  We review the status of Standard Model predictions for lifetimes and mixing
rates of charmed mesons. It is shown that the short distance approach is able
to reproduce tau(D^+)/tau(D^0) at leading order in the 1/m_c expansion. SU(3)
violating effects from interactions with the soft hadronic background are
identified as the dominant contribution to the D-Dbar mixing rate. We discuss
the contribution from operators of dimension nine, which is able to enhance the
neutral charm width splitting by a factor of order ten and comment on possible
CP violation in mixing.
