BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s presidential election was postponed again on Friday, despite rival leaders’ agreement in principle to give the post to army chief Michel Suleiman in a step that would ease the country’s deep political crisis.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Investigators are probing the death of a top manager at Russia’s second largest bank VTB, who was found with his arms and legs bound in a swimming pool, police and law enforcement sources said on Friday.

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s ruling AK Party, which has Islamist roots, signaled on Friday it plans to ease a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in universities under a new draft constitution.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Fair Russia, a small political party backing President Vladimir Putin, will not nominate its own candidate for a presidential election in March, the party’s leader said on Friday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A female suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16 people and a suicide car bomb killed 10 in two attacks in Iraq’s most restive province northeast of Baghdad on Friday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A Shi’ite lawmaker and the head of Iraq’s main Sunni Arab bloc shouted accusations at each other in parliament on Thursday, underscoring deep sectarian divisions just days after Sunnis ended a brief boycott of the legislature.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The air still smelled unmistakably of blood and the street was still strewn with shredded store mannequins and clothes.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Nine Kurdish troops were killed when suspected al Qaeda gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Diyala province north of Baghdad on Thursday, police said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq will have to cut food rations in 2008 because of insufficient funds, Trade Minister Abdul Falah al-Sudany said.

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) – Eight Kurdish Peshmerga troops and three militant gunmen were killed in a battle northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, a spokesman for the Kurdish forces said.