Pump

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

Their internationally recognized names sell music and movie tickets. They promote perfumes and presidents. But when it comes to selling their own houses, celebrities often find that their cachet doesn't pull in the cash. Actors Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell haven't found a buyer for their Malibu beach house, which comes with a raft of celeb-friendly amenities including a covered outdoor living room, a spa-like bath retreat and a meditation room. So the couple have nipped $3.5 million from last year's price, listing the Balinese-influenced oceanfront spread at $11.2 million.

Americans, lately accustomed to paying about $1 per gallon for gasoline, may get some sticker shock abroad. Recent average prices at the pump for the cheapest-grade gasoline, from a survey of 85 locations: Most Expensive Hong Kong: $5.04 Oslo: $4.57 Paris: $4.47 Amsterdam: $4.35 Hamilton, Bermuda: $4.32 London: $4.27 Milan, Italy: $4.21 Brussels: $4.05 Buenos Aires: $3.97 Stockholm: $3.97 Least Expensive Caracas, Venezuela: $0.48 Lagos, Nigeria: $0.49 Kuwait City: $0.51 Jakarta, Indonesia: $0.

The company introduced last year as a financially powerful production partner for KCET-TV has been reduced to a tiny operation that has been late on some of its bills, according to several people familiar with the company. In addition, the company relied on mass-market DVDs, and not just its own archive, for some segments of a nostalgia program it makes for the public television station, according to these people. Four people who have worked for Eyetronics Media & Studios said in interviews that they and others had gone without pay for as long as six weeks during the last year.

State inspectors investigating claims by nurses that faulty drug pumps had led to the accidental overdose of five patients at UC Irvine Medical Center found three deficiencies and issued an "immediate jeopardy" warning, alleging that patient care was at risk, hospital officials acknowledged Thursday. The warning earlier this summer is one of the most serious that can be issued against a hospital -- and typically federal or state inspectors stay on site until a plan to correct the problem is in place.

The average price of regular unleaded self-serve gasoline in California fell 2.8 cents to $1.48 a gallon for the week ended Monday, the Energy Information Administration said. The average price peaked April 12 at $1.62 a gallon. A year ago, Californians were paying $1.24 a gallon for regular gasoline. Nationwide, the average price was unchanged at $1.14.

The April 8 front-page article, "Get Used to High Gas Prices, U.S. Says," continues on page A25 with the headline "Gasoline Prices Expected to Stay High Through 2006." Isn't that an election year that the Bush administration and its oil industry friends have "an interest" in? Here's a way to remind fellow consumers, the oil industry and elected officials about the "important implications" of these obscene price increases. Let's all deliberately stop the pump at $20.06 instead of rounding it to $20. Think how often consumers and the gas stations will see that reminder that "you can't fool all the people all the time."

I see where the cost of crude that is used to make gasoline is at a very low price right now ["Energy Chief Says Gas Supply Stable, May Boost Oil Reserve," Sept. 28]. How come the "instant overnight" price at the pump does not come down [overnight]? When the price of crude goes up a bit, the "instant overnight" phenom of a higher price kicks in in a nanosecond. What am I missing here? Ray P. Keesler La Crescenta

How remarkable it is that gas prices are declining without mandates from the political class ("Pump Prices Starting to Ease," Sept. 13). People are actually capable of making up their own minds about how much gas they want to buy at whatever price, and finding ways around not having to buy gas. When demand falls and supply rises or is stable, price falls. All this wondrous stuff without new laws, price caps and corporate average fuel economy mandates from Washington and Sacramento.

Retail gas prices fell every day this week, easing off their national summer peak of $2.693 a gallon as U.S. storage facilities swelled with unused supplies. At the pump, the national average for gasoline dropped less than a penny Friday to $2.658 a gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and the Oil Price Information Service. In California, the statewide average price for a gallon of regular gas fell to $3.010, down from $3.028 a week ago. The price was $2.671 a gallon a month ago and $4.596 a gallon at this time last year.

Gas prices have soared about 15% in the last six months, hitting $3.94 a gallon on average nationwide, and $4.29 in California. The mood of motorists? Meh. Partisan finger-pointing aside, polls suggest that most people aren't as worked up over gas prices as they were four years ago, when a gallon of regular hit a national average of $4.11 a gallon. Nor has there been as much clamor for drastic measures, such as tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Texas and Louisiana.

SACRAMENTO - The bullet train boondoggle is looking more like a bullet bull's-eye. But one big question lingers: Where are the bucks? And even if the state can find the bucks, should it spend them on building a high-speed rail line, a cool choo-choo? Especially when higher education in California is such a train wreck? Education - kindergarten through college - should be our No. 1 priority, for both moral and economic reasons. Producing an educated, skilled workforce for the increasingly competitive global economy is even more important than creating temporary track-laying jobs.

SACRAMENTO - An elected state tax collector wants to save strapped California motorists money by freezing the sales tax on gasoline whenever the pump price jumps above $4 a gallon. The idea, said George Runner, a Republican member of the State Board of Equalization, is to put a few bucks back in consumers' pockets rather than provide a small windfall to local governments. Gasoline prices in California averaged $4.33 on Wednesday, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

Beyond tensions over Iran and refinery problems, the recent jump in gasoline prices stems partly from an encouraging sign: The economy is improving. The demand for crude oil has risen as the recovery from the severe global recession has picked up steam in the U.S. and abroad. That, in turn, has helped fuel higher prices at the pump, economists and industry analysts said. "A lot of what drives prices is projection of future demand," said Carl A. Larry, president of Oil Outlooks and Opinions, a research and consulting firm.

Billionaire political patrons filled the coffers of the presidential "super PACs" last month, spotlighting once again the enormous influence a tiny cadre of wealthy donors is having on the 2012 race. The biggest donations came from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his family, who pumped an additional $5.5 million into the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future in February — 95% of the money the group raised, according to documents filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission.

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), a soft-spoken accountant with a low profile on Capitol Hill, is championing a high-octane cause: increasing the federal gasoline tax at a time of high fuel prices. Conceding it's "not a very popular" idea, he says the 18.4-cent-per-gallon tax -- last raised in 1993 -- should be indexed to inflation to ensure funding for road improvements without putting Uncle Sam further in the red. "This isn't something easy to do," he told colleagues. "It's something that we have to consider.

Peer Portner, 68, the inventor of an implanted electrical pump for heart-failure patients, died of cancer Feb. 9 at his home in the San Francisco Bay area, according to an announcement from Stanford University. Originally trained as a nuclear physicist, Portner became a consulting professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. He began working with doctors at the school in the early 1970s to develop his pump, called the left ventricular assist device.

Every time I go to the gas pump, I wonder if President Clinton feels my pain. H. EUGENE DOSS Diamond Bar

California motorists bludgeoned by the nation's second highest average retail gasoline prices may finally see some relief in the coming days. That's because the price for the nation's most expensive raw or unfinished gasoline, known as Carbob, has plummeted from its February highs, according to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service. Carbob is an acronym for a tongue-twisting mouthful: California Reformulated Gasoline Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending.

As gasoline prices climb, President Obama's poll numbers plummet. In February, a Washington Post/ABC poll had Obama up 6 points against Mitt Romney. Monday's poll has him down 2. According to the polls, gas prices are a huge part of the story, particularly given how the last 30 days or so have not exactly been great for the GOP. COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Presidential Election 2012 No wonder Obama is desperate to get out in front of the issue. The dilemma is that he's invested so much of his prestige in his energy policies that he can't admit those policies have been an abject failure.