Still, inflation is "going to be serious," Wal-Mart US CEO Bill Simon said during a meeting with USA TODAY's editorial board. "We're seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate." Along with steep increases in raw material costs, John Long, a retail strategist at Kurt Salmon, says labor costs in China and fuel costs for transportation are weighing heavily on retailers. He predicts prices will start increasing at all retailers in June.

"Every single retailer has and is paying more for the items they sell, and retailers will be passing some of these costs along," Long says. "Except for fuel costs, US consumers haven't seen much in the way of inflation for almost a decade, so a broad-based increase in prices will be unprecedented in recent memory." Consumer prices - or the consumer price index - rose 0.5% in February, the most since mid-2009, largely because of surging food and gasoline prices. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, rose a more modest 0.2%, though that still exceeded estimates.

The scenario hits Wal-Mart as it is trying to return to the low across-the-board prices it became famous for. Some prices rose as the company paid for costly store renovations. Major retailers such as Wal-Mart are the best positioned to mitigate some cost increases, Long says. Wal-Mart, for example, could have "access to any factory in any country around the globe" to mitigate the effect of inflation in the US, Long says. Still, "it's certainly going to have an impact," Long says. "No retailer is going to be able to wish this new cost reality away. They're not going to be able to insulate the consumer 100%."

But al-Awlaki, who has been linked to a series of terrorist plots, said the removal of anti-Islamist autocrats meant Islamic fighters and scholars were now freer to discuss and organise. "Our mujahideen brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of the Muslim world will get a chance to breathe again after three decades of suffocation," he wrote, using a term that refers generally to Islamic guerrilla groups or holy warriors.

"For the scholars and activists of Egypt to be able to speak again freely, it would represent a great leap forward for the mujahideen", wrote Awlaki, who is believed to be hiding in Southern Yemen. Al- Awlaki made his remarks in the fifth edition of Inspire, an online al-Qaeda magazine aimed at Muslims in the West.

The rebels have now lost the key oil port of Ras Lanuf and the nearby town of Bin Jawad, and are also in full retreat from Brega. In the west, the rebel-held town of Misrata is still reportedly coming under attack from pro-Gaddafi troops, reports say.

A British Foreign Office spokesperson said: "We can confirm that Moussa Koussa arrived at Farnborough Airport on 30 March from Tunisia. He has told us that he is resigning his post. We are discussing this with him and we will release further detail in due course. Moussa Koussa is one of the most senior figures in Gaddafi's government and his role was to represent the regime internationally - something that he is no longer willing to do."

"We encourage those around Gaddafi to abandon him and embrace a better future for Libya that allows political transition and real reform that meets the aspirations of the Libyan people." The Foreign Office in London called on other members of the Libyan government to abandon Colonel Gaddafi. UK intelligence officials hope that his deep knowledge of the Libyan regime will help bring about its early end, says the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Humphrey Hawksley.

The UN, which recognises Mr Ouattara as winner of November's poll, has voted to impose sanctions on Mr Gbagbo's circle. They add to economic measures already taken by the EU and African groups. The UN resolution, drafted by France and Nigeria, imposes a travel ban and assets freeze on Mr Gbagbo, his wife Simone and three of his closest associates. One million people have fled the violence - mostly from the main city Abidjan - and at least 462 people have been killed since December, according to the UN.

Key details:

462 killed, one million fled since disputed election

9,000 UN peacekeepers monitor 2003 ceasefire

World's largest cocoa producer

Once was haven of peace and prosperity in West Africa

Alassane Ouattara recognised as president-elect

International sanctions imposed to force Laurent Gbagbo to go

The situation at the plant remains critical, with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency yesterday saying that radioactive iodine-131 at more than 3,350 times permitted levels has been found in a sample of seawater taken from near the facility. The water is the most highly contaminated sample taken from the sea and indicates that radiation from the core of one or more of the reactors, where fuel rods have partly melted, is leaking into the Pacific Ocean.

A spokesman for the agency said the radioactivity poses no immediate threat to human health because fishing has been banned close to the plant and iodine will have been "significantly diluted" before it comes into contact with marine species and then enters the food chain for humans.

The girl, from Groningen in the north of the Netherlands, was on a day out on Tuesday last week with her classmates where she began to feel violent stomach pains, the spokesman said. A supervisor thought the pains suspicious and alerted the emergency services. When ambulance staff arrived they saw the girl was on the point of giving birth and rushed her to a nearby building where she had her baby. Both "are doing well" in the maternity ward of a Groningen hospital, the spokesman said.

Attorney Tracy Rizzo was alarmed. A number of days ago, an envelope, with a Chicago postmark and a hand-written address to her private investigations firm, came in the mail. The letter inside said, "The Al-Qaeda organization has planted 160 nuclear bombs throughout the US in schools, stadiums, churches, stores, financial institutions and government buildings." It also said, "This is a suicide mission for us."

The writer, who claims to be Osama Bin Laden, tells the reader the nukes are remotely controlled. "It was clear the writer wanted to scare me," said Rizzo, "Yes, it frightened me." Rizzo was one of eight people in the Chicago area to contact the FBI. Agencies in Oregon, California, Texas and Florida also got the letter with the Chicago postmark.

"There are items in the letter that lead us to believe it is a hoax," said Zavala. "There are several demands documented that aren't fully coherent." He said much of what's in the message doesn't add up, but in a post 9-11 world, the FBI can't let it go - even if it does appear to be a hoax.

Lloyd's said its businesses were capitalised to withstand a Japan quake loss of up to $64 billion (39 billion pounds), compared with the estimated $20 billion to $30 billion impact of the March 11 disaster. The insurance market plans to give an estimate next month of losses from the Japan quake. "As part of our market oversight we have a realistic disaster scenario which looks at a $64 billion earthquake centred on Tokyo," Lloyd's finance chief Luke Savage told Reuters.

"We think that this loss which we have seen will come well within that (scenario). Lloyd's, which traces its origins back 323 years to a London coffee house where wealthy merchants met to insure ships, said its 2010 pretax profit fell 43 percent to 2.2 billion pounds, weighed by claims from catastrophes including earthquakes in Chile and New Zealand and floods in Australia.

The market, made up of over 70 competing insurance and reinsurance syndicates who provide cover against large-scale, complex risks, was also hit last year by a 29 percent drop in investment income amid weaker financial markets and persistently low interest rates.

Shoppers will be left in the dark because products from the offspring of cloned animals will not require special labels. One MEP warned supermarkets could soon be flooded with their milk. More than 100 clone offspring animals, mostly dairy cows, are being reared on British farms. Meat, milk and cheese from these and similar animals could go on shelves within months. Caroline Spelman, Tory food and farming secretary, led the moves in Brussels to sabotage attempts to regulate or mark food from clones and their descendants.

The failure to reach any agreement leaves the 27 EU states without meaningful controls on clone farming and food. Two MEPs, who led negotiations on behalf of the European Parliament, condemned the Commission and the European Council, which represents national governments. 'It is deeply frustrating that the Council would not listen to public opinion and support urgently needed measures to protect consumer and animal welfare interests,' said Gianni Pittella and Kartika Liotard in a joint statement.

'Parliament had overwhelmingly called for a ban on food from cloned animals and their descendants. We made a huge effort to compromise but we were not willing to betray consumers on their right to know whether food comes from animals bred using clones. Since European public opinion is overwhelmingly against cloning for food, a commitment to label all food products from cloned offspring is a bare minimum.'

Next September, the Canadian economist Robert Mundell will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of his work "A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas," which not only earned him the Nobel Prize for economics, but also remains a fundamental point of reference in the debate over the euro. Mundell argued that for a monetary union to function, workers and capital must be able to move about within its borders as freely as possible. For former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the idea of "maintaining an economic and monetary union in the long term without a political union" was an "absurd notion."

It is this context that makes Mundell's insights seem more relevant than ever. Politicians in Berlin, Paris and Brussels are currently outdoing each other with proposals for greater coordination of their economic and financial policy. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble promises "progress in European integration." In the future, says his French counterpart Christian Lagarde, every country will have to "take into account the effects of its economic policy on others." And European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso feels that it is his duty to endow the European Union with greater powers, saying: "We must further intensify and strengthen political coordination within the European Union."

"This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the solar system's innermost planet," Messenger mission scientists explained in a statement. The new Mercury photo shows a region around the south pole of Mercury. A 53-mile (85-kilometer) wide crater called Debussy clearly stands out in the upper right of the image, with bright rays emanating from its center.

A smaller crater called Matabei, which is 15 miles (24 km) wide and is known for its "unusual dark rays," is also visible in the image to the west of the Debussy crater, mission managers explained. The new Mercury photo was posted to the Messenger mission website managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which is overseeing the flight for NASA. Messenger arrived at Mercury on March 17, more than 6 1/2 years after its launch from Earth.

Go to: http://www.space.com/11254-nasa-photos-mercury-orbit-messenger-spacecraft.html to see the pictures.

Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, said a new assessment by the rich nations' oil watchdog showed that the total number of barrels exported by Opec in 2011 would be slightly lower than in 2008, when cartel oil revenues reached $990 billion. But if average prices remain around $100 a barrel, Opec's oil revenues will still reach a record of $1,000 billion this year.

"It would be the first time in the history of Opec that oil revenues have reached a trillion dollars. It's mainly because of higher prices and higher production," Mr Birol said in a Financial Times interview. "However, Saudi Arabia has made substantial efforts to calm down the oil markets by increasing production and hinder prices from going higher."

Many of Opec's biggest producers are using the price gains to increase public spending, partly to guard against popular unrest. Saudi Arabia announced a multiyear spending package of $129 billion and is expected to spend about $35 billion in 2011. This largesse means the country now needs an oil price of $83 per barrel in order to balance its national budget this year. "The more they earn, the more they tend to spend. So the oil price they need is ratcheted up," said Leonidas Drollas, chief economist at the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London.

Brad Bourland, chief economist at Jadwa, an investment house in Riyadh, predicted in a note to clients that "unless the [Saudi] government takes measures to reduce spending... we assume this breakeven price will rise in subsequent years"

Mr Kan told parliament the situation at the quake-hit plant "continues to be unpredictable". The government "will tackle the problem while in a state of maximum alert", he said, adding that he was seeking advice on whether to extend the evacuation zone around the plant.

Meanwhile National Strategy Minister Koichiro Gemba said the government could consider temporarily nationalising Tepco, the company running the plant. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, in another press briefing, described the situation at Fukushima as "very grave". Workers are battling to restore power and restart the cooling systems at the stricken nuclear plant, which was hit by a powerful quake and subsequent tsunami over two weeks ago.

"We are doing our utmost efforts to contain the damage," Mr Edano said. "We need to avoid the fuel rods from heating up and drying up. Continuing the cooling is unavoidable... We need to prioritise injecting water." But he said work to safely remove contaminated water was also a priority.

On Monday highly radioactive water was found for the first time outside one of the reactor buildings at Fukushima plant.

Plutonium - used in the fuel mix for one of the six reactors - has also been found in soil at the plant, but not at levels that threaten human health, officials say.

Two years ago at an Islamic conference, I heard a Jordanian minister deliver an impressively forceful warning to his Western listeners. He said: 'We are sitting on a powder keg. In every Muslim society, a huge new young generation is rising, which is prey to deep frustrations: social, economic, political - and sexual. What will happen when these explode, none of us can guess.'

Today, the upheaval he anticipated has begun, powerfully influenced by the twin forces of the internet and the independent Qatar-based 24/7 broadcaster Al Jazeera, which has shown people rising up against their oppressive regimes in Arab North Africa. It seems likely to bring lasting change to the Muslim world, though the process will be protracted, and resistance from some rulers stubborn. Whether the West can usefully influence it is a much harder question.

Most Muslim societies are failures, not merely politically, but also economically and industrially. The oppression of women is just one manifestation of a culture that stifles modernity. The only Middle Eastern export the world wants is its oil. Those Muslim countries that lack black gold invent and produce almost nothing else of value, and most are wretchedly poor. Their inhabitants are bitterly conscious of the West's wealth and of its indifference towards them, which sometimes spills over into contempt. Above all, of course, Israel is the focus of rage - compounded by the West's support for that country.

To remain mere spectators while a substantial part of the Middle East struggles over its destiny, and while innocent people suffer, flies in the face of many Western leaders' strongest instincts. But our power to influence events is small. The consequences of Muslim rage could be grave. We know what we want to happen: that freedom, democracy and prosperity should flourish throughout the Arab world. But there is dismayingly little that we can do to advance these fine things, as I fear we shall discover in the boundless Libyan sands.

However, a shortage of qualified fighter pilots means the RAF may not have enough to replace all of them when the squadron has to rotate in a few weeks. The situation is so serious that the RAF has halted the teaching of trainee Typhoon pilots so instructors can be drafted on to the front line, according to air force sources. The handful of pilots used for air shows will also be withdrawn from displays this summer.

The shortage has arisen because cuts to the defence budget over the past decade have limited the number of pilots who have been trained to fly the new Typhoon. There are also fewer newly qualified pilots coming through after the RAF was forced to cut a quarter of its trainee places due to cuts announced in last year's Strategic Defence and Security Review.

The Government's decision to decommission HMS Ark Royal, Harrier jump jets and the Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft - all of which could have played a role in the Libya conflict - has exacerbated the problem. Serving RAF pilots contacted The Daily Telegraph to warn of the risks to the Libya operation. "We have a declining pool of pilots," one said. "There's less people to do twice as much work. If we are not training any more we are going to run out of personnel very soon."