The price spike occurred overnight, and by Thursday morning oil had fallen back slightly to $132.87, down 30 cents from its close on Wednesday.
But the leap capped a rally that has seen oil rise nearly $5 a barrel in two days, underscoring the dire implications of the current price run-up for businesses across the globe.
Ford Motor Company, the American auto manufacturer, said on Thursday it would cut vehicle production for the rest of this year and fall short of reaching profitability in 2009, a long-held company goal. In a statement, a top Ford executive said rising gasoline prices "are having a tremendous impact on our sales, our manufacturing operations and our profitability."
Meanwhile, Europe's biggest airline, Air France-KLM, warned of a profound reshaping of the world airline industry caused by what it called the "explosion" in the price of oil. And American Airlines said on Wednesday that it would slash flights and begin charging passengers to check bags, part of a company effort to cut costs in the face of skyrocketing fuel prices.
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I was watching public TV with my wife a couple of years ago when a researcher was being interviewed about the 
LONDON (AFP) - A British man has been branded a city's "dumbest criminal" after he posted more than 80 videos of himself committing various misdemeanours on 
PARIS - 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Growing anxiety about their economic prospects and deep unhappiness with President George W. Bush and the U.S. Congress plunged Americans into a dark mood this month, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.
These days, sit down at a sushi bar for a plate of unctuous, glistening toro, and along with it will come a heap of guilt and grief.
If you're like me, it doesn't matter how much American history you read—you've got this diorama version of it all set up in your head. It's a little series of scenes, all safe and protected behind glass, telling the tales you've been taught or have chosen to believe. And whether you've gotten comfortable with a sanitized, State Capitol Visitor's Center version of American History, or one that might perhaps work better in Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, it will likely take an awful lot to shake up that presentation. 
A funny thing happened on the way to the worst administration in American history. 
It seems a growing number of Americans are hoping the yearlong vitriol aimed at strong women will evaporate right along with the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it — thanks to its location close to Hong Kong's port — to be China's first "special economic zone," one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the "real" China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture — the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada's favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats — a design intended, he says, to "suggest and illustrate the process of the market." A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.
Alien technology scavenged by U.S. and Russian scientists has started a race to colonize planets outside our solar system -- and the U.S. scientists are losing! In a desperate move the U.S. government decides to use a group of Apache volunteers in an experimental attempt to colonize a primitive planet, but before they can even begin their spaceship crashes on the planet Topaz... 
(AP) Despite more than $22 million in repairs, a levee that broke with catastrophic effect during Hurricane Katrina is leaking again because of the mushy ground on which New Orleans was built, raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses. 
