World highlights

• At least 21 Palestinians were killed as President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction and Islamist Hamas battled for control of Gaza and Israel launched a deadly round of air strikes against the Islamists. Palestinian officials said the widening hostilities could bring down a two-month-old unity government formed between Hamas and secular Fatah. Some Palestinians see this leading to all-out civil war and the end of the Palestinian Authority.

• European countries signalled they would resist any US bid to keep World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz in place as the bank's board considered whether to endorse a report that found he broke bank rules. An endorsement of the report on Mr Wolfowitz's handling of a promotion and pay rise for his companion in 2005 would effectively be a statement of no confidence in his leadership and would ramp up pressure on the former deputy US defence chief to step down.

• A suicide bomber who killed 25 people in an attack on a crowded hotel in Pakistan left a grisly warning taped to his leg: "Those who spy for Americans will meet the same fate." "The message in Pashto language appeared to be written with a black marker," Malik Zafar Azam, Law Minister in Pakistan's volatile North West Frontier Province, said.

• The US Senate voted overwhelmingly against withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq by March 31 as a majority of senators embraced an alternative plan tying US reconstruction funds to Baghdad's progress in stabilizing the country. The Senate's votes, while non-binding, were orchestrated to ease passage today of a war-funding Bill so that House of Representatives and Senate negotiators can get to work on a compromise that President George W. Bush could sign by the end of May.