STORMS HIT IOWA, MINN

EARTHQUAKES

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

China says 200,000 evacuated because of flood risk By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer Sat May 31, 9:09 AM ET

MIANYANG, China - Chinese authorities had evacuated nearly 200,000 people by early Saturday and warned more than 1 million others to be ready to leave quickly as a lake formed by a devastating earthquake threatened to breach its dam. The confirmed death toll from China's worst quake in three decades was raised Saturday to 68,977, an increase of about 120 people from a day earlier. Another 17,974 people were still missing, the State Council said. The increase was the smallest since the government started issuing a daily death toll shortly after the quake hit.Hundreds of Chinese troops have been working around the clock to drain Tangjiashan lake in Sichuan province. The lake formed above Beichuan town in the Mianyang region when a hillside plunged into a river valley during the May 12 quake that killed more than 68,000 people.The official Xinhua News Agency said work on a runoff channel had been completed. It quoted Yue Xi, deputy chief of the water and electricity section of the People's Armed Police, as saying water was expected to be discharged between Sunday and Tuesday.

Xinhua said 197,477 people were evacuated to safe ground by Saturday morning. It did not say how the exact number was arrived at, and many of the people may have moved just short distances to higher areas.The news agency said Tan Li, the Communist Party chief of Mianyang, had issued another order that calling for all 1.3 million people in the area to be evacuated if the barrier of the quake lake fully opens and floods the area.An official with the press office of Mianyang City Quake Control and Relief Headquarters, who would give only her surname of Chen, said Saturday's drill would involve testing the command system of various levels of government officials to ensure that any order to evacuate — if it comes — would be passed on quickly to everyone in the valley.No public broadcast of the evacuation order would take place.There was no sign that the dam was about to burst. Troops have sealed off Beichuan to the public.Tangjiashan is the largest of more than 30 lakes that have formed behind landslides caused by the quake, which also weakened man-made dams in the mountainous parts of the disaster zone.Millions of people in Sichuan are already living in tent camps and prefabricated housing, which have taken on the tone of new villages.In Mianyang, about 200 families left their camps in flood-prone areas of the city and moved to higher ground in a wooded park on Fule Mountain. Most had camping tents and shelters made of tarp pitched under trees amid ornate gazebos and tea houses with tradition sloping yellow tiled roofs. Red signs on the buildings said, Dangerous building, don't come near.One woman, who only gave her surname, Wang, said life was uncomfortable but fine under the circumstances. We've got all the basics. Those who are out of work are being given food, but my company is taking care of me, said Wang, who was living in a camouflaged camping tent set above the ground on wood planks.

A man who also only gave his surname, Zhang, said his family of three has received no food or shelter since they followed orders to move to the camp two days ago.I had to rig this up myself, he said, pointing to the simple structure of tarps they were living under. We've just been eating instant noodles and bread that we brought ourselves.Nearby, a woman selling tomatoes, green peppers and eggplants along the narrow park road was loading the vegetables back on her three-wheel motorcycle cart. I'm packing things up because no one is buying, she said. They have no pots or pans. No way to cook the food.Xinhua also reported that President Hu Jintao arrived Saturday to check on relief efforts in Shaanxi province. Just to the north of Sichuan, Shaanxi also suffered damage in the May 12 earthquake.

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Storm sweeps through Ill.; lawmakers run for cover By CHRISTOPHER WILLS, Associated Press Writer Sat May 31, 1:33 AM ET

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Tornado warning sirens chased lawmakers to the statehouse basement, a semitrailer was blown from a roadway and homes and an airport building were damaged as severe storms battered parts of Illinois and Indiana on Friday. Illinois lawmakers, lobbyists, reporters and secretaries packed the tunnels beneath the 120-year-old Capitol for about 45 minutes as powerful wind, hail and rain pelted Springfield.It was extremely hot down there ... I was concerned about some people being overheated, said Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville.Aides said Gov. Rod Blagojevich was in a secure location.The National Weather Service had not confirmed several reports of tornado touchdowns in central Illinois. There were no reports of injuries.In Indiana, high winds caused heavy damage to an Indianapolis apartment complex.Rescue workers combed through the apartment building on the city's east side early Saturday looking for residents who might be trapped. Television reports showed injured residents being helped onto stretchers.

High winds were estimated at upward of 70 mph downed trees and power lines throughout the state, leaving tens of thousands without electricity. A teenager in Rochester, about 40 miles south of South Bend, was taken to a hospital after he was struck by lightning, authorities said.In Springfield, the state House returned to work briefly, then canceled the rest of the evening's session amid worries about another storm front in the area. There was no immediate word on the Senate's plans.ComEd said 20,800 customers were without power in northern Illinois, down from a high of 69,000. Duke Energy reports about 7,000 customers are without electricity, with most of the outages in Tippecanoe and Wabash counties.Winds in the region were enhanced by a string of thunderstorms, said weather service meteorologist Stephen Rodriguez. Gusts up to 60 miles per hour were reported near the Wisconsin state line.A semitrailer was blown from a roadway near Marengo, and a building at the Rockford airport lost its roof, he said.Strong wind damaged a gas station and blew a tree onto a house in Tolono, about 130 miles south of Chicago, emergency workers told the weather service.In nearby Sidney, a fertilizer business was damaged and power lines were knocked down, the weather service said.

Emergency workers also reported hail over 4 inches in diameter in the area.In Nebraska, volunteers stacked sandbags in Platte Center, a day after severe storms deluged the town of about 360 people. A swollen Elm Creek spilled over its banks Thursday night, flooding 30homes and 10 businesses.Associated Press writers Caryn Rousseau and Karen Hawkins in Chicago; David Mercer in Champaign; Charles Wilson in Indianapolis; and Nate Jenkins in Aurora, Neb., contributed to this report.

Alma weakens to tropical depression By FILADELFO ALEMAN, Associated Press Writer Sat May 31, 12:24 AM ET

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - The remnants of Tropical Storm Alma dumped rain on Honduras on Friday and led to the death of a child who was swept away by a swollen stream. The 7-year-old girl drowned in the southern province of Choluteca, Honduras' national Emergency Commission said in a news release.The storm also blew down trees, knocking out some electricity lines in the southern region, Honduran national energy company spokeswoman Karla Matute said.

In Nicaragua and Costa Rica, officials cleared trees from roads and repaired roofless homes on Friday.Alma reached land Thursday near the Nicaraguan colonial city of Leon, the first such storm for the eastern Pacific season.The storm blew roofs off homes, knocked out power and telephone service and brought down a light pole at the city's baseball stadium.A 30-year-old man was electrocuted by a power line that snapped under high winds, said Nicaraguan emergency official Flor de Maria Escobar.The wind whipped up the sand, and it lashed your face like sandpaper, said Erasmo Lopez, a fisherman in the coastal hamlet of Poneloya, near where Alma made landfall. The trees were shaking like crazy, cars were shuddering and you couldn't even see in front of you.In Costa Rica, authorities rescued three children and their mother after an embankment collapsed on their house outside the capital, San Jose. A 7-year-old girl was still in critical condition Friday.Along the coast, 200families were evacuated to storm shelters after Alma dumped rain over the country for 24 hours. Landslides blocked a few highways. The eastern Pacific hurricane season began May 15.Associated Press writers Marianela Jimenez in San Jose, Costa Rica; Marcos Aleman in San Salvador, El Salvador; and Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; contributed to this report.

Planalytics sees active 2008 hurricane season By Janet McGurty Fri May 30, 1:59 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private weather forecaster Planalytics expects a more active Atlantic storm and hurricane activity in 2008 than in the 2007 season, the company said on Friday. We are looking for an active season, with 12 threat periods and up to 16 events, a slightly more active hurricane season than the previous year, the company said in a webcast ahead of the official June 1 start to the season.Planalytics defines a threat period as a meteorological situation that indicates a likely tropical development, which could include an event, or named storm.In 2008, the forecaster expects eight to 11 of the threats to become hurricanes, and three to four of those of turning into intense hurricanes.An active season is projected, said chief forecaster Jim Roullier, adding that the ingredients for an active season were present and expected to continue.Tropical Storm Alma, the first cyclone of the Americas hurricane season, slammed into Nicaragua's Pacific coast on Thursday, killing one person as winds toppled trees and ripped roofs off flimsy homes. But Alma hit land before it could gather enough strength to become a hurricane.In 2007, the U.S. had only one minor storm and none in 2006 after a very active and deadly 2005 hurricane season where Katrina and Rita decimated the Gulf Coast.

Strong storm activity was expected to center on the Western Gulf of Mexico, with less storm activity than normal anticipated in the eastern half of the Gulf, Planalytics said.The Texas coast from Brownsville to Corpus Christi was at risk from two storms beginning in the middle of June to early July. In late August and early September, two more storms could form, the company said.Corpus Christi is home to three oil refineries with a total capacity of 587,000 barrels per day.Below normal storm activity was anticipated in the central Gulf of Mexico to western Florida with most storm activity seen late in the season, from the end of September to early October. The season officially ends November 30.The East Coast was at moderate risk for storms from late July to early August with activity focused in the Carolinas. The threat returns to the region in late August.Planalytics' forecast of 12 to 16 named storms is line with government estimates.Last week, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast 12 to 16 named storms this season, with six to nine becoming hurricanes.
(Reporting by Janet McGurty; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Torrential rains sweep western Europe Fri May 30, 10:07 AM ET

ROME (AFP) - Italy declared a state of emergency in the north of the country Friday after flooding and mudslides left at least three people dead in heavy rains that also hit Belgium, Britain, France and Germany. The state of emergency, which will enable aid to be speeded up to the affected regions of Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta, was decided at a cabinet meeting, the ANSA news agency said.In Piedmont, where three people were killed and one was still missing, schools were closed in the town of Saviglano because of mudslides, and 30 people were evacuated from their homes in Demonte.A mudslide in Villar Pelice near the city of Turin swept away a house, killing an old man inside it, civil protection authorities said. A second person was found dead in a car also caught up in the mudslide.Fifty patients were evacuated from a hospital in Turin, but Red Cross official Giuseppe Vernero told the Sky TG-24 television channel the worse seemed to be over.In France the SNCF train operator closed lines overnight between Turin and Lyon, southeastern France, to avoid accidents after heavy rains in the region.Road tunnels linking France and Italy were closed to trucks for several hours after parts were affected by a mudslide. Several highways were blocked or closed for safety in the Alpine districts of Savoie and Isere, local authorities said.In Corsica two hotels were evacuated overnight due to flooding, firefighters said.

Mudslides and flooding also cut hit villages and cut secondary roads in eastern France overnight, while other routes were blocked by fallen trees, authorities said.Further north meanwhile, streets were turned to rivers of mud in the eastern Belgian city of Liege after a violent storm, media reports said, but no casualties were reported.Belgian television pictures showed flooded houses and cars swept along in the mud.In southwestern Germany media reports said heavy rain and hail had caused extensive damage, while at Moenchengladbach a woman suffered a severe electric shock when she went into her flooded cellar in bare feet to cut the power.Dozens of motorists had to abandon their cars, while in Baden-Wurtemberg lightning set fire to a farm.A clean-up operation was under way in southwest England Friday after torrential rain caused flash flooding the previous evening.The worst-hit area was the southern part of the county of Somerset. Cars were abandoned on water-logged roads, fire crews had to rescue a number of motorists and hundreds of homes and businesses were flooded out.There were no reports of anyone injured, emergency services said.Southern and central England were hit by some of the most devastating floods in years 12 months ago, but Devon and Somerset Fire Service described Thursday's weather as a typical flash flood.

AP Impact: Hurricane season outlooks of little use By ALLEN G. BREED, AP National Writer MAY 31,08

RALEIGH, N.C. - Each April, weather wizard William Gray emerges from his burrow deep in the Rocky Mountains to offer his forecast for the six-month hurricane season that starts June 1. And the news media are there, breathlessly awaiting his every word. It's a lot like Groundhog Day — and the results are worth just about as much.

The hairs on the back of my neck don't stand up, ho-hums Craig Fugate, director of emergency management for Florida, the state that got raked by four hurricanes — three of them major — in 2004. When it comes to preparing, he says, these long-range forecasts are not useful at all.The AP contacted the emergency management agency in every coastal state from Texas to Maine and asked whether these seasonal forecasts play any role in their preparations for the hurricane season. Their response was unanimous: They're a great way to get people thinking about the upcoming season, but that's about it.Regardless, since the former Colorado State University climatologist pioneered the seasonal predictions in 1984, other forecasters have followed suit.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Tropical Storm Risk Consortium in London and, most recently, the Coastal Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh are now among teams attempting to handicap the storm season weeks or months ahead.After high-profile, back-to-back busts by Gray and others, critics have questioned whether these long-range outlooks do more harm than good. But the very question presupposes that Gray, et al., have been promising more than they can deliver.They can pretty accurately predict an above- or below-average season, even predict the likelihood a major storm will hit SOMEWHERE along the U.S. coast. Beyond that, they're not promising anything.

Honestly, I think people get a lot more excited about it than I do in terms of what its usefulness is, says CSU scientist Phil Klotzbach, who has largely taken over the hurricane work of Gray, now semiretired.From the beginning, Gray issued disclaimers with his forecasts, like the one from May 1989 that asserted the forecast can only predict about 50 percent of the total variability in Atlantic seasonal hurricane activity.NC State's Lian Xie says in a boldface disclaimer in his 2008 forecast: Results presented herein are for scientific information exchange only ... Users are at their own risk for using the forecasts in any decision making.

So how did these things become such a big deal?

Fugate thinks part of the problem is that the media and some public officials picked up the cloudy crystal ball and ran with it. Particularly national media has been using these forecasts inappropriately, he says. I'm as guilty as anyone else.Hurricane-prediction researchers are like chefs tinkering with a recipe for the same dish, and working from the same list of ingredients: In this case, decades worth of data from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction.Studying past seasons, scientists look for patterns that might explain why one year was more active than another. Teams have developed computer models that emphasize different conditions — everything from ocean salinity and rainfall amounts over West Africa to sunspot cycles and the influences of the Pacific warm-water current known as El Nino.They test their theories by hindcasting — basically, plugging in known conditions from past storm seasons and seeing how well the models recreate the historical results.

When Gray burst onto the scene a quarter century ago, some wondered what business a man nearly 2,000 miles from the Atlantic had predicting hurricanes. Still, writing about his predictions became a rite of spring. (The Associated Press transmits urgent stories for his initial Dec. l forecast, and for the April, June and August updates.) Reporters would note when Gray missed, as in 1989 when he predicted a relatively mild season with only four hurricanes. Instead, a total of seven hurricanes and four tropical storms killed 84 people in the United States. But most years, they have published his forecasts with little or no commentary on his overall record — or even analysis of how he'd fared the season before.

That is, until 2005.

That spring, Gray and Klotzbach forecast 15 named storms, eight of them hurricanes. Instead, there were a record 28 named storms in 2005, including 15 hurricanes — most notably Katrina. The following year, the team overestimated the storm activity. Instead of the predicted 17 storms and nine hurricanes, the final numbers that season were 10 and five. Coincidentally, 2005 was also the year Xie and his students published a groundbreaking paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. In it, they suggested that the interplay of sea surface temperatures in the tropical North and South Atlantic, and not El Nino, was responsible for Florida's disastrous 2004 season. The following year, NC State felt confident enough to issue its forecast publicly. In a release, the university's PR department would later crow that its was the only national model to accurately forecast Atlantic hurricane activity in 2006. Unfortunately, NC State's 2007 forecast was as off as anyone's. This season, Xie and master's student Elinor Keith are forecasting 13 to 15 named storms, but again with caveats — the highest probability they offer for any particular number in that range is 11 percent. They predict six to eight of those storms will become hurricanes — but put the probability of seven occurring at just over 14 percent. So even though that's the most likely answer, compared to some other numbers, that's still a small number, right? says Xie. People need to have that in mind.Others have decided that there is need to qualify their forecasts, as well. Klotzbach says his next update will include an extra section that deals with forecast uncertainty.And when NOAA released its 2008 outlook last week, it included for the first time a pie chart showing the likelihood that its prediction of 12 to 16 named storms was accurate. The verdict: About 65 percent for the whole range.

We want to best convey the forecast by telling the people what the forecast is and what it is not, lead forecaster Gerry Bell says. This is NOT a landfall forecast. This does NOT imply levels of activity for any particular region.Gray insists that people DO use these forecasts to make strategic, real-world decisions. Ask him who, and he will suggest the reinsurance and Gulf oil-and-gas industries. Platts, a division of McGraw-Hill that supplies information to the energy industry, publishes the forecasts. But chief economist Larry Chorn can't think of anyone who takes any action based on them. It allows me to gauge what the experts are saying in terms of the likelihood of this being a mild season or a bad season, he says. Beyond that, I don't know how to use them.

There is some concern that average folk may be lulled into complacency by forecasts of a light storm season. They can go one or two ways, Joseph Bruno, commissioner of the New York City's Office of Emergency Management, says of the long-range predictions. They can make people more apathetic than they already are about emergencies, or they can really heighten concern and alarm.But most seem to have figured out that they can't plan their lives around the forecasts. Let's say someone says this is going to be a really horrible hurricane season. Does that mean you close your business, lay off your employees? says Melissa Perlman, who co-owns a small eco-resort in the beach town of Tulum on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. I don't really start paying attention until they are actually on the map.It's like Nostradamus, adds Sonya Strasburg, who works at the Galveston Fishing Pier on the Texas barrier island — site of the nation's deadliest hurricane. I don't believe it.So why keep doing them? Gray and Klotzbach opened this year's forecast paper with that very question. The answer they give: Because they add to the overall understanding of how hurricanes work. You actually learn more when you bust than when you verify, says Gray, who retired from CSU in 2004 but continues to work with Klotzbach.

Another reason: Because people simply want to know.

The truth is, every time I go to a conference, without fail, people come up to me and before they even ask about me or my family, they say, What kind of a season are we going to have? says Max Mayfield, former longtime director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Mayfield, now under contract with a Miami television station, sees no harm in the forecasts, as long as people are aware of their limitations. His favorite example is 1992. Forecasts called for a below-average season that year, and it was — just six storms. The first one just happened to be Hurricane Andrew, which killed 23 people and did $26.5 billion in damage. I think it comes down to how people like you and me in the media portray this ..., Mayfield says. You need to be prepared no matter what the numbers are.
EDITOR'S NOTE: AP reporters Jessica Gresko in Miami, Mike Graczyk in Galveston, Texas, Sara Kugler in New York City and Traci Carl in Mexico City also contributed to this story. On the Net: NOAA Forecast:http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml CSU Tropical Meteorology Project: http://hurricane.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/

GENERAL OF MYNAMAR OUT OF TOUCH WITH CITZENS
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Myanmar warned against premature resettlement MAY 31,08

YANGON, Myanmar - Cyclone victims in Myanmar who leave relief camps may not receive the aid they need, making them even more vulnerable to disease and the elements, a U.N. official said Saturday following reports of forced evictions by the government. Human rights groups have lambasted Myanmar's military rulers, accusing them of kicking homeless cyclone survivors out of shelters. The U.S. defense secretary said the junta's blockage of international help has cost tens of thousands of lives.The sharp criticism came a day after a U.N. official reported the government was evicting cyclone victims from camps and dumping them near their destroyed villages with virtually no supplies a month after the storm unleashed its fury.Anupama Rao Singh, regional director of the United Nations Children's Fund, who recently visited affected areas, warned Saturday against premature resettlement, even if it's voluntary. She did not confirm that evictions had taken place.Many of the villages remain inundated with water, making it difficult to rebuild, she said. There is also a real risk that once they are resettled, they will be invisible to aid workers. Without support and continued service to those affected, there is a risk of a second wave of disease and devastation.An estimated 2.4 million people remain homeless and hungry from this month's cyclone, which left at least 134,000 people dead or missing.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced people also have been expelled from schools, monasteries and public buildings, Human Rights Watch said in a release Saturday. In the nation's biggest city, Yangon, there were eyewitness reports of one such eviction from a Christian church.The forced evictions are part of government efforts to demonstrate that the emergency relief period is over and that the affected population is capable of rebuilding their lives without foreign assistance, Human Rights Watch said.Another group, Refugees International, said authorities appeared to be trying to get villagers back to their land to begin tending their fields and reviving agriculture.While agriculture recovery is indeed vital, forcing people home without aid makes it harder for aid agencies to reach them with assistance, it said.Defense Secretary Robert Gates added his voice Saturday to critics of the junta's handling of the humanitarian crisis, calling the government deaf and dumb over its refusal to accept outside help.We have reached out, frankly, to Myanmar multiple times during this crisis in very direct ways, Gates said during an international security conference in Singapore. We have reached out, they have kept their hands in their pockets.The generals' obstruction of international efforts to help cyclone victims cost tens of thousands of lives, he said.Shortly after the cyclone struck, the U.S., France and Britain sent warships loaded with relief supplies, but the Myanmar regime has refused to let them land, apparently fearing a foreign invasion.

With U.S. ships off Myanmar's coast poised to leave because they have been blocked from delivering assistance to the ravaged country, Gates vowed that the U.S. will keep trying to deliver aid.
A day earlier Teh Tai Ring, also from UNICEF, reported at a meeting of U.N. and private aid agency workers that eight camps set up for homeless survivors in the hard-hit Irrawaddy River delta town of Bogalay were totally empty as authorities continued to move people out of them.After his statement was reported, UNICEF issued a statement saying the remarks referred to unconfirmed reports by relief workers on the relocation of displaced people affected by the May 2-3 storm.Separately, at a church in Yangon, more than 400 cyclone victims from a delta township, Labutta, were evicted Friday following orders from authorities a day earlier. It was a scene of sadness, despair and pain, said a church official at the Yangon Karen Baptist Home Missions in Yangon, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of official reprisals. All the refuge seekers except some pregnant women, two young children and those with severe illnesses left the church in 11 trucks Friday morning. The authorities told church workers that the victims would first be taken to a government camp in Myaung Mya — a mostly undamaged town in the Irrawaddy delta — but it was not immediately clear when they would be resettled in their villages. Aid groups, meanwhile, said Myanmar's military government was continuing to hinder foreign assistance for victims of the cyclone, despite a promise to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to ease travel restrictions. Some foreign aid workers were still awaiting visas, and the government was taking 48 hours to process requests to enter the Irrawaddy delta, the groups said. Aid workers who have reached some of the remote villages say little remained that could sustain the former residents. Houses were destroyed, livestock were dead and food stocks have virtually run out. Medicines were nonexistent. Our teams are still encountering people who have not seen any aid workers and still have not received any assistance. Some of the villages that are only accessible by foot are particularly vulnerable, said the aid group Doctors Without Borders.

UBC HELPS UNCOVER SECRETS OF SUPER VOLCANOES
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NHL PLAYER LUC BOURDON DIES IN ACCIDENT
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FAMINE

REVELATION 6:5-6
5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.(A DAYS WAGES FOR A LOAF OF BREAD)

High gas prices hit consumers worldwide By ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writer Sat May 31, 2:12 AM ET

PARIS - Feeling woozy about the fortune you've just pumped into your gas tank? Drivers around the world share the sensation.

Consumers, gas retailers and governments are wrestling with a new energy order, where rising oil prices play a larger role than ever in the daily lives of increasingly mobile people. But as the cost of crude mounts, the effect on the price at the pump varies startlingly — from Venezuela, where gas is cheaper than water, to Turkey, where a full tank can cost more than a domestic plane ticket.Taxes and subsidies are the main reasons for the differences, along with lesser factors such as limited oil refining capacity and hard-to-reach geography that push up prices.I don't know why it is but... it hurts, says Marie Penucci, a violinist filling up her Volkswagen at an Esso station on the bypass that rings Paris.As she pumped gas worth $9.66 a gallon she looked wistfully at a commuter climbing onto one of the city's cheap rent-a-bikes, an option not open to her since she travels long distances to perform.High taxes in Europe and Japan have long accustomed consumers to staggering pump prices, which now are testing new pain thresholds — and it could have been even worse, if a strong euro hadn't cushioned some of the blow. As a result, plenty of European adults never even bother to learn to drive, preferring cheap mass transit to cumbersome cars.Subsidies in emerging economies such as China and India, meanwhile, shield consumers but hurt governments, which must find a way to afford rising market prices for oil.

Increasingly, they can't. Indonesians are staging protests against shrinking gasoline subsidies in a nation where nearly half the population of 235 million lives on less than $2 a day. And there are now 887 million vehicles in the world, up from 553 million vehicles just 15 years ago, and on track to nearly double to a billion by 2012, according to London-based consultancy Global Insight.In Europe, taxes are often the focus, since the high tax burden means crude itself is a smaller part of the burden.The pain of a rise in prices is much less in Europe, because we may be paying a lot more here, but the rise in a percentage sense is a lot smaller, said Julius Walker, oil analyst at the Paris-based International Energy Agency.The United States, with its relatively low taxes, is considered to have retail prices closer to what energy data charts call the real cost of gasoline — which is closely linked to the price of oil.So as oil prices have soared, average U.S. prices have gone up 144 percent in the past five years — from $1.67 in May 2003 to $4.02 a gallon this month, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Over the same period, gas prices in France went up 117 percent to $9.66 a gallon.Proposals by U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton to suspend federal gas taxes this summer would lower the price tag — but have little effect on the underlying oil price. French President Nicholas Sarkozy has urged the EU to cut value-added tax on fuel.

French fishermen and farmers, who need fuel for their trawlers and tractors, say their livelihoods are threatened by soaring prices and have blocked oil terminals around France and shipping traffic on the English Channel to demand government help. Italian, Portuguese and Spanish fisherman joined them and went on strike Friday. British and Bulgarian truckers are staging fuel protests, too.Russia is proof that big oil-producing nations are not in any better shape when it comes to gasoline prices. Gas in the world's No. 2 oil producer runs about $3.68 a gallon — nearly that in the United States, where the average wage is about six times higher.

Much of the Russian cost comes from taxes, which run between 60 and 70 percent. Limited refining capacity and the costs of transporting gasoline across the country's vast expanse also push up prices.

Turkey faces similar problems — and even higher prices — $11.29 a gallon, which for a full tank in a midsize car can reach nearly $200, enough for a domestic plane ticket.In China, government-mandated low retail gasoline prices have helped farmers and China's urban poor but also have hurt conservation. In the first four months of 2008, gasoline consumption was up 5.5 percent from the same period last year. Venezuela, too, is a gas-guzzler's wonderland. A gallon costs just 12 cents and consumers are snapping up SUVs even as Americans are shunning them. Thanks to long-held government subsidies and plenty of oil, Venezuelans see cheap fuel as a birthright. Some policymakers in less oil-flush nations look to Brazil's use of ethanol as a potential solution. Ethanol from sugarcane is widely available in the world's No. 1 sugar producer and its 190 million people. Eight out of every 10 new cars sold are flex-fuel models that run on pure ethanol, gas or any combination of the two. The price for ethanol in Sao Paulo is currently running about half the price of gas, which runs $5.67 per gallon. In Japan, gas station owners say some customers aren't filling up their tanks all the way.

It's been tough. I had to switch to regular gasoline from premium class, said Hiroyuki Kashiwabara, a company employee in his 50s whose monthly spending on gasoline has increased by nearly 10,000 yen ($96) over the last couple of months. My salary doesn't change and I can't cut back on my spending on food or anything else.

Americans, too, are beginning to trim their hearty gas appetites.

We're beginning to see a slowdown in the U.S. in gasoline demand in particular. That's not so visible in other parts of the world, the IEA's Walker said. Jean-Marc Jancovici, a French engineer and co-author of a philosophical treatise called Fill It Up, Please! despairs rising thirst in the developing world for shrinking oil resources. The real question is ... how to save peace and democracy in this context, he asks. His answer? To rich-country consumers, at least, he says: Pick up your bike and stop being petroleum slaves.
Associated Press writers David Nowak in Moscow; Robin McDowell in Jakarta, Indonesia; Ian James in Caracas, Venezuela; Alan Clendenning in Brasilia, Brazil; Joe McDonald in Beijing; Mari Yamaguchi and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo; Ashok Sharma in New Delhi; and Franziska Scheven and A.J. Goldmann in Berlin contributed to this report.