World highlights

• Nato forces killed 55 Taliban fighters in fierce clashes in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said, and a suicide bomber killed 15 Afghans, many working for the US military in another part of the country.

• The chief prosecutor in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial said he had an audio tape and documents proving the former Iraqi leader personally ordered the gassing of Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s.

• Senior Hutu commanders backed by France shot down the plane carrying Rwanda's president in 1994, killing him and touching off a genocide, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said.

• EU president Finland launches a last-ditch drive this week to resolve a row between Turkey and Cyprus before a December deadline, but is warning it sees no speedy solution to the issue threatening Ankara's EU entry bid.

• US Vice President Dick Cheney has held three hours of talks with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah as the Americans step up diplomatic efforts to halt Iraq's descent into chaos. Mr Cheney and King Abdullah made no comment after the talks which had been expected to focus on Middle East issues.

• Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview that he saw hopeful signs that big powers are turning their attention to a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "There are signs in that sense which have recently come from important international capitals... We hope that this will give birth to urgent and serious movement which will break the stalemate," he told the Egyptian state newspaper al-Ahram.

• The Middle East is on the verge of three civil wars - in Iraq, Israel and Lebanon - unless strong action is taken urgently by the international community, Jordan's King Abdullah warned yesterday.With US President George W. Bush heading to Amman this week to talk with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, King Abdullah said "something dramatic" must come from that meeting to stop violence spinning out of control in Iraq.