Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic at 0827 gmt on 16 March begins a live relay of the first session of the newly elected Iraqi Council of Representatives from Baghdad. The session begins with a Koranic recitation.

By Gilbert Cranberg Nobel economics laureate Prof. Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University calculates that, when all of the costs of the Iraq intervention are tallied, the bill for U.S. taxpayers could total $2 trillion over the next decade.

Text of report in English by Iranian news agency IRNA website Tehran, 26 October, IRNA: Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Wednesday [26 October] that participation of the Iraqi people in referendum for the Constitution indicated national resolve to establish democratic, independent and progressive government.

Text of unsigned editorial: "Iraq: massive support", by Spanish newspaper ABC website on 26 October Amid so much indiscriminate violence sponsored by the insurgent terrorists who are tormenting the country, the data from the Iraqi constitutional referendum provide revealing figures that enable a ray of hope to filter through.

BAGHDAD, Iraq _ Iraq's proposed constitution won voters' approval, election officials announced Tuesday, even as the results showed that the minority Sunni Muslim Arabs overwhelmingly rejected the document, which was billed as a consensus-building charter.