WASHINGTON: Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney hit an off note when he told a "humorous" story about his dad shutting down a factory. Actor Robert De Niro managed to get both Romney's fellow Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and the Obama campaign riled up when he joked at an Obama fundraiser that America isn't ready for a white first lady.

As Crowley points out, Mitt Romney was pretty well-poised to seize on Obama's open mic moment, in which he told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he'd have "more flexibility" on missile defense after his re-election. Romney dug in on the issue Monday, hammering the White House on the stump and calling Russia "without question our number one geopolitical foe" on CNN.

REUTERS - President Nicolas Sarkozy leads his Socialist challenger Francois Hollande for the first time in an opinion poll on Tuesday for round one of France's presidential election, but is still shown losing in the second round. The Ifop/Fiducial poll put support for Sarkozy at 28.5 percent in the first round on April 22, up from 27 percent at the end of February.

François Hollande, the leftwing French presidential frontrunner, is to stage a high-profile campaign visit to London aimed at boosting his international profile and explaining his drive to rein in the excesses of world finance. The former Socialist party leader, who has never served in government, is engaged in an increasingly bruising election fight with Nicolas Sarkozy before the first-round vote in April.