Washington - The United States has moved to cut off all Iranian transactions routed through US banks to further tighten sanctions over the Islamic state's nuclear and other illicit activities, the US Treasury Department announced Thursday.

Iranian banks and other institutions could previously send transactions through US banks as long as they were initiated by a non-Iranian or American bank outside the US and ended in a non- Iranian or American bank outside the US.

Washington - Art has not escaped the downward pressure of the economy, as Christie's failed to get even half of the minimum prices expected for a raft of late 19th and 20th Century artworks.

The New York auction house brought in only 47 million dollars instead of the 104 million dollars projected as the minimum values in its auction late Wednesday night.

Nearly 30 per cent of the work for sale found no buyer, including works by Manet, Cezanne, Rothko and de Kooning.

Washington - President-elect Barack Obama made his first White House appointment on Thursday - picking Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and will meet with President George W Bush to discuss the transition phase on Monday.

Emanuel, a close friend of Obama's, served as a senior advisor in former president Bill Clinton's White House in the 1990s and oversaw the successful Democratic effort to regain control of the House in 2006.

Washington - President-elect Barack Obama has made his first White House appointment - picking Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and will meet with President George W Bush to discuss the transition phase on Monday.

Emanuel, a close friend of Obama's who served as a senior advisor in former president Bill Clinton's White House in the 1990s, accepted the job on Thursday, a Democratic Party aide confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Sacramento - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday proposed several stringent measures to curb spending and increase taxes in order to deal with a budget shortfall, this office said.

The proposals include a steep increase in state sales tax, a five cent tax on every alcoholic drink sold and an estimated 4.5 billion dollars in welfare and other budget cuts.

The moves are meant to close a projected budget shortfall of 24 billion dollars by the middle of 2010.

Washington - President-elect Barack Obama has made his first White House appointment - picking Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and will meet with President George W Bush to discuss the transition phase on Monday.

Emanuel, a close friend of Obama's who served as a senior advisor in former president Bill Clinton's White House in the 1990s, accepted the job on Thursday, a Democratic Party aide confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.