Summary: Seven bombs rocked Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing 37 people and wounding more than 100 in a dramatic escalation of violence as the U.S. military thins out its presence before a June 30, 2009 deadline to pull combat troops out of Iraqi cities.

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Summary: President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak issued a statement agreeing on “a stern, united response from the international community” as North Korea prepared to launch a long-range, multistage Taepodong-2 rocket capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

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Summary: Baitullah Mehsud, commander of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for a deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said the group was planning a terrorist attack on the White House that would “amaze” the world.

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Summary: Pentagon spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to fight terrorism elsewhere has reached $685.7 billion since 2001, according to a U.S. government watchdog agency. The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, said the Iraq war accounted for $533.5 billion in Defense Department spending obligations through December 2008, while spending on operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines totaled $124.1 billion. The remaining $28.1 billion was for operations to defend the U.S. mainland, the GAO said in a letter to Congress dated March 30, 2009.

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Summary: Iraqi authorities arrested the local leader of a Sunni “Awakening Council” group that had broken with al-Qaida, Adil al-Mashhadani, sparking a two-day gunbattle in central Baghdad that killed four people and wounded 21.

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Summary: Calling the situation in the region “increasingly perilous,” President Barack Obama ordered 4,000 more military troops into Afghanistan, vowing to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” the terrorist al-Qaida network in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

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Summary: The military is racing to inspect more than 90,000 U.S.-run facilities across Iraq to reduce a deadly threat troops face far off the battlefield: electrocution or shock while showering or using appliances.

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Summary: Baghdad has been much calmer since sectarian violence peaked in late 2006 and the first half of 2007. However, the calm has been achieved in part because the city is now ethnically divided, with Shiites predominating and Sunnis having largely fled.

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Summary: The al-Qaida-linked terror network, Jaish-e-Mohammed, runs schools for jihadi fighters in the heart of Pakistan, hundreds of miles from the Afghan border, amid reports that insurgent commanders and suicide bombers in the AfPak border region are increasingly coming from Punjab. … A suicide bomber struck a tent filled with Kurdish funeral mourners, unleashing a huge fireball that killed 25 people in the northern Iraq town of Jalawla, where Kurds and Arabs are competing for power.

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Summary: American flags were set on fire to chants of “No, no for occupation” as followers of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr marked the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war, which has cost hundreds of billions of dollars — and will ultimately run into the trillions — dwarfing the original Bush administration estimate of $2.4 billion.

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