In news from Iraq, the Shiite political coalition that won last month’s election will pick its nominee to be Prime Minister by secret ballot on Friday. Members of the United Iraqi Alliance will choose between Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Ahmad Chalabi. Jaafari is Iraq’s interim Vice President and is expected to win the secret vote. He is the leader of the religious Dawa Party. Chalabi is a secular Shiite and the head of the Iraqi National Congress. For years Chalabi was closely allied to right-wing U.S. politicians who backed regime change in Iraq. The U.S. public relations company Rendon helped create Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress as the face of the opposition to Saddam Hussein. But relations between Chalabi and the U.S. soured last year. In August an Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for Chalabi but the arrest was never carried out. He has also been accused of secretly maintaining close ties to Iran and of feeding fabricated information about Iraq’s weapons capabilities to US intelligence agencies and to journalists ahead of the Iraq invasion.