AP - Putting more U.S. soldiers in the streets of Baghdad risks a new showdown with a radical anti-American cleric who has modeled his movement after Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas.

AFP - The families of four British soldiers killed in Iraq have won a key legal battle in their bid to force a full public inquiry into the legality of Britain's decision to go to war.

AP - A prized statue of an ancient king that was stolen during widespread looting in Iraq following the U.S. invasion three years ago has been returned to the country's government, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

AP - Saddam Hussein appeared in court Wednesday for the first time since his hunger strike and hospitalization, looking thinner and complaining that he had been brought to the chamber against his will.

AFP - The tensions in the Middle East must not deflect international attention from Afghanistan's development as the war in Iraq has done, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said.

AP - U.S. and Iraqi soldiers captured six members of an alleged "death squad" in Baghdad on Tuesday, hoping to quell the rampant sectarian violence dividing the capital. Attacks elsewhere in Iraq left at least 34 people dead — including an American soldier.

Reuters - President George W. Bush told Turkish Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan that the United States wants to deal more aggressively with cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, the White House said on Tuesday.

AP - U.S. plans to add military muscle to curb sectarian violence in Baghdad will achieve only limited success without a political agreement among Iraq's religious and sectarian factions on the future of the country.

AP - The head of Saddam Hussein's tribe was killed when gunmen attacked a meeting in the office of a prominent sheik in Tikrit, police said Tuesday.

Reuters - The last contingent of Japanese ground troops based in Iraq came home on Tuesday, completing the military's riskiest overseas mission since World War Two without firing a shot or suffering any casualties.

AFP - The final batch of Japanese troops have returned home from Iraq, ending the nation's most significant military operation since World War II, officials said.

AP - The last batch of Japanese troops touched down on Japanese soil Tuesday, wrapping up the country's humanitarian mission inside Iraq, its biggest and most dangerous overseas deployment since World War II.

AP - The most wanted Iraqi fugitive claimed in an interview published Monday that key elements of Saddam Hussein's old army are now heading the insurgency.

A citizenship ceremony on Monday for three soldiers injured in Iraq was presided by President George W. Bush. Bush also promoted his proposal for overhauling the nation's immigration laws as he visited the Walter Reed Army Medical Center....

AP - Saddam Hussein's trial resumed Monday for closing arguments, a day after the former Iraqi leader was hospitalized and fed with a tube during his hunger strike to demand better security for his lawyers.

AP - As of Sunday, July 23, 2006, at least 2,564 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 2,026 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

AP - The U.S. military has dismissed all charges against a Pennsylvania National Guardsman accused of killing an unarmed Iraq civilian near Ramadi, finding that the soldier had reason to believe the man had a weapon.

AFP - The second batch of Japanese troops has returned home from Iraq after the nation's first significant military operation since World War II.

At least 30 civilians were killed and 74 wounded in a suicide bomb explosion in a bus in eastern Baghdad suburb Sadr district on Sunday. The explosion took place between Sadr City and Jamila district, a Shiite-dominated area....

AP - Iran left open the possibility Sunday that it might consider suspending uranium enrichment, one of the most contentious features of its suspect nuclear program.