FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) - Jury selection will start July 9 in the murder trial of the Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly 2009 Fort Hood shooting rampage.

The judge set the date after rejecting Maj. Nidal Hasan's request for a three-month trial delay.

Col. Tara Osborn, the judge, says testimony will start Aug. 6 at the earliest.

Jury selection will start later in July if a jury consultant hired for Hasan's defense is unavailable. Right now he's scheduled to be working on another case in mid-July.

Hasan faces the death penalty or life in prison without parole if convicted in the attack that left 13 dead on the Texas Army post.

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Aamer Madhani and Tom Vanden Brook, USATODAY

WASHINGTON -- In a move that American officials are expressing guarded optimism about, the Taliban announced on Tuesday that they will sit down for direct peace talks with U.S. and Afghanistan officials.

Afghanistan officials will open a U.S.-backed office in the Gulf nation of Qatar as early as Tuesday to facilitate direct peace talks with the Taliban, according to three senior administration officials.

Taliban spokesman Muhammed Naimsaid at a new conference in Qatar that the group would participate in the peace talks. Naim said the Taliban are willing to use all legal means to end what they called the occupation of Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press.

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - Prosecutors are moving quickly through the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning.

The former Army intelligence analyst is charged with aiding the enemy. He has acknowledged sending reams of government secrets to WikiLeaks, but says he didn't think it would hurt national security.

As the trial entered its third week Monday, testimony focused on documents in which the U.S. had assessed the threat level of individual detainees at the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

So far, the military judge has heard from more than 40 of the government's approximately 140 witnesses.

Last week's testimony involved battlefield reports and videos. Still to come is evidence about 250,000 diplomatic cables Manning allegedly stole from a State Department database.

Manning says he leaked the material to expose wrongdoing.