• Six car bombs killed at least 19 people across Baghdad as Iraq's prime minister urged the United States to give Iraqi forces more weapons and said he could bring security in three to six months if they did. Three bombs in quick succession killed at least 10 people and wounded 30 in a wholesale vegetable market in the violent southern district of Dora, police said.

• US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the quartet of Middle East peace negotiators would probably meet in Washington on February 2. "I have issued an invitation to the members of the quartet for a meeting in Washington that will take place in the week beginning January 29, and is likely to take place on February 2," she said before she met German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

• US and North Korean officials ended three days of discussions in Berlin without commenting on the chances of a breakthrough at six-party talks on the communist state's nuclear weapons programme. A spokesman for the US embassy confirmed US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who met North Korean officials for six hours on Tuesday and one-and-a-half hours on Wednesday, held a third round of talks.

• Six foreign hostages were freed in Nigeria's oil-producing delta and President Olusegun Obasanjo voiced impatience with his policy of negotiation in the face of rising violence in Africa's oil heartland. Thousands of foreign oil workers have left Nigeria in the past year as attacks and kidnappings have multiplied, and some industry executives see the situation in the Niger Delta descending into anarchy as landmark elections approach in April.

• US-trained Philippine soldiers killed 10 Islamic rebels in fresh fighting in the south as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo vowed to put down the militants "with a hand of steel". Lieutenant-Colonel Ariel Caculitan, a Marine spokesman, said 10 Abu Sayyaf militants and three soldiers were killed in an hour-long gun-battle on the island of Jolo, where most of the militant group has taken shelter. Two rebels were captured.