BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s parliament failed to reach agreement on an elections law on Wednesday, likely delaying into 2009 local polls that the United States and United Nations have pushed hard to be held as soon as possible.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic demanded on Wednesday that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the U.N. war crimes tribunal to back his claims of an immunity offer from the United States.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia buried Soviet-era dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn at a 16th-century monastery on Wednesday after a religious ceremony attended by President Dmitry Medvedev which bore all the hallmarks of a state funeral.