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The new commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East gave a bleak assessment on Iraq yesterday, saying while Baghdad security had improved some, gains would be lost unless Iraqis found a way to embrace Sunnis in government.

Virginia Tech mass killer Seung-Hui Cho reached out from his grave to lament that "this didn't have to happen" and warned that "I will no longer run" in a bizarre multimedia package received by NBC News yesterday that he apparently mailed in the two-hour interval between two sets of slayings that took 32 lives and his own on the college campus Monday.

Theresa Walsh was one of the last people to see Liviu Librescu alive.

Procedure known as partial birth abortion blocked by Supreme Court, which could set stage for broader push.

It was another massacre that killed dozens of innocents and led to soul-searching about how to keep lethal ingredients out of the hands of madmen.

Two Michigan men have been indicted for spying for the Iraqi government before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country, according to federal authorities.

Liviu Librescu's coffin came yesterday afternoon to a place he had never been.

Seung-Hui Cho's behavior was so disturbing that he should have been required to undergo treatment and monitoring as a condition of remaining in school, some local experts said yesterday.

JULIA PRYDE, 23

Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho took an English class last year called Contemporary Horror in which he studied films such as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the slasher flick "Saw," according to two classmates.

Taxpayers in the Northeast swamped by a storm just before the income tax deadline can delay filing their federal returns for another week, IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said yesterday.

POLL: GIULIANI, CLINTON LEAD. Rudolph Giuliani's lead over his Republican presidential rivals has narrowed considerably, while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has maintained her advantage in the race for the Democratic nomination, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Arizona Sen. John McCain runs a solid second in the GOP nominating contest. But there is fresh evidence in the new survey that his focus on the war and on attracting conservative support have made him more polarizing as a potential general election candidate. Giuliani remained the front-runner in the national poll, but his support has eroded. In a late February Post-ABC News poll, 44 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents preferred the former New York mayor for the nomination, a figure now down to 33 percent. Support for McCain held steady at 21 percent.