Here is a brief look at the stories making headlines this week:
Iraq vote winner asserts right to form government [AP]
The leader of the top vote-getting coalition in Iraq’s inconclusive March 7 elections insisted his bloc still has the right to form the next government despite an alliance forged this week between two rival Shiite groups.
Big ideas’ key to US surge success in Iraq [APF]
The US troop surge succeeded in Iraq because the army embraced new ideas about waging war against insurgents, focusing on winning the trust of local people, top commander General David Petraeus said.
Abducted Kurdish Writer Is Found Dead in Iraq [NYT]
A Kurdish journalist was kidnapped here in the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, tortured and then found dead with two bullets in the head on a highway, his family and members of the security forces said on Thursday.
Iraq says Kuwait reparations are unsustainable [AFP]
Iraq cannot sustain its reparations payments to Kuwait for Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion, which it says are the highest paid by any country in history, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said Thursday.