BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s main Sunni Arab bloc rejoined the Shi’ite-led government on Saturday in a breakthrough for national reconciliation after parliament approved its candidates for several vacant ministerial posts.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A U.S.-based investment group laid the foundation stone for a $100 million luxury hotel in Baghdad on Saturday, a move Iraqi officials said showed the country was open for business with violence at a four-year low.

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Ten members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were killed in clashes with Turkish military forces in southeastern Turkey late on Friday, security sources said on Saturday.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Eighty-three percent of Pakistanis want President Pervez Musharraf to be removed and judges he sacked restored, according to a survey released by the U.S.-based International Republican Institute on Thursday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will visit Germany and Italy next week to encourage European investment in Iraq, the government’s spokesman said on Thursday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a rare public appearance, welcomed five Lebanese freed from captivity in Israel on Wednesday after his guerrilla group returned the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers.

The occupation command of Russian troops reported that under the so-called “Exercises” units of paratroopers gangs from the Pskov Province have been sent to Georgian border.

On photo: One of former hostages who survived by a miracle in Kadyrov’s personal prison in Hosi-Yurt   Islamic preacher Muhamadsalah Masayev told in his interview to New Gazette (“Novaya Gazeta”) about how he ended up in Kadyrov’s torture chambers after his sermon in one of the mosques in the …

The United States is concerned by the recent violation of Georgian airspace by Russian military aircraft over the rebellious Georgian region of South Ossetia, Sean McCormack, spokesman for the US State Department says.