesus A. (PA); crewchief

From a CH47:
Housh, Anthony F. (IL); flight engineer

Wallace, Michael J. (MI); crewchief

From a CH54:
Lord, Arthur James (GA); aircraft commander

Millard, Charles W. (NC); pilot

Shafer, Philip R. (CO); crewchief

Werdehoff, Michael M. (OH); flight engineer

Also reported MIA this day in 1968:
Wilburn, John E., US Army (OK); fell out of UH1H when it was hit by enemy fire and began to spin - presumed Killed / body not recovered