AP - If the shuttered factories that dot the Ohio landscape tell the story of NAFTA, so too do the miles of trucks carrying auto parts, fruit and tequila across the Mexican border through this booming port city in South Texas.

AFP - The destiny of the searing Democratic White House battle is on the line in two key states Tuesday, with Barack Obama seeking a knockout, and Hillary Clinton desperately reaching for a lifeline.

Reuters - Women have secured more places in parliaments and governments around the world in the past three years, a new study showed on Friday, but officials said progress is slow and only quota systems will speed it up.

AFP - Campaigners calling for a British referendum on a disputed new European Union treaty staged a protest Monday on top of a crane next to the House of Commons in central London.

AP - Hillary Rodham Clinton has scored comeback primary wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, denting Barack Obama's delegate lead in the Democratic presidential race.

AFP - Sudan has found remains believed to be of a French soldier missing after deadly clashes between EU and Sudanese troops near Chad, European officials said Wednesday as they worked to repatriate the body.

AFP - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was among the high-level participants at a conference Thursday on women's role in world affairs, though the EU organiser complained that others had chosen to stay away.

AP - The council of world leaders launched by former President Nelson Mandela is sending a three-person team to help ease tensions in the troubled Middle East, the organization known as The Elders said Friday.

AP - Former President Clinton highlighted his wife's support for reforming national flood insurance and for rebuilding wetlands in a town nearly wiped off the map by Hurricane Katrina as he campaigned ahead of next week's Democratic presidential primary in Mississippi.

AP - Andre Carson would appear to have everything going for him in Tuesday's special election to choose a successor to his late grandmother, Julia Carson, in Congress.

AFP - Several hundred Tibetan activists marched though New York Monday calling for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics and urging the United Nations to listen to their appeals for independence from China.

CQPolitics.com - Tuesday's Republican congressional primaries in Mississippi provided no definitive outcomes in the 1st and 3rd Districts, two strongly Republican-leaning constituencies in which the most recent incumbents are not running this year. As a result, April 1 runoff elections will be needed to determine the Republican nominees, who will be heavily favored to win the November general elections in these districts.

CQPolitics.com - Georgia Republican Paul Broun won his seat in the U.S. House by scoring a big upset in a July 2007 special election. Ever since, Broun has had to fend off the label of 'accidental congressman' applied to him by some of his political adversaries.

AP - The Senate rejected calls from both parties' presidential candidates to take an election-year break from pork-barrel spending as a Democratic-run Congress passed budget plans that would torpedo hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts won by President Bush.

AP - Sen. Arlen Specter knows a thing or two about bad health. Spry and physically fit at age 78, he also has a few secrets about living.

AP - Alaska's Republican Party chairman survived an ouster attempt Saturday night as the state's GOP wrapped up its annual convention.

CQPolitics.com - It may appear that House Republicans are running for the exits in outsized numbers this election year rather than seek re-election. But it only seems that way because so few Democrats are heading into retirement.

AP - Ladarius Beal is a rarity on the South Side of Chicago.

AP - Liberals are antsy. They haven't seen Democratic voter enthusiasm like this in a long time and they'd rather not wait until the party's August convention to harness it to the party's presidential nominee.

CQPolitics.com - The overwhelming victory margins long enjoyed by Louisiana Republican Rep.

AFP - The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was to meet the Dalai Lama on Friday, the first high-level official to do so following a wave of unrest in Tibet.

CQPolitics.com - The fundraising efforts of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which assists its party's candidates in U.S.

AP - The U.N. envoy for Somalia urged the international community on Thursday to take action to stop the violence in the conflict-wracked Horn of Africa nation and consider deploying an interim multinational force.

CQPolitics.com - The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which helps fund the campaigns of Democrats who are running for the U.S. House, reported raising $6.2 million in February. That compared to $4.6 million raised by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the partisan counterpart to the DCCC, which also filed a campaign report Thursday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

CQPolitics.com - The Feb. 5 congressional primaries in Illinois were supposed to settle the November general election matchups for the House seats of two retiring Republican incumbents.

AP - In 1971, a 10-year-old boy named Barry Obama enrolled at the private Punahou School and entered an unfamiliar world of privilege where he initially felt out of place. But he kept those feelings to himself and eventually prospered at the school.

AP - 'McCain Blogette' seems an oxymoron: a senior citizen and his presidential campaign chronicled by the Facebook generation.

Reuters - European Union peacekeepers raided the homes on Thursday of relatives of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, a genocide suspect on the run from the U.N. war crimes court.

AFP - US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Saturday stepped up efforts to wrest away his rival Hillary Clinton's blue-collar base amid heightening fears about the country's sagging economy.

Reuters - The United States is ready to make significant agricultural concessions to reach a new world trade deal if other countries open their markets to more U.S. exports, President George W. Bush said on Friday.

CQPolitics.com - Republican Gregg Harper is poised to come from behind and win Mississippi's 3rd Congressional District primary runoff Tuesday, according to independent analysts and Republicans in the state.