Until a year ago, the £130 price of the false teeth would have been only a dream for a woman such as Mrs Anhasan, who scratched a living as a hawker selling cheap goods in the arid savannah of northern Ghana.

But a mixture of arduous labour under the blistering sun and insatiable demand in the developed world for plant-based beauty products, has transformed Mrs Anhasan and 30 other women into a band of steely entrepreneurs with a lucrative toehold in a £2bn global cosmetics industry.

Pounding golfball-sized shea nuts with her comrades in the “Pagsum” or Ideal Woman Shea Butter Producers and Pickers Association, Mrs Anhasan said: “Our butter goes from our village to London and Tokyo. It makes me so proud to think that what we make here goes to the greatest cities in the world.”

Responding to a warning from the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, that the economy may be heading into a recession, the prime minister insisted: “We have got to steer the economy through difficult times. I’ve done it before and I believe I can do it again.”

In a series of interviews, Brown said that his record as a chancellor who had managed to keep the British economy growing for 10 years, even when other economies were faltering, meant that he should resist calls for him to step down as prime minister.

Although he refused to whether he agreed with King about the prospects of a recession, he stressed that international factors, particularly the rising price of food and oil, were to blame for the economic slowdown.

He claimed that his government was taking the right long-term decisions.

And he dismissed some of the recent attacks that have been made on his character, insisting that the portrait of him as someone who was difficult to work with was inaccurate.

From her wheelchair in her new Somerset home - all the rooms on the ground floor lead into each other through wide doors, across even floors without a step in sight - she talks of the risks to the countryside from intensive farming, and the problems we all face as the planet warms. Maw’s own contribution to the problem has led her to search for an alternative method of generating electricity, in particular, for wheelchairs.

With the Summer Games in Beijing approaching in August, though, Kibet’s Olympic hopes have grown remote. He and many of Kenya’s majestic runners — including dozens of Olympic contenders — were disrupted by the ethnic violence that followed a disputed presidential election last December and left 1,200 people dead, while several hundred thousand fled their homes.

Among those killed were Lucas Sang, a quarter-miler who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics, and Wesley Ngetich, an elite marathon runner. On Dec. 31, during rioting here in the Rift Valley, Kibet was hit in the head with a stone and knocked unconscious. He sustained a concussion and stopped training for two weeks. In February, he pulled out a pistol to extricate himself from another potential attack.

Kibet said these events left him traumatized, unable to focus completely on his training. Then he pulled a hamstring muscle, the direct result, he believes, of interrupted training. Last month, Kibet finished a disappointing eleventh at the London Marathon — seven minutes off the pace.

Mr Clarke said the Prime Minister should stop using “bullying” tactics to stifle debate and abandon “dog- whistle politics” such as promising “British jobs for British workers”. The technique, targeting messages about sensitive issues such as immigration at specific groups which only they hear, is a jibe normally thrown at the Tories by Labour.

The former home secretary said Labour needs to correct “short-term errors which, week-by-week, erode confidence in Labour’s competence and capacity”.

He suggested an early mini-Budget to solve the problems caused by the abolition of the 10p lower rate of tax; called for the scrapping of plans to allow suspected terrorists to be detained for 42 days without charge; and demanded that post office closures be suspended and women’s pensions safeguarded.

Much the same sense of a private communication pervades the duo’s album, The Age of the Understatement - a sequence of songs that, by accident rather than design, came to turn on the theme of the femme fatale and the fall-out from their entanglements with versions of the archetype. In both musicians’ cases, the record is an away day from their main occupations: for Turner, of course, it represents an artistic left turn between Arctic Monkeys albums; and for Kane, a breather as he prepares to concentrate his energies on breaking through with his own band, Liverpool trio the Rascals.

Italy’s Prime Minister-elect, Silvio Berlusconi, responded by promising decisive action to resolve the emergency and avoid EU fines. The developments came as barricades and protests returned to the streets of Naples, amid public fury over the crisis. Firemen have been called out to dozens of fires over the past few days as desperate residents burn the rubbish mountains, which are a growing health risk as warmer weather arrives.

Some rubbish has been cleared by the Italian army. But nearly six months on, most of the great heaps of split plastic bags and dustbin liners remain, and so does the stench, with residents covering their faces with handkerchiefs as smoke rises from the festering, burning mounds.

Three landfill sites have been reopened but are already full, and the Campania region’s first new incinerator is not due to begin working until next year. Suburbs where the authorities are trying to reopen other dumps look like war zones, with barricades of overturned rubbish bins, corrugated iron and tyres, manned by menacing young men.

Taipei was embarrassed by the public disclosure that about $30 million, which had been intended for Papua New Guinea in exchange for its switching diplomatic allegiance from Beijing, had disappeared.

Foreign Minister James Huang tendered his resignation over the case Tuesday. Vice Premier Chiou I-jen also resigned from the cabinet, a day after he left the Democratic Progressive Party and said that he would retire from politics. Vice Defense Minister Ko Cheng-heng resigned later Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.

In 2006, the government wired the $30 million to an account in Singapore that was controlled by two middlemen who had been enlisted by Taipei for the secret diplomatic gambit. After negotiations with Papua New Guinea foundered, Taiwan requested the money back, but to no avail.