Mark Memmott

Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in February from January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported. The increase — the largest in the past 10 months — was mostly fueled by higher prices for gasoline.

Excluding the food and energy sectors, prices rose 0.1 percent. That's a sign that the so-called core rate of inflation remains in check.

According to BLS:

-- Gas prices spiked 6 percent last month and were up 12.6 percent from February 2011.

While American sports fans focus on college basketball, there's big cricket news that's making headlines in much of the rest of the world:

"Sachin Tendulkar Scores his 100th International Century For India." (BBC News)

If you had defending national champions Connecticut making it out of the first round in your NCAA men's basketball championship bracket, we're sorry to say that the Huskies lost on Thursday to Iowa State by a score of 77-64.

It's not a huge upset, since Iowa State was seeded No. 8 in the South region and Connecticut was seeded No. 9. But still, it's a quick exit for last year's top team.

We're learning more about the U.S. Army staff sergeant accused in Sunday's massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children:

Rowan Williams, who as archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader for more than 70 million Anglicans around the world, announced today that he will step down at the end of the year to become Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University.

"Researchers from the University of Rochester and North Carolina State University have for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos — nearly massless particles that travel at almost the speed of light," U of R reports.

And they pushed the message — which simply spelled out the world "Neutrino" — through "240 meters of stone" (787 feet).

An alert for all those who were caught up in the excitement last year when the Decorah Eagle Cam was streaming as a pair of bald eagles in Iowa watched over their three eggs and as the eaglets hatched:

He's "like James Dean, a star dead before his time," according to The Local.

Spiegel Online says "the future had looked so bright for tiny Til."

Global Post somberly says that "an attempt to show a rare rabbit on TV took a tragic turn."

In a "blistering" 500-page report released this morning a special prosecutor concludes that Justice Department lawyers "intentionally withheld" information that could have bolstered then-Sen. Ted Stevens' defense during the Alaska Republican's 2008 trial on corruption charges, NPR's Carrie Johnson tells us.

There was a 14,000 decline in the number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, the Employment and Training Administration just reported:

"In the week ending March 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 351,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 365,000. The 4-week moving average was 355,750, unchanged from the previous week's revised average of 355,750."

The priest who was put on administrative leave by the Archdiocese of Washington following a much-talked-about incident in which he denied communion to a lesbian woman attending her mother's funeral, has issued a long defense of his action and has said the church isn't being candid about the reason for its decision to put him on leave.

The news that the U.S. Army staff sergeant who is suspected of murdering 16 Afghan civilians has been moved to a detention facility in Kuwait is sparking some small protests in Afghanistan.

Greg Smith is a fairly ordinary name — but it's now one that's all the talk of Wall Street after he quit his position at Goldman Sachs today in one of the most amazingly public ways:

With an essay in The New York Times that accuses Goldman Sachs of having a money-is-everything culture that is "toxic and destructive."

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron are due to hold a news conference at the White House just after noon ET.

We'll live blog as they speak, so check back as the time approaches and hit your "refresh" button every once in a while after they get started.

After two years of going with the wrong team to win it all, President Obama is counting on North Carolina — the team he correctly picked to win the 2009 NCAA men's basketball championship — to end up No. 1 this year.

As he has each year since taking office, the president spent time with ESPN going over his bracket for the tournament.

After Oregonian editorial page editor Bob Caldwell died Saturday, the report from the newspaper on Sunday said he had suffered a heart attack.

That does appear to be the 63-year-old journalist's cause of death. But the circumstances surrounding his last moments were considerably more complicated.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- 'Tragic Day For All Of Belgium': 22 Children Killed In Bus Crash.

-- In Afghanistan, Panetta Says Mission Continues.

Repair crews are working this morning to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses in Boston's Back Bay district, "after two transformers caught fire Tuesday night, knocking out power" and sending think black smoke billowing over the area, our colleagues at WBUR report.

There's been a horrible traffic accident inside a Swiss tunnel. At least 28 people — 22 of them children mostly around the age of 12 — were killed Tuesday night when the bus they were in crashed.

At Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan today, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged U.S. military personnel to not be deterred from their mission and continue "to make life difficult" for the Taliban and al-Qaida, says NPR's Larry Abramson, who is travelling with Panetta.