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."

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the "nerve center" of the conservative movement.

The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals - not least among the donors who fund Media Matters' staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

"The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment," said Brock, Media Matters' chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group's main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media. The new strategy, he said, is a "war on Fox."

Brock said Media Matters also plans to run a broad campaign against Fox's parent company, News Corp, an effort which most likely will involve opening a United Kingdom arm in London to attack the company's interests there. The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the US, UK, and elsewhere against the network.

The group will "focus on [News Corp CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests - whether that be here or looking at what's going on in London right now," Brock said, referring to News Corp's - apparently successful - move to take a majority stake in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

While the revolutionary movements gripping the Middle East have created uncertainty throughout the region, the video shows that the Iranian regime believes the chaos is divine proof that their ultimate victory is at hand. The propaganda footage has reportedly been approved at the highest levels of the Iranian government.

It's called The Coming is Near and it describes current events in the Middle East as a prelude to the arrival of the mythical tweflth Imam or Mahdi - the messiah figure who Islamic scriptures say will lead the armies of Islam to victory over all non-Muslims in the last days. "This video has been produced by a group called the Conductors of the Coming, in connection with the Basiji - the Iranian paramilitary force, and in collaboration with the Iranian president's office," said Reza Kahlil, a former member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who shared the video with CBN News.

Kahlili, author of the book, A Time to Betray, worked as a double agent for the CIA inside the Iranian regime. "Just a few weeks ago, Ahmadenijad's office screened this movie with much excitement for the clerics," Kahlili told CBN News. "The target audience is Muslims in the Middle East and around the world."

The video claims that Iran is destined to rise as a great power in the last days to help defeat America and Israel and usher in the return of the Mahdi. And it makes clear the Iranians believe that time is fast approaching. "The Hadith have clearly described the events and the various transformations of countries in the Middle East and also that of Iran in the age of the coming," said a narrator, who went on to say that America's invasion of Iraq was foretold by Islamic scripture - and that the Mahdi will one day soon rule the world from Iraq.

"I think it's a very grave development," Mideast expert Joel Rosenberg, author of The Twelfth Imam, told CBN News, "because it gives you a window into the thinking of the Iranian leadership: that they believe the time for war with Israel may be even sooner than others had imagined."

Kahlili says The Coming is Near will soon be distributed by the Iranian regime throughout the Middle East. He explained that their goal is to instigate further uprisings in Arab countries.

US warplanes have dropped 455 precision guided bombs, costing tens of thousands of dollars each. A downed Air Force F-15E fighter jet will cost more than $60 million to replace. And operation of the war craft, guzzling ever-expensive fuel to maintain their positions off the Libyan coast and in the skies above, could reach millions of dollars a week, experts say.

That means the planes, each on a 25-hour round-trip flight, ran up a bill of $750,000, and the 45 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) they dropped added at least $1.3 million more.

While many Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill have questioned President Obama's constitutional authority to engage in Libya without their consent, some are voicing concern about the effect on the skyrocketing federal deficit. "We have already spent trillions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which descended into unwinnable quagmires," Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio wrote in a letter to colleagues last week. "Now, the president is plunging the United States into yet another war we cannot afford."

Proposals for it include turning it into a commercial heliport, a base for security personnel during the London Olympics, or a school and nightclub.

Ark Royal's operations have included leading the UK's naval forces during the invasion of Iraq. The current ship is the fifth vessel to carry the name - the first saw battle in 1588 against the Spanish Armada. Interested bidders are being invited to view Ark Royal at her home port, Portsmouth Naval Base, on 3 and 4 May.

Before they can attend, they must submit an outline of their "intentions regarding the vessel" to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The aircraft carrier is listed on the edisposals.com website, which is run by the MoD's Defence Equipment and Support arm. It has a budget of 14 billion pounds to equip the UK's armed forces with everything from aircraft to clothing, and in order to supplement that, it regularly sells off kit that is no longer needed.

Also on sale currently are three Type-42 destroyers - HMS Exeter, HMS Southampton and HMS Nottingham.

But UK Transport Minister Norman Baker said it should not be "involved" in individual cities' transport choices. "We will not be banning cars from city centres anymore than we will be having rectangular bananas," he said. Outlining plans for a "Single European Transport Area", the Commission said there needed to be a "profound shift" in travel patterns to reduce reliance on oil and to lower emissions from transport by 60% by 2050.

As part of this, it wants half of "middle distance journeys" between cities - above approximately 186 miles - to shift from road to rail. Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said this move, plus the phasing out of petrol or diesel cars in city centres, need not inconvenience people. "Freedom to travel is a basic right for our citizens," he said. "Curbing mobility is not an option. Nor is business is usual."

"The widely-held belief that you need to cut mobility to fight climate change is simply not true. We can break the transport system's dependence on oil without sacrificing its efficiency and compromising mobility." It also wants Europe's air traffic control operations to be modernised with the introduction of a single integrated system.

"We are all paying the price for a transport policy that's been heading in the wrong direction for far too long," Richard Dyer, Friends of the Earth's transport director, said. "Phasing out cars that run on fossil fuels from cities is a good way to kick-start action but despite these headline-grabbing proposals the emission reduction targets in the plan lack ambition," he added.

Local media report that about 52 people have died while waiting to see him. A BBC reporter says the queues to see him stretch for 26km (16 miles). Belief in magic and the powers of traditional healers are widespread in Tanzania. Some witchdoctors say that the body parts of people with albinism are effective when making magic charms, leading to the killing of dozens of albinos in recent years.

In 2009, the government outlawed all witchdoctors and traditional healers. But on Monday, Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said he would not take any action to stop Mr Mwasapile's activities. Mr Mwasapile's concoction is made from herbs and water, which he sells for 500 Tanzanian shillings (five cents; 3p). When she visited Mr Mwasapile's home near the northern Loliondo town recently, the BBC's Caroline Karobia found 6,000 people waiting to see the retired Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT) pastor.

They are waiting for days by the roadside and outside his home in Samunge village without shelter, clean water or toilets. As word has spread in the past month of the pastor's supposed ability to cure any ailments, some people have even been taken out of hospital by their relatives who believe they are more likely to be cured by Mr Mwasapile. Some of these have died before seeing him, while others are reported to have died after taking his concoction.

The Knesset has taken an interest in the Jewish Leadership faction's report, and the Internal Affairs committee plans to discuss its findings in a special hearing on Tuesday. The Temple Mount discrimination "deals a blow to the values on which the state of Israel was founded, as a Jewish, democratic state," Fuah told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew-language news service. The situation has worsened in recent months, he added.

Fuah described the discrimination: "Everyone who has attempted to ascend the Temple Mount knows the reality, in which everyone with a 'Jewish look,' a beard and kippah, experiences discrimination. He is pulled aside for extra checks while everyone else passes by unimpeded." In addition, Jews are prohibited to pray at the site. "This discrimination is taking place at the place that is holiest to the Jewish people," he noted.

In some cases, he said, individual Jews have been forbidden to ascend to the Temple Mount, which according to Judaism is the world's most holy place. "They simply got a phone call in which [the police] told them that they cannot visit the Temple Mount, with no reason given," he said.

He recalled the case of Rabbi Yosef Elbaum, of the Belz chassidic sect, who was prohibited to visit the Mount following an interview with Arutz Sheva in which he mentioned his efforts on behalf of the Movement for Establishing the Temple. Members of the group study Jewish law regarding the Temple and the Temple Mount. "Rabbi Elbaum is sixty, and he never hurt anyone," Fuah said. "Among Arabs, on the other hand, anyone over the age of 40 can enter the Temple Mount freely."

The anti-nuclear Greens claimed about 24 percent of the vote - about 12 points higher than five years ago - and were likely to form a coalition with the Social Democrats, who garnered about 23 percent in the rich state. The online service of newsweekly Der Spiegel called the outcome for the two parties, based on preliminary results released on public television, a "sensation".

They edged out Merkel's party and their junior partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), who look set to claim a dismal 44 percent between them. Green party candidate Winfried Kretschmann, who could become the party's first state leader in Germany, called it a "historic victory. It's a dream come true..." "We could never have dreamed of a result like this a few days ago," added Franz Untersteller, a Greens spokesman.

The result in the state bordering France and Switzerland marked a debacle for Merkel, 56, after drubbings in North Rhine-Westphalia in May and Hamburg in February, with three more state polls to come this year. Meanwhile, in a further triumph for the Greens, strong gains in another election in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate appeared to force the Social Democrats to cede their absolute majority and join them in a coalition.