BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S. military has begun withdrawing from Iraq the last of the five additional combat brigades that were deployed to the country in 2007, a U.S. military spokesman said on Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The man suspected of killing Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 is hiding in Western Europe, Russia’s chief criminal investigator was quoted as saying on Tuesday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon said on Tuesday a prisoner swap deal reached between Israel and Hezbollah marked a “big failure” for the Jewish state which had earlier refused to agree to such a plan.

KABUL (Reuters) – NATO troops in Afghanistan and Pakistani soldiers together killed a number of militants along the rugged border, the NATO force said on Tuesday, in a rare show of close cross-border military cooperation.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Four Iraqi men are suing U.S. military contractors who they say tortured them while they were detained in Abu Ghraib prison, according to lawsuits being filed at U.S. federal courts on Monday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Iraqi government sued dozens of companies, including oil giant Chevron Corp., for more than $10 billion on Monday, saying they paid kickbacks to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s government under the U.N. oil-for-food program.

The Estonian delegation headed by the country’s President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, has left a forum for Finno-Ugric nations in protest at comments made by the Chairman of Russian Duma’s (Parliament’s) International Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachev, who said that Estonia’s ethnic policies are “unprincipled”.

For censorship considerations, Russian media have concealed from their readers the fact that Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves left not only the conference room in protest of the slander against Estonia voiced at the so-called “Fifth World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples”, but he also left Russia and returned to Tallinn …

According to earlier reports, 6 people were injured. All of the victims of the explosions in Gagry are locals, Echo of Moscow (“Ekho Moskvy”) reported.

After the Command of Armed Forces of the Caucasus Emirate released the report about the successful operation in the village of Elistanzhi, the sources of the Russian invaders came up with their own “version” of the special night operation by the Mujahideen, as usual.