* Israeli paper says strike on Iran could delay bomb A major Israeli newspaper ran a front-page story on Wednesday quoting an unidentified “senior defence official” as saying Israel believed a military strike could disrupt what it says is an Iranian nuclear arms program.

* Russia to boost Abkhazia presence Russia is to spend almost $500m (£300m) next year reinforcing its military bases in Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhazia.

* China warns of ‘arms race in outer space’ China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi called Wednesday for international diplomacy to avert an “arms race in outer space.”

* Fatah Conference Boosts Abbas, but Peace May Remain Elusive Leadership elections inside Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, are a lot like comets: they only come around every 20 years or so.

* Extremist Christians: ‘God hates Jews’ Members of the extremist Westboro Baptist Church, known for its anti-gay and anti-Semitic rhetoric, protested in front of several Jewish institutions in New York on Tuesday.

* Israel ‘won’t make Jordan Palestine’ A delegation of security officials secretly traveled to Jordan last week in an attempt to assuage concerns that Israel plans to transfer Palestinians from the West Bank to the Hashemite Kingdom.

* Navy to partake in Turkish exercise In a sign that tension between Jerusalem and Ankara has cooled down, two Israeli Navy missile ships will sail to Turkey next week to participate in the annual Reliant Mermaid search-and-rescue naval exercise.

* Despite bombings, Iraq confident it can maintain security A series of bombings in Baghdad and Mosul on Monday killed at least 49 people and wounded more than 230 in the latest attack.

* German Jews back campaign to reprint ‘Mein Kampf’ German academics who have been engaged for years in a campaign calling for the reprinting of an annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”) received support from an unlikely source.

* New Google ‘puts Bing in shade’ Google has lifted the lid on its updated search engine, which developers have nicknamed “Caffeine”.