The White House yesterday ruled out previously authorised direct talks between Tehran and the US ambassador in Baghdad, which were to have focused on the situation in Iraq. The move marks a hardening of the Bush administration's position, despite pressure from the international community to enter into direct dialogue with Iran. A White House official said that although the US envoy had originally been granted a mandate for talks with Iran, "we have decided not to pursue it

Oil prices fell more than 3 percent today, dipping below $70 a barrel amid concerns about weakening demand and rising inflation. Some analysts said the selloff was triggered by profit-taking. "This is demand destruction not on a consumer level. It's demand destruction on a trading level," said Michael Guido, Societe Generale's director of commodity strategy. "The reality of it is that the market was in desperate need of a correction," Guido said

The latest sign of Russia's wealth explosion, the 5,000 rouble (£100) banknote, is to be unveiled by the central bank today. The new note will sit comfortably in the wallets of the country's 88,000 dollar millionaires and 33 billionaires, but is likely to be less useful for most of the population, for whom two of the notes are roughly a month's salary

Todd Hardwick's mobile phone has not stopped ringing for a week. May is always the busiest month for Florida's handful of licensed alligator trappers but three fatal attacks in six days have left residents of the sunshine state unusually jittery. "They've just gone crazy about gators," said Mr Hardwick, whose Miami-based company, Pesky Critters, has a contract with the state to remove "nuisance" reptiles from lakes and canals

George Bush, scrambling to hold on to an increasingly disaffected conservative Republican base, said last night that he was deploying thousands of troops on America's border with Mexico to crack down on illegal immigration. With opinion polls charting a steep decline in support from the conservatives who have been the president's bedrock, Mr Bush promised to deploy as many as 6,000 national guard troops along the 2,000-mile frontier as part of a $1.9bn (£1

The US said yesterday it is to restore full relations with Libya for the first time in more than 25 years, after having once branded its leader, Muammar Gadafy, as one of the world's most dangerous men and a supporter of international terrorism. Washington also removed Libya from a state department list of states sponsoring terrorism. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said: "We will soon open an embassy in Tripoli

Every day, more than 70,000 new blogs are born on the Internet. While the vast majority are used as online diaries, an increasing number of businesses see them as tools to reach customers. Sprint uses one to target wireless users, while Boeing used one last year to keep folks up to date on flight testing of its new long-range 777 airplane. General Motors has its FastLane Blog to pass along news about its cars

NGOs are switching over from health management to emergency tactics, as the Hamas administration's funding-starved services start to collapse, writes Anna Coote It was a chilly, wet Monday. Some 20 of us sat around a long table. There were snacks and bottles of fruit juice in front of us. Someone joked nervously about where the juice came from. Was it Israeli or Palestinian? We were at the headquarters of the ministry for health in Ramallah on the West Bank

Silvio Berlusconi's outgoing government was yesterday forced to deny a role in an alleged CIA abduction after new evidence surfaced pointing to the involvement of a member of Italy's security forces. Prosecutors looking into the disappearance of an Egyptian cleric had placed a Carabinieri warrant officer under formal investigation on suspicion of aiding and abetting a kidnapping

Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday called for a fundamental rethink of Europe's mission, saying its historic rationale of preserving peace after the second world war was no longer sufficient. In her most significant speech on Europe since becoming chancellor last year, Mrs Merkel said the EU had to do more than just keep the peace. It needed to reconnect with its citizens, she said