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French President Jacques Chirac has replaced his prime minister. Chirac is trying to build national unity after losing a divisive national vote on the EU constitution. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin resigned today and was replaced by Dominique de Villepin.

Tribal war veterans in Kenya are seeking restitution for atrocities they say were committed against them in the 1950s. At that time, hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were held in British detention camps, where they say they were tortured, executed and used for forced labor. A new book supports the Kenyan claims.

Stalin, a biography by Oxford University historian Robert Service, adopts a new view of the Soviet leader. Service says Josef Stalin was not the uneducated and coarse man he was often perceived to be. In fact, Service says, Stalin deliberately fashioned that image for himself.

The impending pullout from the Gaza Strip has roiled the political waters in Israel. Anti-withdrawal protestors have blocked traffic on main highways and threaten more acts of civil disobedience. Some Gaza settlers are vowing to resist the pullout by all means.

Alex Chadwick talks to Slate legal affairs writer Emily Bazelon about how the so-called "war on terror" may be influencing national policy on torture. Slate has published an extensive collection of data and documents on the events leading up to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the U.S. government's response to numerous allegations of prisoner abuse.

Democrats force the Senate to delay a vote on John Bolton's nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. A Senate motion to end debate on Bolton failed by a vote of 56-42. Republicans needed 60 votes to move Bolton's nomination to a vote of the full Senate.

Having met resistance from the Pentagon and from Democrats in Congress, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee today gave up on his effort to limit the role of women in combat. An unusual coalition changed the course of the defense bill.

The Senate confirms Priscilla Owen to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 55-43, ending a four-year struggle. A compromise worked out by a bipartisan group of 14 senators resulted in a process by which at least three Bush court nominees will receive an up or down vote, starting with Owen.

The U.S. nuclear posture, and to a degree the Russian as well, has not moved far since the end of the Cold War. Thousands of nuclear weapons continue to put potential adversaries at great risk. Many experts say it's time to take missiles off alert, as the Chinese have, and build a smaller arsenal made of bombs with smaller yields.

The House of Representatives votes to allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, setting up a possible veto by President Bush. The president has said he opposes research using human embryos. The bill passed by a vote of 238-194, not enough to withstand a veto.