President Obama and the U.S.’s NATO allies, meeting at a summit in Chicago, committed to a complete withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by December 2014. The withdrawal will be coupled with the “irreversible” handover of security responsibilities to the Afghans next summer.

A declaration from heads of state at the NATO summit emphasized that the handover will be completed by the end of 2014 but that NATO member countries may remain in a training and advisory capacities:

By the end of 2014, when the Afghan Authorities will have full security responsibility, the NATO-led combat mission will end. We will, however, continue to provide strong and long-term political and practical support through our Enduring Partnership with Afghanistan. NATO is ready to work towards establishing, at the request of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, a new post-2014 mission of a different nature in Afghanistan, to train, advise and assist the [Afghan National Security Forces], including the Afghan Special Operations Forces.

In remarks delivered at the summit today, Obama emphasized the progress made in Afghanistan during the U.S.’s decade-long war. “Our forces broke the Taliban’s momentum,” said Obama. “More Afghans are reclaiming their communities. Afghan security forces have grown stronger.”

Public war weariness has been a growing pressure on the White House and NATO member countries as Europeans and Americans express frustration with the long war and the associated human and financial costs. While NATO forces will maintain an active presence in Afghanistan through 2014, France’s new president, François Hollande, announced that France would withdraw troops by the end of the year.

Standing next to Afgan President Hamid Karzai yesterday, Obama recognized the sacrifices made by both Afghans and Americans over the past ten years. “[President Karzai] recognizes the enormous sacrifices American troops have made,” said Obama. He added, “We recognize the hardships that Afghans have been through during these many many years of war.”

As French police laid siege yesterday to the house of suspected Toulouse killer Mohammed Merah, eventually driving him to jump to his own death this morning, the Palestinian prime minister spoke out against the crimes and the reported justification Merah gave for killing 7 people — including a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school.

Merah reportedly claimed to police that he was affiliated with Al Qaeda, and he was seeking revenge for Palestinian children killed in the Gaza Strip. But Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad denounced the “cowardly” attack yesterday. “This terrorist crime is condemned in the strongest terms by the Palestinian people and our children,” he said. “No Palestinian child can accept crimes against innocent people.” Fayyad went on:

It is time for these criminals to stop exploiting the name of Palestine through their terrorist actions, and to stop pretending to stand up for Palestinian children, who only seek a decent life for themselves and for all children of the world.

The missions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO to France also issued a joint statement condemning the attack, noting that “the murderer is driven by a multi-faceted racist hatred.” The move was welcome despite some standing criticisms that Palestinians don’t do enough to discourage violence.

The suspected shooter of three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse, France, was arrested in an apartment building after a standoff with hundreds of police officers. An early morning police raid to arrest the shooter turned into a firefight in which three police officers were wounded. The suspect, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, told police he belonged to al-Qaeda and was taking revenge for the Palestinian children killed in the Middle East.

The suspect, Mohammed Merah, was known by local anti-terrorism police and had traveled to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, an area where al-Qaeda runs training camps.

The commander of the prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan tells CBS News they held a prisoner by the same name in 2008 in connection with a bombing. The suspect was sentenced to three years but escaped later that year along with 600 other prisoners. CBS was unable to confirm that the escaped prisoner was the same one arrested by French police today.

Merah is a member of the Forsan al-Izza, “Knights of Glory,” a group which the French government banned in January over suspicions it was recruiting Jihadists to Afghanistan. The group had no immediate reaction to Merah’s attack.

The bodies of the the rabbi and three children were flown to Jerusalem. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe accompanied relatives of the dead from France to Israel. At least 2,000 mourners gathered today at the Givat Shaul cemetery on the western outskirts of the city to mourn the deaths. “Talking to local French speaking people here and even to one Israeli minister,” a BBC reporter said, “they all said that this is a problem in France, anti-Semitism is still rife in France.” Watch the BBC’s report:

In a television address, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he had held a meeting with Jewish and Muslim leaders.

I told them and I tell the nation that we should be united. We cannot give in to discrimination or vengeance. We owe this to the victims who have been killed in cold blood and to our country.

Violence in Syria continues to rage as security forces killed more than 50 protesters in the city of Hom today. With the death toll for the past six days totaling over 400, Arab League ministers are exploring a new proposal to send a joint U.N-Arab League mission to Syria.

“There is a proposal from the secretary-general of the Arab League to form a joint mission for Syria in coordination with the United Nations, and it will be presented before the planned Arab foreign ministers’ meeting on Sunday in Cairo,” the Arab League’s deputy head, Ahmed Ben Helli, told reporters today.

The upcoming ministerial meeting in Cairo may also issue a statement on China and Russia’s veto of a U.N. Security Council Resolution last Saturday, reports Reuters. The resolution was based on an Arab peace plan that had the support of the rest of the Security Council but China and Russia’s veto brought criticism from both Western and Arab nations.

The ongoing artillery bombardment of Homs, a recently leaked report detailing the failures of an Arab League observer mission, and the Russian and Chinese veto have left the Arab League and the United Nations looking for new strategies to halt the bloodshed.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby announced this week that a new mission would need international backing, better equipment and more observers than the Arab League mission. Yesterday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed that Elaraby had proposed a joint mission.

Consultations will be held with the Arab League and Security Council members “before fleshing out the details,” said the U.N. chief. But Western powers offered a lukewarm response to the proposal. Agence France-Presse reports that France said there would have to be “guarantees” for the mission and Germany called it a “very serious” idea but emphasized that conditions would have to be met before such an effort could be launched.

While diplomats discuss what steps to take next, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Syrian government to stop shelling residential areas of Homs. “Those responsible for such horrific attacks will have to answer for them,” HRW’s Anna Neistat in a statement earlier today.

Rights groups estimate that more than 6,000 people have died since protests began eleven months ago.