WASHINGTON - US SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton on Friday rejected Israeli assertions that the Bush administration had reached a binding agreement with Israel on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

'We have the negotiating record, that is the official record that was turned over to the Obama administration by the outgoing Bush administration,' Mrs Clinton said at a joint press conference with her Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu. 'There is no memorialisation of any informal or oral agreement' concerning the settlements, she said.

DETROIT (Michigan) - AMONG the many iconic images that helped define the Great Depression in the 1930s, the best remembered is arguably the photograph of a weary-looking mother with her two children burying their faces in her shoulder.

The photograph taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936 'stands apart from all but a few others in telling the human story of a profound time in American history', according to the Library of Congress.

With the United States back in the grips of another historic economic downturn, what are the images that would similarly tell the story of this new era of uncertainty?

WASHINGTON - A FORMER State Department official with top secret security clearance and his wife have been arrested for spying for communist Cuba for almost 30 years, US officials said on Friday.

Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, have been charged with conspiracy to hand over classified information to US foe Cuba, the Department of Justice said in a statement.