BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Forty senior al Qaeda in Iraq members were either captured or killed in November, including a senior adviser to the Sunni Islamist group’s leader, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union was in disarray on Tuesday over Russia’s widely criticized parliamentary election after French President Nicolas Sarkozy telephoned President Vladimir Putin to congratulate him.

TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s government stepped up a Western-backed crackdown on gunmen on Tuesday by deploying hundreds of security officers in the West Bank city of Tulkarm.