Israeli forces killed a local Hamas commander in the southern Gaza town of Rafah bordering Egypt, as well as two of his bodyguards, in a targeted strike on a vehicle, medics said. Israel blamed the slain commander for a rocket strike on its port of Eilat launched from Egyptian Sinai some months ago. Five militants were wounded in a second air raid in northern Gaza. Another air strike at daybreak killed a further militant.

Cross-border violence has surged since Hamas militants fired an anti-tank rocket at an Israeli school bus on Thursday, wounding two people including a teenager, who was listed in critical condition. Israel has said it wants to teach Hamas a lesson for that attack, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday amounted to "crossing a line," adding that "whoever tries to attack and murder children puts his life on the line."

At least 18 Palestinian militants and civilians, including an 11-year-old boy, have been killed in retaliatory strikes on the Gaza Strip since Thursday, and 36 since the latest round of bloodletting began in earnest on March 20.

A Syrian rights group said at least 37 people had been killed in protests across the country on Friday."Syrian security committed (in Deraa) what could be called a crime against humanity," the National Organization for Human Rights said in a statement. "It fired indiscriminately on protesters and killed and wounded tens of them." State television for its part said armed groups had killed 19 policemen and wounded 75 in the city. The Interior Ministry warned it would not tolerate breaches of the law and would deal with "armed groups," state news agency SANA said.

Popular demonstrations calling for greater freedom, inspired by Arab uprisings that began in Tunisia and Egypt, have shaken Syria. Assad has responded with a mixture of force against protesters, gestures toward political reform and concessions to conservative Muslims, including closing Syria's only casino.

Commodities also gained as the dollar fell to the lowest level in more than a year against the euro. "Since the Libya unrest began, there's been a re-coupling of the inverse relationship between the dollar and oil," said Stephen Schork, president of the Schork Group Inc in Villanova, Pennsylvania. "The Middle East is being used as cover by speculators looking to send oil higher."

Crude oil for May delivery rose $2.49 to $112.79 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest settlement since September 22, 2008. Futures advanced 4.5 percent this week and are 32 percent higher than a year ago. Brent oil for May settlement increased $3.98, or 3.2 percent, to end the session at $126.65 a barrel on the London based ICE Futures Europe exchange. It was the highest settlement since July 30, 2008.

The European benchmark was at a $13.86-a-barrel premium over West Texas Intermediate, the oil traded in New York. London Brent, traditionally cheaper than WTI, has been higher than the Nymex grade since August because of ample US stockpiles. Since anti-government protests in Libya began February 15, oil in New York has increased 34 percent while the dollar has declined 6.6 percent versus the euro.

Many Asian central banks have been forced into waging wars to keep their currencies from appreciating because of the influx of investors to emerging markets. They sell waves of their own currencies into the market in an attempt to keep exports competitive. In return they often receive dollars. But with the Federal Reserve printing dollars and the greenback's value continually falling, the Asians sell those dollars in order to preserve the value of their reserves.

"Asia Pacific banks are renowned for their strict diversification" says Neil Mellor at BNY Mellon. "They hold a level with China in order to be competitive. Beyond that it's very strict ratios. They need to swap-out of dollars." When they sell dollars they often buy euros.

"China and Taiwan have tried looking further afield in their diversification, to the Australian and South Korean bond markets" says Mellyor. "But there are only two places that are deep enough to absorb reserves of this magnitude: the Euro Zone and the US. Whenever you see emerging markets perform well you will see the euro perform well."

The metals' rallies have clear links to rising fears about inflation. But recent predictions for silver to hit $50 and gold to breach $1,500 are based on more than just these fears. "Both markets actually have surplus supply. Demand for both is good - particularly industrial demand for silver - but this isn't enough to absorb all the supply," says Suki Cooper, precious metals analyst at Barclays Capital. "That leaves the rest down to investor demand."

Investors have indeed been piling in. Holdings of gold to back exchange-traded funds - the popular way for retail investors to gain exposure - jumped 19.9 tonnes on Thursday alone in the biggest single inflow since late January, according to Barclays. On the same day, holdings of silver jumped 42 tonnes to another record at 15,554 tonnes.

The sources said the decision was reached reluctantly, but it puts Sunni Islam-majority Pakistan alongside other Sunni Muslim partners, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, in a move that apparently is intended to assure that Sunni Islam remains dominant in the Arab world. The perception is that the influence of Shiite Islam-dominated Iran is on the rise.

As a further show of support to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has organized and recruited some 1,000 ex-army personnel for service in the national guard of Bahrain. Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa recently requested troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to put down increasingly violent demonstrations by the Shiites, who make up some 70 percent of the population. Saudi Arabia and the UAE each recently sent some 1,000 troops and logistical support to Bahrain.

Khalifa and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz accuse Iran of fomenting the demonstrations with the idea of taking over the island country between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf.

Meat Promotion Wales said red meat was an "essential part of a healthy diet" and it will complain about the poster to the Advertising Standards Authority. The poster on the corner of Yew and Court Street depicts an overweight young boy eating a burger. It states: "Feeding kids meat is child abuse - fight the fat - go veg."

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) Foundation said it was hoping to make residents take stock of the Merthyr's "ballooning" childhood obesity problem. Spokeswoman Mimi Bekhechi told BBC Wales: "We are seeing diabetes in very young children which is typically an adult disease. We are seeing children as young as three or four with arterial clogging. We know that a vegetarian diet is much healthier."

But a council spokeswoman said: "Unfortunately, the message conveyed in this advert is portrayed as stereotypically offensive and is blatantly inaccurate. From a children's services point of view, this advert is at the very least ill-conceived - and at worst may cause distress to an already vulnerable group of children, young people and their families. In short, it is offensive and strays into a subject area that should not be trivialised."

Meat Promotion Wales said: "Peta's agenda is to force everyone to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle and they are willing to exploit the suffering experienced by genuine child abuse victims to further their own agenda."

The Chancellor last night insisted that Portugal's fate demonstrated that Britain would be 'playing Russian roulette' with the economy if it did not press ahead with painful spending cuts and tax rises to restore the public finances to health. But there was a furious response from Eurosceptic Conservatives at the prospect of British taxpayers being dragged into the Portuguese bailout.

Treasury sources confirmed that Britain could be required to give a multi-billion pound guarantee to pay off Portugal's loans under the terms of a deal signed by Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling in the days after his party lost the General Election, but before the Coalition was formed last May. The Tory leader in Brussels, Euro MP Martin Callanan, insisted the UK should play no part in the bailout and claimed the legality of the EU agreement was 'highly dubious'.

Some experts warned that the much bigger Spanish economy could be the next target for the markets. Joe Rundle, head of trading at ETX Capital, a City trading house, said: 'It's all about Portugal today, but by tomorrow, it'll be Spain, then Italy perhaps. The phrase being used about Spain is "too big to fail, too big to bail".'

Each year, an ever larger portion of the world's crops - cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil - is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. Cassava is a relatively new entrant in the biofuel stream.

But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.

This year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that its index of food prices was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence. Prices rose 15 percent from October to January alone, potentially "throwing an additional 44 million people in low and middle income countries into poverty," the World Bank said.

In the United States, Congress has mandated that biofuel use must reach 36 billion gallons annually by 2022. The European Union stipulates that 10 percent of transportation fuel must come from renewable sources like biofuel or wind power by 2020. Countries like China, India, Indonesia and Thailand have adopted biofuel targets as well.

American warplanes had hardly left the skies over Libya when the remonstrations began. "NATO has let us down," said rebel military chief Abdul Fattah Younis. As the rebels retreated in the town of Brega in the face of a heavy onslaught by Gaddafi's troops, there were no NATO planes in sight.

The withdrawal of the American planes, which flew more than half of the sorties in the first two weeks of the air strikes, has weakened NATO's potential force. With the organization having taken control of the operation, American planes are now only in standby mode, leaving the much smaller air forces of France and the United Kingdom to take on most of the workload. Appeals from the NATO leadership to member countries to send more aircraft have so far been met with little success.

Only the British have beefed up their presence, increasing the number of its Tornado contingent from eight to 12. The French, meanwhile, are having to split their military resouces between two fronts now, with the opening of the conflict in the Ivory Coast.

But the Libyan rebels are not alone in their complaints: Within NATO, there is also increasing frustration at the slow progress on the ground. The seemingly rudderless attacking and fleeing of the untrained fighters in the face of government soldiers is causing the Western allies to despair, albeit not in public, because it looks more and more likely that the undeclared aim of the international intervention - the removal of dictator Muammar Gaddafi - will probably never be achieved. "Libya appears to be sliding into a prolonged conflict with no light at the end of the tunnel," Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at the London School of Economics (LSE), wrote in a commentary posted on CNN's website.

A 50-year old Palestinian in east Gaza was killed by shelling in the afternoon and four others were killed by air attacks in the south near the border with Egypt. A teenage IsraelI boy on the bus was seriously wounded and its driver was injured and a 4-year-old Palestinian girl was injured in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Armed Islamist movement Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, took responsibility for the attack on the bus, saying it was retaliating for Israel's killing of three Palestinian militants in an air strike on Saturday. An Israeli F-16 warplane bombed a major Hamas security compound, rocking Gaza City with a big explosion and wounding at least one person there.

"We hope this situation will be contained, but we will not shy away from taking all the necessary action, offensive and defensive, to protect our country and to protect our citizens," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a news conference during a visit to Prague. The Israeli military said 45 rockets and mortars were launched into Israeli territory from Gaza in the space of three hours, the heaviest fire in two weeks.

The violence in Afghanistan was sparked off by the burning of the Koran in the US. The rioting began in Mazar-e-Sharif when the UN office was ransacked and seven UN officials and guards were brutally murdered. The demonstrations then spread south to Kandahar where over two days some 13 people were killed. After six days it had spread to the eastern provinces and the capital, Kabul.

There was anger among some Western observers at President Hamid Karzai, who drew attention to the Koran burning. Most Afghans did not know about it until he condemned the burning publicly a few days before the riots started. However there is also little doubt that the Taliban have taken enormous advantage of the issue in their heartland of southern Afghanistan and it is they who have been whipping up the crowds.

The out-of-control violence comes as the Kabul government is supposed to take charge of some areas of Afghanistan from US forces in July in the transition process that will extend to 2014.

Production in Libya, the world's 17th largest oil producer, has been severely affected as fighting between the government and rebels continues. While there has been concern about a shortfall in supplies from the oil producing nations, the demand for oil has been increasing. The economic growth of emerging nations is producing a surge in demand, fuelled by a need for oil to power the industrial sector, as well as an ever growing number of vehicles on the road.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a warning that the disparity in demand and supply of oil is likely to push prices even higher. "There is a risk that the tensions between demand and supply trends could intensify again and prices could rise rapidly," said Thomas Helbling an advisor to IMF's research department.

The IMF also warned that the markets are likely to face further scarcity in oil supplies. "The increase in the trend component of oil prices suggest that the global oil market has entered a period of increased scarcity," the IMF said.

The area was ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami last month which severely damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. Thursday's quake was 118km (78 miles) north of Fukushima, 40km offshore. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which operates Fukushima, says it is checking on the situation at the damaged plant following the latest earthquake. The quake was strong enough to shake buildings in Tokyo.

Portugal's caretaker Prime Minister Jose Socrates said on Wednesday he had asked the EU for financial assistance. Portugal follows Greece and the Irish Republic in seeking a bail-out. However, Spain was quick to say it would not be following these countries in seeking assistance.

Spain's Economy Minister Elena Salgado said that financial markets were perfectly capable of distinguishing between the situations in Portugal and Spain. In an interview on the national radio station SER, she said that the risk of contagion was "absolutely ruled out", and added it was clear that Spain's economy was much more competitive than Portugal's. Spain has the EU's highest unemployment rate and is struggling to deal with a banking crisis and the collapse of its property boom.

In Portugal, Mr Socrates put off a bail-out request as long as he could, having stepped down as prime minister after failing to pass austerity measures. "I always said asking for foreign aid would be the final way to go but we have reached the moment," he said. "Above all, it's in the national interest."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a statement that Portugal's request would be processed "in the swiftest possible manner, according to the rules applicable". He also reaffirmed his "confidence in Portugal's capacity to overcome the present difficulties, with the solidarity of its partners". Mr Socrates did not say how much aid Portugal would ask for. Negotiations will now be underway and the BBC's business editor Robert Peston said rescue loans could amount to as much as 80 billion euros ($115 billion; 70 billion pounds).