AP - A former Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi detainees was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter Thursday in a first-of-its-kind federal trial that ended with some of the jurors shaking hands and hugging the defendant and his sobbing mother.

AP - As of Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008, at least 4,150 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AFP - A former US Marine was acquitted of manslaughter here Thursday in the shooting deaths of four unarmed Iraqi prisoners during 2004 fighting in Fallujah.

AP - The families of 12 Nepali men killed by Iraqi insurgents have filed a federal lawsuit accusing defense contractor KBR Inc. and a Jordanian subcontractor of human trafficking, saying the men were sent to work in Iraq against their will after being promised jobs in a posh hotel in Jordan.

AP - A senior official in Nouri al-Maliki's government was in custody Thursday suspected of ties to Iranian-backed Shiite militias and plotting a June bombing that killed 10 people, including four Americans, Iraqi authorities said.

Reuters - U.S. forces arrested the deputy head of a committee that purged Iraq's government of members of Saddam Hussein's party, an ally said, but the U.S. military said he was a wanted militia leader behind a deadly Baghdad bombing.

AFP - Radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Thursday ordered a halt to armed operations by his 60,000-strong Mahdi Army militia, blamed by Washington for some of the worst sectarian killings of Sunni Arabs in the war-torn country.

AFP - The US military will next week hand over to Iraqi forces security control of Anbar, a Sunni Arab province where some of the war's bloodiest battles have been fought, the provincial police chief said on Thursday.