WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration and Congress anxiously revived negotiations Friday on a $700 billion financial bailout, one day after the largest bank collapse in U.S. history provided a brutal reminder of the risks of failure.

"I'm convinced that by Sunday we will have an agreement that people can understand on this bill," predicted Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a key Democrat in eight days of up-and-down talks designed to stave off an economic crisis.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added that "progress is being made," although neither she nor Frank divulged details at a late-afternoon news conference in the Capitol. Talks continued into the evening.

Frank and Pelosi spoke a few hours after President Bush prodded lawmakers to "rise to the occasion" -- and quickly.

In one small sign of progress, House Republicans dispatched their second-ranking leader, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, to join the talks after their objections to an emerging compromise had brought negotiations to a standstill the day before. They also demanded "serious consideration" for a plan of their own, involving less government intrusion and lower cost to the taxpayers than the $700 billion that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has been seeking.

The legislation the administration is promoting would allow the government to buy bad mortgages and other sour assets held by investors, most of them financial companies. That should make those companies

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices fell just over $1 a barrel Friday as a U.S. financial bailout plan remained stuck in legislative limbo, raising investor worries that the economic crisis could deepen and further erode domestic energy demand.

Crude's fall erased some of the previous day's gains, though prices have largely been in a holding pattern as oil traders await resolution on the stalled the $700 billion rescue package.

"There's really no impetus to push things higher or lower. The market is simply waiting for guidance from the bailout plan," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

Negotiations continued Friday to revive the White House-backed initiative, a day after talks broke down in heated disagreement over the scope and cost of the unprecedented government intervention. The measure would remove billions of dollars in bad mortgages and other risky assets from banks' balance sheets in a bid to calm frenetic financial markets and soothe a jittery public.

Some conservative GOP lawmakers Thursday denounced the plan as an unnecessary federal intrusion into the private sector and proposed a dramatically different scheme under which financial firms with bad assets would pay the Treasury to insure them, rather than sell them outright to the government. It was unclear what form the final proposal would take, though lawmakers from both parties reported making progress on a plan late Friday.

Still, the prospect of a deal being scuttled or delayed rattled investors who were counting on the capital infusion to steady the teetering financial system. Any further softening in the economy could lead to