President Jalal Talabani convened an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss the southern port of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city and the heart of a growing, lethal power struggle among some of the Shiite Muslim religious parties that lead Iraq’s governing coalition. Violence in the south Thursday included a bombing at the home of Basra’s police chief. In Najaf, another major city in the Shiite-dominated region, the head of local militias loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was shot dead by police allied with a rival Shiite party. Full Story