Iraqi Prime Minister Threatens to Block Shiite Cleric's Party. 

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will pick up the pace again as he meets British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street and the Queen at Windsor Castle. 

Half way through his 18-day global tour, Mr Rudd had a brief reprieve from his heavy schedule.

For months, a debate raged at the top levels of the Bush administration over how quickly to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. But the discussion shut down soon after President Bush flew to Camp Arifjan, a dusty Army base near the Iraqi border in Kuwait, in January for a face-to-face meeting with the man whose counsel on the war he values most: Gen. David H. Petraeus. 

The head of the crisis-hit investment bank Bear Stearns has blamed short sellers and market manipulators for spreading negative financial rumours to induce a collapse of the 85-year-old Wall Street institution. 

In his bleakest economic assessment to date, the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Wednesday that the American economy could contract in the first half of 2008, meeting the technical definition of a recession, and he encouraged Congress to help homeowners caught up in the mortgage crisis. 

When NATO leaders meet in Romania on Wednesday to decide whether to put U.S. allies Georgia and Ukraine on a path toward eventual membership, they will find themselves uncomfortably wedged between Washington's firm backing of the former Soviet states' bids and a Kremlin digging in its heels against any further eastward expansion by the alliance. 

Hillary Clinton has vowed to fight on in the contest to be the Democrats' presidential candidate, comparing herself to the film character Rocky. 

Speaking in Philadelphia, where the film Rocky was set, she said: "When it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit." 

Abdul Qader's suffering is part of the human toll of the worst violence in months in Iraq.  

While Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tours the United States, Europe and China, Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has launched a 'Listening Tour' of Australia with a message on YouTube. 

Dr Nelson's YouTube message promotes his three-week tour, where he says he will meet with Australians in service stations, shopping centres, farming communities and at barbeques and morning teas. 

Rudd owes US popularity to Coalition: Opposition

The Federal Opposition has welcomed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's warm reception in the United States but says he owes a lot of it to the Coalition. 

Mr Rudd announced today he will seek a seat on the United Nations Security Council from 2013 after an absence of 22 years. 

The Iraqi army's offensive against the Shia militia of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Basra is failing to make significant headway despite a pledge by the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to fight "to the end". 

From the New York Times ….. 

French First Lady More Than Tames British Press 

Was she the new Kennedy-Onassis or a reborn Diana? With her flat Dior pumps and calf-length gray overcoat, was she a high-school student on vacation, or, as one columnist asked, “Jackie O dressed as a nun”? 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for France and Britain to open a new chapter in their long-fractious ties overnight, as he received a red-carpet welcome in London with his glamorous new wife. 

In a rare address to a joint session of the British houses of parliament, the French leader proposed that the traditional 'entente cordiale' between the two countries be transformed into more friendly relations.