Parliament approved Iraq’s new national unity government today, achieving a goal it is hoped will reduce widespread violence so that allied forces can eventually go home. But as the legislators met, at least 27 people were killed and 68 wounded in a series of attacks.

A bomb killed 19 people and wounded 58 in a Shiite district of Baghdad today as parliament prepared to inaugurate the country’s first fully constitutional government since the collapse of Saddam Hussein three years ago.

OPEC’s president said today that the group needs to increase its output ceiling now despite oversupply in the crude oil market, and may need to act again as US refineries come back on line and the Northern Hemisphere’s winter looms.