ANKARA - Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is apparently the source of the leak to New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh that dozens of Israeli Mossad agents are ostensibly in northern Iraq. The reliable Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet stated on Thursday that Gul, along with two advisers and a spokesman, had a breakfast meeting with Hersh on May 27, on which occasion he gave the information to Hersh.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/443112.html

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5513408
BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S.-led coalition's task in Iraq will become harder if the new Iraq administration imposes martial law after it takes over on June 30, Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted Friday as saying.

Powell said he was pleased that Iraqi officials had said there were no concrete plans for martial law. "It would make our task in Iraq more complex, because implementing martial law is more a policing problem than a military one,"..

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http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=5517522
The Commerce Department surprised economists with a downward revision to first-quarter gross domestic product, cutting economic growth to a 3.9 percent annual rate from the 4.4 percent reported a month ago. Wall Street analysts had not expected the Commerce Department to change the GDP estimate.

While 3.9 percent is still a solid pace, the revision cut GDP -- which measures all output within U.S. borders -- to below the 4.1 percent seen in the last quarter of 2004.

In its final snapshot of the first-quarter economy, the department said after-tax corporate profits rose 2.1 percent from the fourth quarter, a sharp upward revision from the 1.4 percent reported a month ago. Still, the climb was well below the 7.6 percent rise notched in the final three months of 2003.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1246074,00.html
Up to 30,000 Iraqi police officers are to be sacked for being incompetent and unreliable and given a $60m payoff before the US hands over to an Iraqi government, senior British military sources said yesterday.

Many officers either deserted to the insurgents or simply stayed at home during the recent uprisings in Falluja and across the south.

The police forces, now the first line of defence, are being drastically overhauled.

There are 120,000 officers on the payroll, although only 89,000 turn up for work - and more than half of these have still had no training. Those who do not turn up are either ghost employees left over from the previous corrupt system or are permanently absent. Most will be encouraged to retire.

In addition, up to 30,000 regular police officers who are now deemed unsuitable will be sacked and replaced. Each will receive $1,000 to $2,000 in severance pay - a total package of up to $60m.