RAMALLAH — The Israeli government is reeling after Tuesday’s resignation of Israeli army chief Dan Halutz with calls growing for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz also to step down.

BERLIN (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and current EU President Germany said Wednesday the international Quartet for Middle East peace would meet next month, calling the time ripe for a fresh initiative.

BAGHDAD (AP) — A suicide car bomber targeted a market in Sadr City — the main Shiite enclave in Baghdad — killing 17 people one day after Sunni insurgent bombers killed scores of university students just two miles away.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President George W. Bush said Tuesday the unruly execution of Saddam Hussein “looked like it was kind of a revenge killing” and will make it harder for him to convince a sceptical US public that Iraq’s government will keep promises central to Bush’s plan for an American …

MOGADISHU (AP) — The Somali parliament stripped the speaker position from a top lawmaker closely associated with the recently ousted Islamist movement, a move the European Union said was disappointing and could hurt reconciliation efforts in the restive country.

KHARTOUM (AP) — Fifteen UN agencies in Sudan warned Wednesday that their relief operations in Darfur would collapse unless the government and the rebels took immediate steps to end the violence there.

CAIRO (Reuters) — An Egyptian court was right to convict a minibus driver shown in an Internet video being sodomised by police while in custody, but the police should also be punished, the man’s lawyer said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — Iraq’s oil committee has agreed a final draft of an oil law that sets rules for sharing revenues and boosting output and aims to bring in billions of dollars of foreign investment, an oil ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.

KUWAIT CITY (AP) — Kuwait’s emir told the US secretary of state that Washington should talk to Syria and Iran to improve the situation in Iraq, the Kuwaiti foreign minister said Wednesday.

REVIEW TOPICS: Yanukovich’s team in Ukraine concentrates economic and power levers of administration in its hands Scale of mass disturbances in Kharkov, Ukraine, has not been not known since 2001 Ukrainian parliament’s committee head insists on law enforcement bodies reforms Replacements in Security Service of Ukraine come to capital city …