World Highlights

• US President George W. Bush strongly backed Iraq's prime minister, saying Iraqi forces would be prepared more quickly to take over security and that Washington was not looking for a "graceful exit". Mr Bush supported Nuri al-Maliki as the "right guy" for Iraq at talks in Jordan amid spiralling sectarian bloodshed between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims that has overshadowed an already intractable Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

• US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she hoped Israelis and Palestinians would broaden their fragile ceasefire as she began a new push to revive stalled peace talks in the Middle East. With Ms Rice at his side, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he had reached a "dead end" in talks on forming a unity government with Hamas Islamists, seen by Washington and Israel as the biggest obstacle to peacemaking.

• The Iraq Study Group will recommend that the US military shift from a combat role to a support role in Iraq roughly over the next year, a source familiar with the panel's deliberations said. The recommendation by the independent panel would be to pull US fighting forces back to bases inside Iraq, and in the region, as the US military sought to withdraw from the fighting, the source said.