Iran has ended negotiations with the United States about how to bring calm to Iraq because they were going nowhere, Iran’s foreign minister said tonight, in a rare acknowledgement of official talks with Washington.

ROADS blockaded. Men, women and children on the march. Dáil deputies thrown in jail. Refuseniks manning the barricades and government departments under siege.

Newly-crowned British Open champion Stephen Hendry admitted he was down in the dumps before he arrived in Brighton.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim had just delivered a sermon calling for Iraqi unity and Friday prayers were under way at Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrine when a car bomb exploded.