Saddam Hussein

BANJALUKA - Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik announced in Banjaluka Thursday there would be more referendums in the Bosnian Serb republic, noting that they would be conducted electronically to facilitate the process.

All those having a registered residence in Republika Srpska for six months will be eligible to vote in the referendums, he said.

BELGRADE - The head of Republika Srpska has rejected a summons by state prosecutors, saying he would not travel to Sarajevo for questioning after he defied a high-court ruling by holding a controversial referendum.

Republika Srpska's President Milorad Dodik was summoned after Bosnian Serbs on September 25 voted overwhelmingly to maintain a "statehood day" holiday on January 9.

BELGRADE - US President Barack Obama has compared his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein, implying that Putin rigs popularity polls in his own favor.

Two suicide car bombs claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed at least 32 people and wounded 75 others in the centre of the southern Iraqi city of Samawa on May 1, police and medics said. 

Clashes between Kurdish and Shi'ite Turkmen paramilitary forces broke out late on April 23 in northern Iraq, killing at least eight people and cutting a strategic road between Baghdad and the oil city of Kirkuk, security and medical sources said. 

Iraqi police on April 19 unearthed two mass graves in the western city of Ramadi, with bodies of about 40 people killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants during the militant Sunni group's reign of terror in the city, officials said.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants are believed to be responsible for sulfur mustard gas attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, the United States said on Feb. 17.

Tensions are building up. It is as if several key actors are collaborating viciously to send the world into a catastrophe. Will it be a third world war, as some pundits have started talking about, or will it be the "mother of all wars" - as the propaganda minister of the devastated dictator Saddam Hussein of yesterday's Iraq talked about while the Americans almost occupied all of Baghdad?

Iraq announced on Feb. 2 that it has awarded Italian firm Trevi a contract to repair and maintain the country's largest dam, which is in danger of catastrophic collapse.

A delegation from Iraq's cash-strapped Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) agreed on Jan. 31 with the government in Baghdad to cooperate on reforms aimed at dealing with an acute economic crisis afflicting them both. 

The KRG and federal authorities in Baghdad rely heavily on oil export revenue and have been hit hard by the global slump in crude prices.