AFP - Police said Thursday they had seized explosive materials in a raid on a suspected hideout of a member of extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) outside Manila but the owner of the cache escaped.
AFP - Anti-war Democrats accused the White House of plotting to saddle the next president with a "quagmire" in Iraq, as the top US war general faced a second day of intense scrutiny in Congress.
AP - An Illinois woman who says she was raped while working for a contractor in Iraq recounted the experience in a congressional hearing Wednesday.
AP - Police in Mauritania accidentally shot and killed one civilian and wounded another Wednesday during a search for al-Qaida-linked gunmen believed connected to the killing of four French tourists in December, witnesses said.
AP - As of Wednesday, April 9, 2008, at least 4,029 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,281 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
AFP - President George W. Bush plans to announce a return to shorter 12-month tours for US Army troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, ending 15-month tours that have strained the force, a US defense official said Wednesday.
AP - Errant mortar shells slammed into houses and a funeral tent Wednesday, leaving three children among the dead during clashes in a Shiite militia stronghold under siege by American and Iraqi forces on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. capture of the capital.
AP - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday she is the only presidential candidate who will begin a prompt drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, and rival Sen. Barack Obama cast himself as the one best able to turn the nation's economy around.
AFP - The United States on Wednesday urged the European Union to increase financial aid for Iraqi refugees.
AFP - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Gulf Arab states this month for meetings aimed at stabilizing Iraq and bolstering the Arab-Israeli peace talks, her spokesman said Wednesday.