World highlights

• A city in northern Italy's Catholic heartland became the first in the country to allow unmarried heterosexuals and homosexuals to register formally as couples, provoking the wrath of the Vatican and the political right. The city council of Padua in the Veneto region, which has a centre-left majority, voted 26-7 in favour of allowing such couples to register as "families based on ties of affection".

• British police said they were now treating the case of poisoned former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko as a murder inquiry. "Detectives are now at a stage where they are treating it as an allegation of murder," a police spokesman said.

• The US should begin to withdraw its forces from combat in Iraq and launch a diplomatic push, including Iran and Syria, to prevent "a slide toward chaos" in the country, a high-level panel recommended. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group also pushed Washington to reduce its political, military or economic support for Iraq if its government fails to advance security and national reconciliation in the country, where sectarian violence kills scores of people every day.

• Saddam Hussein appeared at his genocide trial despite writing to the chief judge to say he would no longer attend court sessions in protest at being repeatedly silenced. Saddam and six others are on trial for the Anfal - Spoils of War - military campaign against ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s in which prosecutors say up to 180,000 people were killed in poison gas attacks and mass executions.

• Fiji's military chief said his troops would quickly suppress any uprising, as the country's deposed prime minister called for non-violent protests against the South Pacific nation's fourth coup in 20 years. Opponents of Tuesday's bloodless coup by Commander Frank Bainimarama were gradually rounded up. Armed troops surrounded the parliament and interrupted senators as they debated a motion condemning the toppling of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.

• Joseph Kabila took office as Congo's first democratically elected president in over four decades, pledging to combat the corruption and violence that have crippled his resource-rich nation. Mr Kabila was sworn in during a colourful but heavily guarded ceremony in Kinshasa in the gardens of the presidential palace on the banks of the Congo river.