Brent crude gained $1.53 to $117.40 per barrel, near its recent $119.89 high. Meanwhile Asian stock markets suffered on fears rising energy prices could derail the global recovery, with the Nikkei ending the day 1.8% lower. Shares also fell in Hong Kong, Sydney and Bombay, as concerns mount that the continuing unrest in Libya could send oil prices even higher.

The US has indicated that it is considering tapping its oil reserves as one way to help ease soaring prices. But even that news failed to calm the markets as investors remained jittery about the unrest spreading to other oil-producing nations. "The concern is that with what we are seeing in Libya, it's purely fear driving the market," said Jonathan Barratt of Commodity Broking Services.

"Each time the price moves up a little, people are forced into the market. Once it's feeding itself, it will continue to rise," he added. Mr Barratt said US crude prices could peak at $120 a barrel, but only if further supply disruptions did not take place.

Saudi Arabia's worst nightmare - the arrival of the new Arab awakening of rebellion and insurrection in the kingdom - is now casting its long shadow over the House of Saud. Provoked by the Shia majority uprising in the neighbouring Sunni-dominated island of Bahrain, where protesters are calling for the overthrow of the ruling al-Khalifa family, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is widely reported to have told the Bahraini authorities that if they do not crush their Shia revolt, his own forces will.

The opposition is expecting at least 20,000 Saudis to gather in Riyadh and in the Shia Muslim provinces of the north-east of the country in six days, to demand an end to corruption and, if necessary, the overthrow of the House of Saud. Saudi security forces have deployed troops and armed police across the Qatif area - where most of Saudi Arabia's Shia Muslims live - and yesterday would-be protesters circulated photographs of armoured vehicles and buses of the state-security police on a highway near the port city of Dammam.

Like almost every other Arab potentate over the past three months, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia suddenly produced economic bribes and promised reforms when his enemy was at the gates. Can the Arabs be bribed? Their leaders can, perhaps, especially when, in the case of Egypt, Washington was offering it the largest handout of dollars - $1.5 billion (800 million pounds) - after Israel. But when the money rarely trickles down to impoverished and increasingly educated youth, past promises are recalled and mocked. With oil prices touching $120 a barrel and the Libyan debacle lowering its production by up to 75 per cent, the serious economic - and moral, should this interest the Western powers - question, is how long the "civilised world" can go on supporting the nation whose citizens made up almost all of the suicide killers of 9/11?

The Arabian peninsula gave the world the Prophet and the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans and the Taliban and 9/11 and - let us speak the truth - al-Qa'ida. This week's protests in the kingdom will therefore affect us all - but none more so than the supposedly conservative and definitely hypocritical pseudo-state, run by a company without shareholders called the House of Saud.

The ban follows a series of protests by Saudi Shiites in the kingdom's east in the past weeks mainly to demand the release of prisoners they say are long held without trial. Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority mostly live in the east, which holds much of the oil wealth of the world's top crude exporter and is near Bahrain, scene of protests by majority Shiites against their Sunni rulers.

Saudi Shiites complain they struggle to get senior government jobs and other benefits like other citizens. The government of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy without an elected parliament that usually does not tolerate public dissent, denies these charges. Last week, King Abdullah returned to Riyadh after a three-month medical absence and unveiled $37 billion in benefits for citizens in an apparent bid to insulate the kingdom from protests spreading in several Arab countries.

Mr Soros also predicted the Iranian regime would be overthrown in the "bloodiest of the revolutions". Libya produces 1.6 million barrels of oil per day and is the 17th largest producer in the world. And Colonel Gaddafi's hold on power has been dependent on the billions of dollars in oil revenue that pour into the country. Talking of the wave of governments being challenged in North Africa and the Middle East, Mr Soros said: "What has caused the revolutions is a revulsion against a corruption that is fed by the misuse of natural resources like for instance in Libya."

"Transparency and even more importantly accountability in the use of natural resources is what you need for people living in those countries to get the benefit of those national resources. Libya produced enormous wealth which Gaddafi took as his own and now the people rebelled against it. What is happening today in the Middle East is very similar to what happened in the former Soviet Union in 1989-91. But then it was a regime hostile to the West that was destroyed by the revolution," he said.

"Now it is regimes supported by the West, so the West has to regain the allegiance of the people in those countries by actually supporting the transition to democracy. It's very important that Europe and the US should be in front of the revolution rather than behind it because if they are behind it, they are going to lose the allegiance of the new regimes that are emerging and if they are properly supported they will be democratic regimes and it will be a tremendous improvement."

The shareholders have been surprised by the swift gear-change in HSBC's review of its domicile but some have already told the bank that they would support the move. The loss of HSBC's headquarters in London, although threatened for months because of the increase in financial regulations, would be a severe blow to the Coalition which, despite some of its 'banker bashing' rhetoric, is relying on a private-sector-led recovery.

One top institutional investor in HSBC told The Sunday Telegraph: "HSBC has a review of its domicile every three years, normally it's a formality, this time we were told that a move is now more than likely." Another shareholder added: "Instinctively we were very surprised by the change of tone. But you can't argue with the numbers. Moving to Hong Kong could deliver a 30 per cent premium [to the share price] overnight."

An HSBC spokesman said: "London is ideally positioned as an international financial centre and we have been clear that it is our preference to remain headquartered here. However, we are routinely asked by institutional investors about the costs of being headquartered in the UK and it's clear that the City's competitive position needs protection."

"Senator Obama campaigned hard in New Hampshire but he apparently didn't like what he saw," Romney says in prepared remarks. "He certainly didn't learn from it. Instead of lowering taxes, he raised them. He wrapped businesses in red tape, he grew government, he borrowed trillions of dollars, and he made it clear that he doesn't like business people very much."

"He created a deeper recession, and delayed the recovery. The consequence is soaring numbers of Americans enduring unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies. This is the Obama Misery Index, and it is at a record high. It's going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - it's going to take a new president."

Joining the crowd was liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, who praised the protesters gathered in the battle over union bargaining rights as joining the history of the American labor movement. Walker, a Republican, has proposed increased payments for health care and pension benefits for public workers and stripping their unions of most of their collective bargaining rights, a move he says is necessary to address a budget gap of $3.6 billion for the coming two years.

The warning notices, sent on Friday to at least 13 unions, do not represent actual layoffs for the state's 300,000 public employees but take the war of words between the newly elected governor and state Democrats to a new level. Moore told the crowd, which was smaller than it has been the last two weekends of the ongoing protests, that the nation was awash in wealth, concentrated in the hands of a few, but the public has been cowed into not standing up for itself.

"Madison is only the beginning," Moore said. "The rich have overplayed their hand."

"There was no revolt, until now here in Wisconsin," he added. Behind-the-scenes negotiations have failed to produce a compromise. Just one Democrat is needed for a quorum. The absent Democrats have been threatened with $100-a-day fines and the prospect of being arrested and taken to the Senate if they return to Wisconsin. With no action expected on the bill, Walker said he will be forced to send out layoff notices to 1,500 state employees, saving some $30 million.

"Right now the Earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge," said Moore, the Oscar-winning maker of "Bowling for Columbine," whose documentaries also include "Fahrenheit 911" and "Capitalism: A Love Story."

"America is not broke ... Wisconsin is not broke," Moore said. "The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers."

Police estimated the crowd at 30,000 to 40,000, less than the past two Saturdays. Moore urged those gathered not to retreat. "You are not alone," he said. "America is with you."

No police were in sight Saturday as protesters - men and women - held hands to encircle Manama, where Bahrain's Shiite majority has been leading daily demonstrations to end what they say are discriminatory policies and political persecution.Tensions have been high in the Gulf kingdom, the host of the US Navy's 5th Fleet, since a street battle between Sunnis and Shiites on Thursday left at least a dozen people injured.

Organizers say some members of the Sunni minority joined Saturday's event.

Coming a day after it emerged tiny drones could be used to spy on Britons, the CCTV study is sure to add fuel to the debate that we have become a Big Brother state. The research involved police community support officers counting every camera in Cheshire and extrapolating the results nationwide to provide a reliable estimate of the level of CCTV surveillance in the UK.

Officers counted 12,333 cameras in the area, according to a study published in CCTV Image magazine, the majority of which were inside premises, rather than facing public street. The research also found that most CCTV cameras in the UK are likely to be privately owned, with only 504 of Cheshire's cameras run by public bodies.

However, Isabella Sankey, director of policy at the campaign group Liberty, said the figures would do little to allay concerns about surveillance in Britain. 'Who cares if there is one camera or 10 on their street if that one camera is pointing into your living room?' she asked the Guardian. 'Concerns about CCTV are not a simple numbers game; what's required is proper legal regulation and proportionate use.'

Vince Cable said the twin threat puts the economic recovery at risk and piles pressure on struggling households. Economists also fear that food price hikes will reduce economic activity and squeeze household spending as families desperately cut back elsewhere.

A UN report yesterday revealed that rises in bread, pasta, breakfast cereal, dairy and meat prices are on the horizon - irrespective of future oil price hikes. The commodity price of key foods rose again in February, making it the eighth successive month of increases, according to the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation. It pointed out that the export prices of wheat, corn and rice are up by a staggering 70 per cent in one year.

British bakers expect a standard loaf to cost 10p to 15p more within weeks. Higher grain prices also lead to more expensive meat and dairy products in the shops because of their heavy use in animal feed. Gary Sharkey of Hovis said: 'Bakers cannot possibly absorb the latest round of increases. Flour costs have risen yet again, and there have been big increases in energy costs, a major factor in baking, plus significant rises in oil prices affecting daily distribution costs.'

Global commodity prices are running at their highest level since 2008, when food riots rocked many poor states. A report by investment bank UBS earlier this week said UK supermarkets and manufacturers had taken advantage of the global situation to push up prices by more than was justified.

Extreme weather, ranging from droughts in Russia to floods in China and Australia, has particularly hit global wheat production. The UN report said: 'We expect a tightening of the global cereal supply and demand balance in 2010/11. In the face of a growing demand and a decline in world cereal production in 2010, global cereal stocks this year are expected to fall sharply because of a decline in inventories of wheat and coarse grains.'

Experts described Mr Boldt's alleged forgeries as possibly the biggest medical research scandal since Andrew Wakefield was struck off last year for falsely claiming to have proved a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Guidelines for British anaesthetists regarding colloids - used to boost blood volume in patients undergoing surgery - are being revised after it emerged that four of the key studies on which they were based are to be formally retracted.

Mr Boldt, 57, was regarded as a leading specialist in intravenous fluid management, and his work was published widely in British medical journals. He claimed to have proved that colloids were as safe as other, similar treatments despite earlier studies showing them to be more dangerous. Mr Boldt's alleged forgeries date back up to a decade.

Dr Rupert Pearse, a senior lecturer in intensive care medicine at Barts and the London School of Medicine, and co-author of the British guidelines on fluid drugs, said last night: "I specifically remember looking at a paper of his last year and being surprised at how lucky he had been with his results. "For me, it shakes the world I work in and makes me feel less confident in it, and if I were a member of the public I would feel the same."

McCain and Independent Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, both fresh from a trip to the middle east region, participated in a wide ranging discussion at the Brookings Institution to share their views on the recent developments in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya. Lieberman called the changes, "Even more consequential than the collapse of the Soviet Union" and suggested, "It's in our strategic interest at this moment to help history move in the right direction."

Further emphasizing the role technology has played, McCain relayed a story from a young man he met with in Egypt, who held up his blackberry and said, "I can get 200,000 people in the square in two hours." And it is Egypt that the two lawmakers cautioned the Obama administration to keep an eye on. "Egypt is the heart and soul of the Arab world," McCain said. "What happens in Egypt will be vital to what happens in the rest of the region."

The Utah House was to vote as early as Thursday on legislation that would recognize gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as legal currency in the state. The coins would not replace the current paper currency but would be used and accepted voluntarily as an alternative. The legislation, which has 12 co-sponsors, would let Utahans pay their taxes with gold and also calls for a committee to study alternative currencies for the state. It would also exempt the sale of gold from the state capital gains tax.

The bill cleared a state legislative committee on Wednesday, the first of 11 similar bills in statehouses across the country to do so. If the bill clears the House, it would have to pass the Senate before the governor could sign it into law.

"It is not unusual for Beijing-based Western journalists to receive demands from bosses in their home countries to make up stories," said an opinion piece in the paper, which is linked to the ruling Communist Party. Western reporters "must never take delight in blind, idle chatter and instead should remember your true status and the laws of the nation where you are living."

The commentary appeared to underline rising official anxiety over an online call for rallies in cities across China each Sunday. Although no protests have yet been seen, police have thrown tight security at the sites in the past two weeks, which last Sunday saw several foreign journalists roughed up.

The commentary blamed the presence of Western journalists for attracting crowds of curious onlookers and setting police on edge. "Making up stories and fabricating news... does not conform with journalist ethics nor does it really uphold justice," the commentary said.