"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.

"A total war is in progress, fight the enemy where ever you can," Doku Umarov said standing alongside two other militants in a snow-covered forest in a video posted on militant website hunafa.com. As well as repeating calls for women to join the rebellion, Umarov called on Russian Muslims from outside the Caucasus like the Volga regions of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan to join the insurgency.

Umarov, whose Caucasus Emirate group aims to impose Islamic rule throughout the Northern Caucasus, has claimed responsibility for the Moscow airport attack in January that killed 37 and the 2010 metro attacks that killed 40.

Mr Cameron grabbed headlines around the world with his call last month for an end to "state multiculturalism". Labour accused the government of showing a "lack of clarity" on the issue. In a speech in Luton, Mr Clegg said the prime minister was "absolutely right to make his argument for 'muscular liberalism'", and "to assert confidently our liberal values".

But he also attempted to strike a different tone to the prime minister on the issue of multiculturalism. He said: "Where multiculturalism is held to mean more segregation, other communities leading parallel lives, it is clearly wrong. For me, multiculturalism has to seen as a process by which people respect and communicate with each other, rather than build walls between each other. "Welcoming diversity but resisting division: that's the kind of multiculturalism of an open, confident society."

China has been building up its military, causing anxiety to a number of countries in the region. "China's modernisation of its military and increased activity is, along with insufficient transparency, a matter of concern," Yuki Edna, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, said on Thursday. Relations have been strained between China and Japan over disputed isles in the South China Sea, where there are large potential reserves of oil and gas.

China's defence budget was increased by 7.5% in 2010, after double-digit jumps in recent years. "There's no two ways about the fact that China's military is getting much more powerful," said Duncan Innes-Kerr of the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing. "Its ability going forward to overwhelm opponents is clearly increasing," he added.

Other countries in the region are also beefing up their military strength. Last week, India announced an increase of 11.6% in annual defence spending, an increase from 4% last year.

There have been calls in Colonel Gaddafi's stronghold, Tripoli, for protests against his rule after Friday prayers. US President Barack Obama has repeated his demand that the embattled ruler resign. In Benghazi, the opposition National Libyan Council said there was no room for talks, following reports that Colonel Gaddafi had ordered an intelligence chief to negotiate with the rebels.

The council is led by former Libyan Interior Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who defected last month. "If there is any negotiation it will be on one single thing - how Gaddafi is going to leave the country or step down so we can save lives. There is nothing else to negotiate," Ahmed Jabreel, a spokesman for Mr Abdel-Jalil, told Reuters news agency.

The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Benghazi says it appears that neither side has the capacity to move large amounts of manpower or firepower over vast expanses of desert. He says that raises the grim prospect of a military stalemate and a political vacuum after the revolt that began in the east of the country in mid-February. Meaningful talks would be difficult, says our correspondent, because Colonel Gaddafi's only aim is to remain in power and the rebels' goal is to end his 41 years of rule.

The book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week - From the Entrance Into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, is a sequel to his previous book on Jesus' life. The Pope describes the book as a biography of "the final week of Jesus' earthly life."

In the book, Benedict says John's accusation, in which the Gospel writer slams the Jewish People and blames them for Jesus' death, could not be aimed at the entire nation because John, like most Christians of the time, was a Jew himself. Instead, Benedict takes aim at the "Temple Aristocracy," who, the Pope says, ran the Temple and ruled the Jewish people in the latter days of the Second Temple era.

In the Christian Bible's account of Jesus' trial, this 'Temple Aristocracy' is described as being "the chief priests and Sanhedrin." The Temple and Sanhedrin were dominated by the Sadducees, led by the high priest Caiaphas, in the Gospel accounts. Despite this, Christians have long blamed the Jewish people - then popularly led by the Pharisees who fathered Rabbinic Judaism - for Jesus' death.

Benedict's silence on the Holocaust, support for certain Traditionalist Catholic positions regarding Vatican II, and the tacit backing of bishops who have made anti-Semitic statements has led many to speculate that Benedict would roll back the clock on interfaith relations, especially as they pertain to Israel and the Jewish people. But, while Benedict's book has created a stir in the Christian world, especially among Protestants and Traditionalist Catholics, the Pope's position is neither novel nor unique.

In response to Benedict's new book, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent a letter to the Pope on Thursday praising him for "rejecting false claims that have formed the basis of hatred against Jews for years."

There were a series of energy crises between 1967 and 1979 caused by problems in the Middle East but the most significant started in 1973 when Arab oil producers imposed an embargo. The decision to boycott America and punish the west in response to support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war against Egypt led the price of crude to rise from $3 per barrel to $12 by 1974. The price of petrol rocketed, making all transport more expensive. There was even talk in Britain of rationing using coupons left over from the second world war.

The Conservative government, led by Ted Heath, was already struggling to cope with high food prices caused by global shortages. This fed into an inflation rate that hit more than 25% (by comparison, inflation in January 2011 was at 4%, double the Bank of England's current target of a 2% inflation rate). Trade unions submitted claims for higher wages to keep up with rising prices, which led to confrontation with the miners, the introduction of a three-day week and ultimately the fall of the Tories in a general election of February 1974.

A Labour government under Harold Wilson took power but faced a collapse in corporate profits and stock market values. Burmah Oil, a big name in the energy sector, had to be rescued by the Bank of England after running into problems. But the wider oil industry in Britain was a notable winner at this time as money was poured into the North Sea on the back of high crude oil prices, allowing the UK to eventually become a net exporter.

Skyrocketing food prices have been among the triggers for protests in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere and raised fears of a repeat of the food price crises in 2007 and 2008. Global oil prices have spiked on concerns about the potential impact of supply disruptions from Libya. The Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement Thursday that its food price index was up 2.2 percent last month, the highest in real and nominal terms since the agency started monitoring prices in 1990.