Iraq Three US marines and a soldier were killed in two attacks in Iraq as the US military investigated how a suicide bomber managed to penetrate an army base in an strike that killed 22 people. Iraq The first groups of Fallujah residents were briefly admitted to the former Iraqi rebel bastion to survey the damage to their homes six weeks after a devastating US-led assault on the city of 300,000 people. Afghanistan Afghan President Hamid Karzai has appointed a new cabinet which pushes out warlords and installs technocrats capable of fighting drugs and driving reform, the presidential palace said. India Tributes poured in following the death of former Indian prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, who launched the country on the path of free-market reforms in 1991. US The United States criticized the Russian government's surprise takeover of the main asset of the Yukos oil giant, adding new fuel to a series of spats that has rankled a relationship Washington calls good but complex. Nepal Troops killed at least 22 Maoists in a fierce clash in western Nepal as the rebels torched trucks and enforced a partial blockade of the capital to protest the disappearance of activists in army detention. Ukraine Western observers deployed in Ukraine to monitor a presidential vote rerun this weekend as Russian President Vladimir Putin again attacked the West's role and motives in the former Soviet republic. Mideast Palestinians voted in the first council elections for three decades amid a row over British Prime Minister Tony Blair's plan to prepare the birth of a democratic state at a London conference. US The world's first commercially-cloned pet, a nine-week-old kitten, has been delivered to a US woman who paid 50,000 dollars for a copy of her beloved dead cat, the cloner said.