BBC News with Nick Kelly

The United Nations says the number of Malian refugees fleeing the fighting between Tuareg rebels and the military has doubled over the past 10 days. It says more than 44,000 have crossed into neighbouring countries. Martin Plaut reports.

People have been crossing in their thousands into Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso, where the UNHCR has been registering them. The conflict has been fierce with government forces using helicopter

gunships

in an attempt to retake towns

seized

by the rebels. Amnesty International described the fighting, which erupted in January, as the worst human rights crisis in northern Mali for 20 years.

Italian police have arrested eight people in connection with a

seizure

of fake US treasury bonds. Police said the alleged crime posed a serious danger to the stability of the international credit system. Alan Johnston reports.

This is a case of attempted international fraud on the most extraordinary scale. The police say that the $6tn worth of

counterfeit

US bonds were seized in Switzerland. They were found in fake American Federal Reserve security boxes in a raid in January. And now several arrests have been made in different parts of Italy. Investigators say the gang may have been planning to sell the

bogus

bonds to investors in emerging economies or to more mainstream brokers.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton say they are cautiously optimistic that talks with Iran about its nuclear programme might resume. The assessment comes after Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili sent a letter to Baroness Ashton saying Tehran was ready to restart discussions.