n a 71-minute State of the Union address, President Obama managed no more than 101 perfunctory words about Iraq. Throughout its term, the administration has recoiled from discussing Iraq's geostrategic significance and especially America's relation to it.

ANKARA — The top US general in Iraq flew into Turkey Tuesday for talks on Kurdish rebels holed up in the Iraqi north, stressing that Washington wants to cooperate with Ankara and Baghdad to end the violence.

Erbil— The semiautonomous region of Kurdistan is the one place in battered Iraq that promised economic boom times, but some of the foreign oil companies that rushed in over the past few years are becoming increasingly restless.

The Lebanese artists Elissa and Rolla Saad will perform concerts in Iraq according to statements issued by their media offices.

After the Iraqi parliament banned 500 candidates from contesting the March 7 national elections, Vice President Joseph Biden rushed to Baghdad to urge Iraqi political leaders to reconsider. While the ban has fueled U.S. cynicism about Iraqi democracy, such cynicism is unwarranted, especially now.

Suleimani— Since the July 2009 parliamentary elections in Kurdistan, independent journalists in the region have been increasingly targeted for kidnap attempts, arrests and obstruction. In recent weeks these attacks have intensified across Kurdistan.

Men are physically stronger than women. Since the existence of humans, men have been dominant over women. When a woman gives birth to a child, she is physically weak and she is needed to nurture the human child.

Say Iraq, and roses probably don’t come to mind. But thousands of the pink and red blossoms fill parks in the northern city of Erbil in Kurdistan, which brands itself as “the other Iraq” and is preparing for its own surge of tourists and business travellers.

Suleimani— Officials revealed in the Kurdistan region of Iraq on the escalation of violence against women with the complexities of social increase with the expansion of communications technology, while parliamentarians proposed laws include sanctions to curb this phenomenon.