The US government has no exact figure for how many contractors are employed in Iraq and Afghanistan, inviting the risk of fraud and security threats, a US commission has warned.
A bomb hidden in a bicycle has killed five people at a busy market in the Shiite city of Mussayib, while a total of at least ten died and scores more were injured in series of attacks across Iraq Sunday.
The Iraqi parliament has put off a vote on a key election law after failing to reach a quorum, raising the prospect of January polls being delayed. Some MPs blamed a Kurdish boycott for the failure.
More than 60 members of Iraq's security forces have been arrested in connection with a double suicide bombing at the weekend that killed 153 people, in one of the worst days of violence in Iraq in two years.
Al Qaeda's Iraqi wing has claimed responsibility for Sunday's double suicide bombings in Baghdad that killed around 100 people and wounded over 500 more.
President Barack Obama led US condemnation of twin suicide bombings that rocked central Baghdad Sunday, killing at least 99 people and wounding hundreds.
At least 132 people have been killed and more than 600 wounded when two powerful car bombs targeting the justice ministry and the nearby governor's office went off in central Baghdad on Sunday.
In this edition: thousands of Shiite Lebanese are expelled from the UAE for refusing to rat on their compatriotes; civilians get caught in the crossfire in Yemen's civil war; students at a Cairo university are divided over a proposed niqab ban.
