Evening Edition

World Bank president Robert Zoellick cited soaring food prices as “the biggest threat to the poor around the world.”

“We are in a danger zone because prices have already gone up; stocks for many commodities are relatively low,” Zoellick said in a news conference opening the annual World Bank-International Monetary Fund spring meetings.

The port area of Libya’s besieged third city Misrata came under heavy attack by Kadhafi’s forces, who fired dozens of Grad missiles and tank shells that killed at least 13 people and wounded 50, a rebel spokesman said.

The key crossroads town of Ajdabiya on the front line between the rebel-held east and the mainly government-held west, recaptured from loyalist forces at the weekend, came under renewed assault, an AFP correspondent reported.

The port area of Libya’s third city Misrata, meanwhile, came under heavy attack on Thursday by Kadhafi’s forces, who fired dozens of Grad missiles and tank shells which killed at least 13 people and injured 50, a rebel spokesman said.

In Cairo, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for a “political” solution and immediate ceasefire to the conflict in Libya, at an international conference hosted by the Arab League.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also warned in a joint statement that volatile commodity prices could slow the global economic recovery and that huge capital flows could hurt the developing world.

Chinese President Hu Jintao chaired the wide-ranging morning talks in the southern China resort city Sanya with South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

United Nations peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy told reporters in New York however there was still fighting and “quite a lot of looting” despite Ouattara’s victory over Gbagbo’s attempt to cling to power.

“There are still people with arms, it is still dangerous but there are no more blockades,” he said, as UN peacekeepers and French troops worked with the new government to restore order in the port city of Abidjan.

Hundreds of police wearing white protective suits and face masks scoured rubble-strewn neighbourhoods near the plant for victims of the giant wave that smashed into Japan’s northeast coast more than a month ago.

Some of the remains were found inside cars and others were “buried in debris, so that the sight of just a foot or other body part would lead to the discovery of a whole body,” a Fukushima police spokesman told AFP.

Speaking at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Berlin, Clinton also warned of a “violent spring fighting season” in Afghanistan as the Taliban try to exert themselves in areas where Afghan forces are due to assume control.

“We have to steel ourselves and our publics for the possibility that the Taliban will resort to the most destructive and sensational attacks we have seen,” she said.

The meeting took place almost a year since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and caused millions of gallons of oil to gush into the sea.

Diane Wilson, a shrimp farmer from the Texas Gulf Coast smeared her face and hands with a dark syrup resembling oil as she protested outside the annual general meeting (AGM) venue in east London.

Spain’s Pedro Almodovar, Denmark’s Lars Von Trier and Belgium’s Dardenne brothers are among those whose latest projects will be in the limelight when the world’s premier film festival opens on May 11 on the French Riviera.

No fewer than 1,715 films — some for the first time submitted via the Internet — were considered for the 64th edition of the event, festival director Thierry Fremaux told a press conference in Paris.

US District Judge Susan Illston on Wednesday declared a mistrial on three further counts of perjury after jurors were unable to reach a verdict on them.

Prosecutors did not immediately indicate whether they will seek to retry Bonds on any of those counts, in which Bonds was accused of lying to a grand jury when he said he never knowingly used anabolic steroids or human growth hormone or received injections from his personal trainer.

The decision comes two weeks after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani watched together as their teams played in the semi-final of the Cricket World Cup in northwest India.

Several Indian newspapers cited unidentified government sources as saying the question of precisely when and where the first cricket series between the rivals might take place would be decided by the two national cricket boards.

Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of Capitol Hill’s most feared panels, has a history with Goldman Sachs.

He clashed publicly with its Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein a year ago at a hearing on the crisis.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 rich and emerging countries, and the smaller Group of Seven developed nations, later on Thursday will weigh the impact of high oil prices, huge government debts and Japan’s disasters.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, speaking at a conference on the global economy, said the recovery from the 2007-2009 financial crisis was intact and that investment and hiring were starting to pick up.

U.S. and allied intelligence agencies believe NATO’s no-fly zone and air strikes will be effective in stopping Muammar Gaddafi’s forces from killing civilians and dislodging rebels from strongholds like Benghazi, the officials say.

But the more the intelligence agencies learn about rebel forces, the more they appear to be hopelessly disorganized and incapable of coalescing in the foreseeable future.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told NATO ministers meeting in Berlin it was vital for the alliance to maintain “resolve and unity” against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. But she gave no indication Washington was prepared to fully re-engage in ground strikes.

As they met, a spokesman for the anti-Gaddafi rebels besieged in the western city of Misrata warned of an impending “massacre” unless NATO intervened more decisively. The rebels said 23 civilians were killed in a rocket attack on a residential zone near Misrata port on Thursday.

The pillars of former president Hosni Mubarak’s regime and his two sons are now locked up in prison in an unprecedented settling of accounts with the former autocrat’s government.

Mubarak, overthrown in a popular uprising on February 11, would have joined the string of VIP detainees except that the health of the 82-year-old former president is reckoned too precarious.

State television said Mubarak, 82, and his sons Gamal and Alaa would appear before a Cairo judge next Tuesday for questioning after the public prosecutor ordered their detention.

News of the detentions won the country’s ruling generals a respite from demonstrators, who have demanded punishment for Mubarak, whose rule was brought to an end on February 11 by an 18-day mass uprising in which more than 380 protesters died.

At the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in the northeast of the country, engineers were struggling to find a new way to cool one of the six crippled reactors and Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it was now “highly likely” there was a hole in the suppression unit of the reactor.

Kan, whose public support stands at about 30 percent, had sought a grand coalition to help the country recover from its worst ever natural disaster and enact bills to pay for the country’s biggest reconstruction project since World War Two.

Investors considering backing what could be London’s largest-ever listing are likely to scrutinize the directors’ experience and ability to stand up to an executive team used to running a tight-knit partnership with little outside influence.

However, several directors have close links to Glencore. They include a former classmate of CEO Ivan Glasenberg, a former chairman of a Glencore subsidiary and a holder of the trading and mining giant’s convertible bonds.

Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told a press briefing on Wednesday that Goldman had “exploited” clients and that top executives had lied to Congress during testimony in 2010.

“They gained at the expense of their clients and they used abusive practices to do it,” said Levin, adding there was still time for regulatory agencies to take action against Wall Street.

And at the moment, many experts believe China may have gained the upper hand.

Though it is difficult to ascertain the true extent of America’s own capabilities and activities in this arena, a series of secret diplomatic cables as well as interviews with experts suggest that when it comes to cyber-espionage, China has leaped ahead of the United States.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also called for stronger regulation of commodity derivatives to dampen excessive volatility in food and energy prices, which they said posed new risks for the recovery of the world economy.

Meeting on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, they said the recent financial crisis had exposed the inadequacies of the current monetary order, which has the dollar as its linchpin.

Chinese banks extended 679.4 billion yuan ($104 billion) in new local currency loans in March, while the broad M2 measure of money supply rose 16.6 percent from a year earlier, both above market expectations.

Tapping the brakes on money and lending growth has been a crucial part of Beijing’s campaign to rein in inflation, which probably hit a 32-month high of 5.4 percent in the year to March, according to local media reports.

Bonds sat impassively as the jury was dismissed after four days of deliberations in the three-week perjury trial. His attorney, Allen Ruby, said he would file a motion to dismiss the conviction. Bonds faces up to 10 years in prison on the obstruction conviction but would likely receive far less.

U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said the government would decide “as soon as possible” whether to seek a retrial on the three deadlocked counts. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston called a conference for May 20 to discuss the next moves in the case.

After the explosions in Tripoli, one resident of a western suburb of the capital said anti-aircraft guns returned fire, apparently at NATO warplanes.

“A lot of gunfire followed the explosions,” said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared government retaliation. A column of smoke rose in a southeastern part of the city.

Alliance members agreed that Gadhafi must leave power but insisted the military mission remain focused on its declared goals of enforcing an arms embargo, protecting civilians and forcing the withdrawal of Gadhafi forces from cities they have entered.

The limitations of NATO’s aims have been tested by the Libyan rebels’ inability to make progress against Gadhafi’s stronger and better organized forces, who have camouflaged themselves and hidden in populated areas to avoid Western airstrikes now in their third week. As a result, Britain and France have been calling for more strikes by their NATO allies, particularly the U.S., with its sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems. The U.S. says it sees no need to change what it calls a supporting role in the campaign – even though it has still been flying a third of the missions – and many other NATO nations have rules preventing them from striking Gadhafi’s forces except in self-defense.

The announcement followed Wednesday’s stunning detention of the ex-president and his two powerful sons in an investigation into corruption, abuse of power and the killing of protesters, acting on the central demand of the protest camp since Mubarak was toppled on Feb. 11.

The military council that took control of the country from Mubarak after 18 days of massive protests is using greater and more frequent concessions to try to reverse the discord and mistrust between it and the groups pushing for a genuine transition to democracy.

Even as the month-old emergency dragged on, radiation levels dropped enough for police sealed in white protective suits, goggles and blue gloves to begin searching for bodies amid the muddy debris inside a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant that had been off-limits.

Authorities believe up to 1,000 bodies are lodged in the debris. Overall, the bodies of only about 13,500 of the more than 26,000 people believed killed in the March 11 disaster have been recovered.

The ferocity of the Taliban’s widely expected spring offensive to regain lost territory and execute suicide attacks and assassinations will influence President Barack Obama’s decision about how many of the nearly 100,000 U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan can start going home in July.

The extent to which the Taliban return to the fight will also help determine whether the surge of more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops that Obama announced in December 2009 succeeded in arresting the insurgency.

The April 8 raid targeted the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which seeks to overthrow Iran’s clerical leaders. The group won refuge at Camp Ashraf years ago during the regime of Saddam Hussein, who saw them as a convenient ally against Iran. But since then, the exiles have become an irritant to Iraq’s new Shiite-led government, which is trying to bolster ties with Iran.

The attack was the climax of days of building tensions between the Iraqi army and the Ashraf residents, who feared they were about to be attacked after nervously watching soldiers bulk up their forces outside the camp. The Iraqi general who led the raid said it was in response to Ashraf residents pelting his troops with rocks and throwing themselves in front of military cars.

FAA chief Randy Babbitt said in a statement that Hank Krakowski, the head of the agency’s Air Traffic Organization, had submitted his resignation. He said David Grizzle, FAA’s chief counsel, will temporarily take over for Krakowski while the agency searches for a replacement.

Babbitt moved on Wednesday to add a second overnight air traffic controller at more than two dozen airports around the country. The controllers were added hours after a medical flight was unable to raise a lone controller working at 2 a.m. at Reno-Tahoe International Airport. FAA said the Reno controller, who was out of communication for 16 minutes, was sleeping. The plane landed safely with assistance from controllers at a regional radar facility in Northern California.

Census figures released Thursday highlight the growing diversity of the nation’s 366 metro areas, which were home to a record 83.7 percent share of the U.S. population. The numbers from the 2010 count are already having a big effect on redistricting in many states, where district boundary lines are being redrawn based on population size and racial makeup.

Hispanics became the largest minority group in 191 metropolitan areas last year, their population lifted higher as blacks left many economically hard-hit cities in the North for the South and new Latino immigrants spread to different parts of the country. That’s up from 159 metro areas when the previous Census was taken in 2000, when Hispanics were most commonly found in Southwest border states.

If Avigdor Lieberman is indicted, it would likely force him to resign, badly shaking the coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, possibly forcing an election and putting already stalled Israel-Palestinian peace efforts off for many months.

Lieberman denied the allegations.

Major League Baseball is leaning toward expanding replay for the 2012 season to include trapped balls and fair-or-foul rulings down the lines, a person familiar with the talks tells The Associated Press.

Commissioner Bud Selig and a group of umpires discussed the extra video review at spring training and were in agreement, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still being discussed.

The deal on the spending bill struck by Obama, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., requires a separate vote on cutting off money for the year-old health care overhaul. The effort is expected to fall short in the Senate, but it will put lawmakers on record – a prospect Republicans looking ahead to 2012 relish.

Moderate Democrats such as Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska stood with Obama and Democratic leaders in endorsing the health care law. Abandoning it now would draw charges of flip-flopping while voting to keep the cash flowing could engender voters’ wrath.

The protesters included five Gulf Coast residents who had planned to tell investors about the loss of their livelihoods and health problems after the spill. Outside the building, separate groups demonstrated over BP’s polluting tar sands project in Canada and labor disputes in Britain.

Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation fisherwoman from Seadrift, Texas, was arrested after evading security to enter the foyer of the building, where she covered herself in a dark syrup to represent oil.

The government has given the OK for oil exploration in treacherously deep waters to resume, saying it is confident such drilling can be done safely. The industry has given similar assurances. But there are still serious questions in some quarters about whether the lessons of the BP oil spill have been applied.

The industry “is ill-prepared at the least,” said Charles Perrow, a Yale University professor specializing in accidents involving high-risk technologies. “I have seen no evidence that they have marshaled containment efforts that are sufficient to deal with another major spill. I don’t think they have found ways to change the corporate culture sufficiently to prevent future accidents.”

Along a country road next to a muffler shop and a cemetery is a 40,000-square-foot store filled with all the items that never made it home from vacation. Shoes, samurai swords, iPods, even lingerie, all available for 20 to 80 percent off.

When airlines can’t determine who owns a bag, they sell it for a few bucks to the Unclaimed Baggage Center, a warehouse-sized facility that would put your local PTA garage sale to shame.

The wider recall, announced Thursday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, covers all F-150s built for the 2004 and 2005 model years, as well as part of the 2006 model year. Also included are 16,000 2006 Lincoln LT pickups.

An electrical short can cause the air bags to deploy unexpectedly, in some cases injuring drivers.

Nobody has been able to match the iPad thus far. But the PlayBook, the first effort from BlackBerry smartphone maker Research In Motion, has emerged as one of the strongest contenders.

On the surface, the PlayBook looks similar to other iPad competitors: Its slick touch screen measures 7 inches diagonally, smaller than the iPad’s but comparable with those of others. It has front and rear cameras for snapping photos and video conferencing and a black rubberized plastic back and sides.

Obama used vivid, populist language in a forceful speech Wednesday to denounce the GOP plan for cutting spending and revamping Medicare and Medicaid. The Republicans, he said, have concluded that “even though we can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy.”

But the president’s language was tortured and opaque when it came to one element of his own proposal: raising taxes for certain Americans, mostly high earners. Obama said he wants “to reduce spending in the tax code.” That code, he said, is “loaded up with spending on things like itemized deductions.”

Treasury’s “current contracts and fee bill review practices create an unacceptable risk that Treasury, and therefore the American taxpayer, is overpaying for legal services,” the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said in a report issued Thursday.

Treasury could not have adequately gauged whether the fees were reasonable because the records are so sparse, the report says.

Not that they’re cheering. Fewer people expect refunds this year than in previous years, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. But as Monday’s filing deadline approaches, the poll shows that 54 percent believe their tax bills are either somewhat fair or very fair, compared with 46 percent who say they are unfair.

Should taxes be raised to eat into huge federal deficits? Among the public, 62 percent say they favor cutting government services to sop up the red ink. Just 29 percent say raise taxes.

After a 12-day trial and four days of deliberation, a jury had deadlocked on three charges he lied under oath. But Bonds was convicted on one count of obstruction of justice.

“Are you celebrating tonight?” one fan asked.

“I’m going to take it, saddle up again tomorrow and get more,” said Rep. Rob Woodall of Georgia. While the $38 billion in cuts in the current budget year may be inadequate, “nothing is worthwhile until the president signs it into law,” he said.

The freshmen have been in the forefront in demanding that the Democratic-led Senate go along with a House bill requiring deeper cuts of $61 billion for the budget year ending Sept. 30.

Animal advocates complain elected officials have essentially overruled the will of the people and some are prepared to put the issue on the ballot again next year. Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, said public confidence is undercut when about 100 lawmakers change a law backed by about 1 million voters.

“The effort in Jefferson City is a piece-by-piece dismantling of every core provision,” Pacelle said. “It suggests to me that this is an industry that wants deregulation. They want to do things that they want and to heck with the people who care about dogs or consumers as long as there are enough dogs purchased.”

Death penalty opponents have argued that the case of Cameron Todd Willingham could be the first instance of a person wrongly executed in the U.S. since capital punishment resumed more than three decades ago. The New York-based Innocence Project first raised questions about the case in 2006, two years after Willingham was executed for the deadly home fire.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission noted that 20 years have passed and insisted that nothing in its report “constitutes a comment upon the guilt or innocence of any individual.” The panel determines whether forensic science in such cases was sound, though it doesn’t have the power to exonerate Willingham or reopen his case.

Lawmakers describe the provision in the spending bill as a necessary intervention in a wildlife dilemma that some say has spun out of control. Sixty-six wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies from Canada in the mid-1990s; there are now at least 1,650.

But legal experts warn the administration’s support of lifting protections for the animals opens the door to future meddling by lawmakers catering to anti-wildlife interests.

To ensure their uniqueness – after they’ve shopped in faraway malls and tapped into store registries – girls are using social media to claim dibs on their dresses.

A photo of Ashley McGowan’s floor-length black gown is on the prom Facebook page for her school in suburban Somers, N.Y. She’s relieved that only one other classmate has posted a black frock.

He soon had to start calling friends and neighbors in this northern Illinois hamlet of about 260 to find anyone willing to accept an appointment to the other four village commission seats, including mayor.

“It kind of surprised me a little bit” that nobody else ran, said Mahar, who was appointed to the commission two years ago and sees potential in this speck of a place with two taverns, a post office that’s slated for closure and no stoplights. “I love this little town and the people here.”

And for decades, the Democratic college professor enjoyed respect and increasing visibility as his career took him from state assemblyman to New York City and state comptroller. Two of his sons followed him into the state Legislature.

But now Hevesi faces the possibility of prison after a twofold downfall that stands out as a symbol of scandal even in a state that’s rife with it. Forced from office in 2006 after admitting he had a state employee chauffeur his wife, Hevesi has now pleaded guilty to a second felony charge for partaking in a feast of influence-peddling at the giant state pension fund he oversaw.

The weak economy, lack of a Democratic primary challenger and no clear front-runner in the Republican field may delay or prevent small donors from opening their wallets, strategists say, forcing a greater dependence on wealthy contributors for a re-election campaign that could cost more than $1 billion.

Many Web-based activists also contend that Obama has let them down, from extending Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy to breaking his pledge to close the U.S. military prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That’s dampened the ardor of many online donors, says Peter Daou, who was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Internet director in her 2008 presidential campaign but now backs Obama.