In a scramble to find a fix for energy prices, Congress has tried (and failed) to strip tax breaks from Big Oil, to open protected sites for exploration and drilling, and to jump-start a new era in nuclear power. Now, Capitol Hill is zeroing in on speculators and THE LEGAL LOOPHOLES THAT SOME LAWMAKERS SAY ARE ADDING AS MUCH AS $70 TO THE PRICE OF A BARREL OF OIL.

SPECULATORS NOW ACCOUNT FOR 71 PERCENT OF THE OIL FUTURES MARKET, UP FROM 29 PERCENT IN 2000, he says, citing data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Overall, commodity index speculation has jumped from $13 billion in 2003 to some $260 billion today.

Many lawmakers insist that such a surge cannot help but contribute to the surge in oil prices. "THE COMMODITIES MARKET IS BROKEN. IT DOESN'T WORK. It is full of speculators and what they're interested in is to drive up the price. THEY DON'T GIVE A RIP ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO THE ECONOMY," says Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota, who is chairing another hearing on speculation.

"Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, WHOSE CHRISTIANITY WOULD WE TEACH IN THE SCHOOLS?" Obama said. "Would we go with James Dobson's or Al Sharpton's?" referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy - chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application. Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament. "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," Dobson said. "HE IS DRAGGING BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING THROUGH THE GUTTER."

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri and Indiana due to the heavy rains and deadly storms which swept through the region in recent weeks. Early estimates place the damage in the billions as roads were washed out, rail and barge traffic shut down and millions of acres of crops were swamped. Scores of levees collapsed or were overtopped by the rushing waters which swallowed entire towns.

The extreme weather which began May 25 and included a series of deadly tornadoes claimed the lives of 22 people, 17 of whom were in Iowa. MORE THAN 11 MILLION PEOPLE IN NINE MID-WESTERN STATES WERE AFFECTED BY THE FLOODING AND EXTREME WEATHER, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said. "A lot of these rivers won't go back below flood stage until mid-July," Buan told AFP. "IT'S GOING TO TAKE A LONG TIME TO DRY OUT."

Thousands of fire fighters battled the blazes on the ground and from the air and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was alarmed by the number of fires that kept erupting. He said he was told late Sunday evening that the state had 520 fires, and he found it "quite shocking" that by morning the number had risen above 700.

Moments later, a top state fire official standing at Schwarzenegger's side offered a grim update: The figure was actually 842 fires, said Del Walters, assistant regional chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. All but a couple were in the northern part of the state. "THIS IS AN UNPRECEDENTED LIGHTNING STORM IN CALIFORNIA, that it lasted as long as it did, 5,000 to 6,000 lightning strikes," Walters said. "We are finding fires all the time."

The assistance, mostly fire fighting aircraft, arrived Monday from Nevada and Oregon after being requested over the weekend. Schwarzenegger said he had enlisted the help "because you can never prepare for 500 or 700 or 800 fires all at the same time."

Soaring energy and gasoline prices, fueled in part by voracious demand in China, have put central banks on guard against inflation. Many analysts expect interest rates increases sooner rather than later in Europe while the Federal Reserve is seen holding steady for the time being, while keeping a close eye on prices.

A United spokesperson said the cuts will take place over the next 18 months. It's a result of a sweeping cost-cutting measure which has United grounding 100 flights by the fall. Aviation experts said this could be indicative of what other airlines may be forced to do, too, as the industry fights to stay in the black.

The skies aren't looking so friendly anymore to Chicago-based United Airlines and its employees. Executives were getting ready to furlough about twelve percent of its pilots, about 950 in total, in the airline's latest cost-cutting move. In a statement, United blamed record fuel prices for the cuts. Aviation experts, like DePaul University's Joe Schweiterman, said it was expected.

Experts said the airlines' struggle to stay viable could likely result in even higher fares and many believe this is only the beginning. "WHAT HAPPENS AT UNITED, THE REST OF THE INDUSTRY TYPICALLY EXPERIENCES AS WELL. Probably the next few weeks we'll see reports of job losses at some of the other big network airlines. All that's going to ripple through the transportation system," Schweiterman said.

Iran and Israel have engaged in a sharp exchange of words this month over suspicions Tehran is looking to develop nuclear weapons, helping to push global oil prices higher. "THEY DO NOT HAVE THE CAPACITY TO THREATEN THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference.

He was asked about a New York Times report on Friday that quoted U.S. officials as saying Israeli jets conducted a long-range Mediterranean exercise this month that appeared to be a practice for a mission against Iran. "They (Israel) have a number of domestic crises and they want to extrapolate it to cover others. Sometimes they come up with these empty slogans," Hosseini said in comments translated by Iran's English-language Press TV satellite station.

Iran's defense minister on Sunday accused Israel of "psychological warfare", but said Tehran would give a "devastating" response to any attack. On Friday, the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, said a military strike on Iran would turn the Middle East into a fireball and prompt Tehran to launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons.

Many analysts say Iran's nuclear sites are too numerous, distant and fortified for Israel to take on alone. Iran has threatened to retaliate if it is attacked. Its Shahab-3 missile, with a range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), is capable of hitting Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, Iranian officials say.

The chaos that erupted outside Milwaukee County's main welfare office Monday over DISASTER-RELATED FOOD AID had more to do with a weak economy and crushing poverty in parts of this community than the devastating floods that swept through the state earlier this month, local government and food relief officials said.

About 3,000 people turned out for the assistance beginning at 3 a.m. Monday, creating a line that stretched several blocks around the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center at 1220 W. Vliet St. At least one woman said she was trampled when a crowd rushed the doors as they opened around 7:30 a.m., and dozens of Milwaukee police officers and sheriff's deputies were called to quell the scene.

"The food crisis in Milwaukee and throughout the United States is worse than many of us have realized," said Milwaukee Common Council President Willie Hines, who with other elected officials called on the community to support local food pantries. "WE EXPECT LONG LINES FOR FREE FOOD IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES," Hines said. "We don't expect a line of 2,500 people waiting for food vouchers in Milwaukee."

James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."

Longtime global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., citing a recent poll, said in a statement, "Hansen, (former Vice President) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it." But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., committee chairman, said, "Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet."

The Dutch-language de Volkskrant newspaper said it spoke to thousands of believers in THE IMPENDING END OF CIVILIZATION, and while theories on the supposed catastrophe varied, MOST TIED THE 2012 DATE TO THE END OF THE MAYAN CALENDAR, Radio Netherlands reported Monday.

De Volkskrant said many of those interviewed are stocking up on emergency supplies, including life rafts and other equipment. Some who spoke to the newspaper were optimistic about the end of civilization.

"You know, maybe it's really not that bad that the Netherlands will be destroyed," Petra Faile said. "I don't like it here anymore. Take immigration, for example. They keep letting people in. And then we have to build more houses, which makes the Netherlands even heavier. The country will sink even lower, which will make the flooding worse."

The Arab world would be "pleased" by Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, he said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. "It [the reaction] will be positive privately. I think there'll be public denunciations but no action," he said.

Mr Bolton, an unflinching hawk who proposes military action to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons, bemoaned what he sees as a lack of will by the Bush administration to itself contemplate military strikes. Israel, however, still had a determination to prevent a nuclear Iran, he argued. The "optimal window" for strikes would be between the November 4 election and the inauguration on January 20, 2009.

The industrial action affects one in three council workers, with tens of thousands of school dinner ladies, librarians and classroom assistants and bin men in England, Wales and Northern Ireland stopping work. The stoppages, the worst for two years, are set to cripple rubbish collections and shut car parks and some toll tunnels in the first major test of Chancellor Alistair Darling's call for restraint over pay increases.

Union barons will meet on Tuesday to decide when to hold the first two-day strike next month. The "yes" vote means that the union now only has to give seven days' notice of strike action before a walk out.

The move now presents Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a major industrial relations headache with more trouble expected over the next few months. Another 100,000 Unison members in Scotland are voting on industrial action in a separate dispute over pay next month. Leaders of the white collar PCS union will discuss plans for a ballot of 280,000 civil servants this Autumn in a stoppage which could disrupt pension payments for hundreds of thousands of pensioners. Around 800 coastguards are due to start a work to rule on Monday next week when they will only carry out work relating to 999 and distress calls. A similar stoppage is planned for the week starting July 11.

Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies painted a bleak picture of the current housing downturn, pegging it as possibly being "the worst in a generation" in its "The State of the Nation's Housing 2008" report. The study noted that housing starts, new home sales and existing home sales are at all-time lows since after World War II, while home price declines and mortgage defaults are the worst on record.

"We've never had so much information or data in uncharted water," said Eric Belsky, the Joint Center's executive director. "A recovery is not anywhere near in sight."

The developments came a day after Tsvangirai withdrew from Friday's presidential runoff against longtime leader Robert Mugabe, saying harassment and violence against opposition supporters had made the balloting impossible. Tsvangirai entered the Dutch Embassy shortly after the police raid, Dutch television reported. It was not clear how long he intended to remain in the embassy building.

"I can confirm that Tsvangirai is currently in the Dutch Embassy," said spokesman Bart Rijs. Rijs said he could not speculate why Tsvangirai chose the Dutch Embassy. But he noted that the Netherlands was a strong supporter of human rights groups in Zimbabwe although it did not finance any political parties.

Tsvangirai won the first round of the presidential election on March 29, but did not gain an outright majority against 84-year-old Mugabe. That campaign was generally peaceful, but the runoff has been overshadowed by violence and intimidation, especially in rural areas. Independent human rights groups say 85 people have died and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes, most of them opposition supporters.

The most important single development is probably the growing improbability of a U.S./Israeli strike against Iran. Fear of such a strike - and of its predictably catastrophic regional and global consequences - has kept the region in a state of nervous alert.

Why has this fear receded? The main reason is that American and Israeli politics are in turmoil. U.S. President George W. Bush and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are largely discredited. Bush is a lame-duck president in the last months of a lamentable and much criticized mandate, while Olmert is threatened by a major corruption scandal. He could be out of office within weeks.

They are both failed 'war leaders', without the authority or the domestic backing to lead their countries into another major conflict. Next November's presidential elections in the United States could well coincide with early elections in Israel the same month. In both countries, the public is eager for change at the top.

Another reason war clouds are receding is the growing dependence of the United States and much of the industrial world on the Gulf - not only for the supply of oil, the price of which is breaking all records, but also as a source of finance, at a time when major Western banks and financial institutions are facing an unprecedented credit squeeze.

Is all well, therefore, in the troubled Middle East? Is peace breaking out? Can the journalists and diplomats go home? Unfortunately, this is far from being the case. The Arab-Israeli conflict continues to spread its poison in the region and beyond. A united Jerusalem will be Israel's forever, Olmert declared, as if unaware that his relentlessly expansionist policy robs the Palestinians of their hoped-for statehood, and condemns his own country to live as a pariah in a dangerous and permanently hostile environment.