Topic: Iraq

After charting five consecutive years of steady growth in the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported a sharp five-percentage point decline in January and February of this year, bringing the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans below that of the general population for the first time since 2008.

"Veterans have led in the field; they can lead in a factory or research facility. Veterans believe in getting the job done and doing it in the right way," writes GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday it had failed to secure an agreement with Iran during two days of talks over disputed atomic activities and that the Islamic Republic had rejected a request to visit a key military site.

Senior U.N. inspectors arrived in Tehran on Monday for talks on Iran's disputed nuclear program, a day after the Islamic state responded defiantly to tightened EU sanctions by halting oil sales to British and French companies.

The world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, appears to have cut both its oil production and export in December, according to the latest update by the Joint Organizations Data Initiative (JODI), an official source of oil production, consumption and export data.

Iran has indicated that its threat to cut oil supplies to European states in order to pre-empt a European Union oil embargo that comes into effect in July may be only a symbolic one.

The Pentagon doesn’t know what happened to more than $100 million in cash held at Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad during the Iraq war, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

The European Union has included Iran's state-owned Bank Tejarat among entities it is blacklisting to raise pressure on Tehran over its nuclear programme, according to an EU document published on Tuesday.

The deputy governor of Iran's central bank says trading in foreign currency outside of banks or licensed money changing operations is forbidden.

Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is nearing its comfortable operational production limits and may struggle to do much to make up for shortages that arise from new sanctions imposed on Iran by the West, Gulf-based sources said.

Iran's currency has slid 20 percent against the dollar in the last week despite central bank intervention, and Iranians concerned about the economy said on Tuesday attempts to send text messages using the word "dollar" appeared to be blocked.

From Los Angeles to Paris to Tehran, disparate opposition groups with little in common but an aversion to Iran's clerical leaders are struggling to extract political gains from an escalation in Western sanctions.

The tensions over Iran and threats from the West to apply sanctions on Iranian oil will see crude prices facing more of an upside risk in the near future, a commodities analyst told CNBC.

Iran's navy chief boasts that closing the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic would be "easier than drinking a glass of water." Hardly, U.S. analysts say.

Closing off the Gulf to oil tankers will be "easier than drinking a glass of water" for Iran if the Islamic state deems it necessary, Iran's top naval commander told the country's state television on Wednesday.