World highlights

• Fifteen European states plan to launch a common database to store pictures and fingerprints of visa applicants in 2009 to help better control who they allow into the region, lawmakers and officials said yesterday. The changes would help improve the security of the common EU visa system, as one country would be able to know if someone had already been granted or denied a visa in another, and whether the person had overstayed their time in the bloc.

• An attack on a US patrol which killed four US soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda, the US military said, as thousands of troops scoured farmland for three missing soldiers. Meanwhile the Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-led group, demanded that the US military stop their search for the three soldiers it says it was holding, saying this was the only way to secure their safety.

• Gunmen shot dead a Supreme Court official, regarded as a key witness by the legal team representing Pakistan's suspended chief justice in his fight against a move by President Pervez Musharraf to sack him.

• A roadside bomb ripped through a vehicle in a convoy of Nato troops as it passed over a bridge outside the western Afghan city of Herat, causing some casualties, as Germany called for a review of the tactics used by Western forces in Afghanistan after a series of civilian casualties in recent weeks.