Barack Obama said tonight a proposal to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control to avoid US military strikes could be a potential breakthrough.

BP says it could be tomorrow or later before it knows whether its latest attempt to clog the source of America’s largest oil spill is working.

The leaders of the world’s largest economies begin two days of meetings today in search of a common approach to advance a fledgling economic recovery and prevent new financial meltdowns.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said he had to “hold his nose” over last year’s taxpayer-funded bailouts of financial giants.

Senate Democrats working with a well-known Republican war critic are developing a resolution declaring that US president George Bush’s troop build-up in Iraq “is not in the national interest”, says a person familiar with the document.