New York - Government leaders attending the UN General Assembly debate on religion and peace on Thursday pledged respect for all faiths because they are convinced it can lead to the resolution of conflict.

US President George W Bush, appearing most likely for the last time before the 192-nation assembly, urged UN governments to include religion in their work and help spread democracy around the world. He had addressed the assembly in the past eight years.

Washington - Democratic leaders in Congress said Thursday they do not expect to pass an immediate bail-out for the struggling US auto industry, citing opposition from Republican legislators.

Christopher Dodd, a Democratic senator from Connecticut who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, said his party did not have the support for legislation to help the nation's three largest automakers, which are struggling to remain afloat amid a sharp downturn in car sales.

Paris/Warsaw - French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet the Dalai Lama in Poland next month, but Poland's president will not be available for talks on the EU's stalled reform treaty, officials said Thursday.

Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU's six-month presidency until December 31, is to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader at a December 6 event celebrating 25 years since former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa received the Nobel Peace Prize, officials in Paris said.

Baghdad - A civilian cargo plane carrying six crew members and one passenger crashed in western Iraq on Thursday, a US military spokesman said.

According to the CNN website, either a mechanical failure or a pilot error appeared to have caused the accident.

Despite affirming that there was no high-profile coalition personnel on board, the spokesman said the status of the crew members was not yet known.

It was reported earlier on Thursday that an airplane made an emergency landing in Anbar province, south of the city of Fallujah, a bastion of Iraqi militants.

Los Angeles - The transgender American man who last year became the first male to have a baby is pregnant again, he revealed Thursday to ABC News.

Thomas Beatie, 34, switched genders in 2002, but did not remove his female reproductive organs. He first became pregnant in 2007 after he stopped taking male hormones and his wife Nancy artificially inseminated him with sperm they bought on the internet. They used a syringe they bought at a pet store.

Beattie gave birth to Susan in June 2008, sparking a storm of interest around the world.

Washington - US President George W Bush on Thursday called for overhauling the "outdated" regulatory structures of the financial industry in light of a massive global credit crisis, but warned against reinventing the free market system that has spurred economic growth for decades.

Speaking ahead of an emergency Washington summit of the world's 20 leading economies, Bush offered a broad defence of US-style capitalism and free markets, warning leaders to fix the flaws exposed by the financial crisis rather than abandon the system wholesale.