AFP – A man who played a key role in securing George W. Bush's reelection has become the first member of the president's inner circle to publicly break up with him insisting that Bush's 2004 rival, Democratic Senator John Kerry, was right on Iraq, The New York Times reported on its website late Saturday.

AP – The trial of a soldier accused in the rape and killing of an Iraqi teenager and the slaying of her family has been delayed after new information surfaced in the case, the soldier’s attorney said.

AP – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Saturday it will be difficult to make progress on important domestic issues until the Iraq war has ended.

AP – The Iraqi Interior Ministry on Saturday raised the death toll in last week’s suicide truck bombing against a Shiite market in Tal Afar to 152, which would make it the deadliest single strike since the war started four years ago.

AP – As of Saturday, March 31, 2007, at least 3,246 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,621 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

AP – Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Biden found a ready critic for his own criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq as the senator campaigned Saturday in the hometown of Shaw Air Force Base.

AP – The U.N. refugee chief said Saturday that the agency planned to begin basing non-Iraqi staff in Baghdad for the first time since the United Nations sharply curtailed its international presence in the aftermath of the bombing of its headquarters in 2003.

AP – The real deadline for Congress to provide more money for the war in Iraq is well beyond the April 15 deadline cited by President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

AP – Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite just back from barnstorming for support among Sunni Arab leaders across the Middle East, appears determined to make another run at the premiership.

AFP – US President George W. Bush, bracing for new battles with Congress over Iraq, moved Saturday to shore up his Republican base as he called for resistance against a Democratic tax plan, a traditional unifying issue for conservatives.