Some news snippets for you…

• Team Unibet.com won’t be racing in Italy this year, apparently.
• Ivan Basso (aka My Boyfriend) is giving lots of interviews lately. This time he’s talking to Skylife about - among other things - the recent soccer riots in Italy.
• Dammit. Basso went back to Europe after the Discovery Team’s California training camp instead of coming up to Oregon to visit new sponsor Nike. (Didn’t he get my memo??) Well, he’ll be back on the West coast soon for the Tour of California, so my hopes aren’t dashed completely. Yet.
• It’s great to see races in the US attracting top European teams and riders - it’ll be quite cool to see the World Champion’s rainbow jersey racing in the Tour of California this month.
• David Millar has some things to say about the Operación Puerto scandal. And he should know about doping scandals.
• Alessandro Petacchi might not have beaten sprinting rival Tom Boonen in Qatar, but he’s the King of the Etruscans - for the 3rd year in a row. Full race report and pictures are here.
• New team Tinkoff Credit Systems has its first win in Langkawi, getting it one step closer to a wild card slot in the Giro. The post also has some videos of the stage as well.
• More amusing than the apparent need for Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow to announce that they are not, in fact, back together are the comments on this post. Amazing how people can look at the same set of facts and come to completely different conclusions.