Was it a missile? As the MoD's investigation into the cause of the RAF Hercules crash in Iraq continues, Ansar al-Islam - one of Iraq's longest-established militant groups - claims to have brought the plane down, killing up to 15 British service personnel. We'll follow the latest developments.
Meanwhile the full impact of yesterday's Iraqi elections is likely to take a while to be felt. As a Guardian leader put it this morning:
The most obvious message to draw from yesterday's elections in Iraq is that it will be a long time before it becomes clear who the real winners are. Not only is this literally the case - in that it will be at least a week and a half before the results are known, and many of the candidates were anonymous - but figuratively too. This election is, as Kofi Annan observed, only a first step in deciding Iraq's future. What happens from now on will decide what path Iraq continues along.
Back to today's coverage: we'll be keeping up to date with the latest reaction, adding to our gallery of election images. On the comment and analysis side, the Guardian's Middle East editor, Brian Whitaker, will be looking ahead to consider what happens once the votes are counting, here on Newsblog Simon Jeffery will be gauging the reaction from the Iraqi bloggers, and US infantryman and blogger Nicholas Cademartori, aka The Questing Cat, writes about his year in Iraq.
Ros Taylor will be writing about why Gordon Brown shouldn't be telling students how to spend their gap years, Matthew Tempest is looking at the government's crackdown on animal extremists, and Mark Oliver will be following the opening day in the trial of Michael Jackson. For more on what's being dubbed the trial of the century, read LA correspondent Dan Glaister's feature.
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