Iraq Oil Report's Daily Brief compiles the most important news and analysis about Iraq from around the web.
Iraq inspected an Iranian cargo plane bound for Syria on Monday, a day after it searched a Syrian aircraft flying from Moscow to Damascus, the head of Iraq's civil aviation authority said.
No prohibited items were found on either flight, Nasser Bandar told AFP.
Mike Di Paola reports for Bloomberg:
In the 1990s, Saddam Hussein diverted the flow of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, then drained and burned the marshes of southern Iraq.
The reasons were mainly political; the effect was an epic disaster that killed or displaced tens of thousands of people and threatened to erase the very cradle of civilization.
A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi provincial elections candidate and three other people north of Baghdad on Sunday, bringing the number of candidates killed in attacks to 14, officials said.
Najm al-Harbi was on travelling to Baquba on a highway in Diyala province in his personal vehicle when the bomb exploded, killing him, two of his brothers and a bodyguard, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said.
Sameer N Yacoub and Adam Shreck report for the Associated Press:
Even the dead are not spared the campaigning for Iraq's upcoming local elections.
Brightly colored placards blanket major streets and hang around the vast cemetery in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, appealing to the hundreds of mourners who stream through each day.
The April 20 vote for provincial governing councils will be the first election since the U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011. Even though elections for federal positions such as prime minister and parliament are not scheduled until next year, this will nevertheless be a key test for Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's dominant political bloc.
An Iraqi official says the country has forced an Iranian plane headed to Syria to land in Baghdad so authorities could search it for arms. It's the third inspection in as many days.
Ali al-Moussawi says no weapons were found on the 747 cargo flight Wednesday. It made checks of Syria-bound Iranian flights the two previous days, saying no weapons were discovered.
Diaa Hadid reports for The Associated Press:
In Iraq's national museum, home to some of the world's most precious artifacts of ancient Mesopotamia, a caption beside a skeleton simply reads in English: "dated to very old time."
And some of the museum's most impressive pieces carry no labels at all — like a giant stone head lying on the ground that may or may not belong on a nearby empty pedestal labeled "Assyrian King Nimrod," the Biblical tormentor of the patriarch Abraham.
Babak Dehghanpisheh reports for The Washington Post:
As the conflict in Syria has raged over the past two years, the sectarian bloodletting, the car bombs and the rise of religious extremists have been all too familiar to one group of people in the country: Iraqi refugees.
There are some 480,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria, according to government estimates, many of whom fled Iraq to escape exactly the same kind of indiscriminate violence that is spreading across Syria.
Omar al-Shaher reports for Al-Monitor:
As the hot weather sets in, promises to provide round-the-clock electricity are making headlines in Iraqi news programs and newspapers. This comes after the hardships Iraqis have undergone in recent years as a result of inadequacies in the electricity grid.
During the summer, when temperatures can reach 50 degrees celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), the electricity supply is on for less than two hours per day.
Semih Idiz writes for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse:
Although it did not get as much news coverage as the Turkey-Israel or Syrian files, Ankara’s tense relations with Baghdad were also among the key topics discussed during US Secretary of State John Kerry’s talks with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul over the weekend.
Judging by what is filtering through the diplomatic grapevine, and what has being written about the topic recently, Washington is increasingly wary about developments in Iraq which suggest the country may be heading for a division that is bound to influence regional balances in favor of Iran.
Jane Arraf reports for Al Jazeera:
It has been 10 years since a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down in Baghdad in the days after a US-led invasion stormed the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
The toppling of the bronze statue is regarded as symbolising the end of Saddam's 24-year reign.
Today's Iraq is immensely more free than it was under the former dictator, but not as free as many Iraqis would like.
Iraq's Cabinet has issued a formal complaint to Ankara after Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) struck a deal to relocate the U.S.-listed terrorist organization to Iraq.
