Self-serve regular averaged $2.67 a gallon. Mid-grade cost $2.76 a gallon while premium hit $2.86 a gallon.

Among the stations surveyed, the lowest average price in the country for regular unleaded was in Salt Lake City at $2.28 a gallon. The most expensive was in Honolulu, where drivers paid $2.88 a gallon.

Bodman spoke with Reuters during a visit to Fermilab, the largest U.S. laboratory for studying particle physics, which is located in Batavia, Illinois.

Bodman said with U.S. refineries running at 86 percent capacity following the battering they received from hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, high crude oil prices and an annual U.S. shift to summer gasoline, the switch by refineries to ethanol as a fuel additive from MTBE could result in shortages in some areas this summer.

Most U.S. refiners will stop using methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, before the peak U.S. summer driving season kicks off.

MTBE has been found to pollute water supplies and many refiners are gearing up to shift to ethanol as an additive to produce cleaner-burning fuel.

Most U.S. ethanol is produced in the Midwest from locally grown corn, and Bodman said shortages were most likely in areas furthest from supplies.

"We expect there will be sufficient ethanol," Bodman reiterated. "But it is reasonable to expect that some areas could experience fits and starts, but that shouldn't last too long."

Bodman said the U.S. government is preparing for what meteorologists are warning could be another heavy hurricane season this summer after Katrina and Rita hit the southern U.S. coast last year, flooded New Orleans and disabled a large chunk of the oil production and refining capacity along the Gulf of Mexico.

The government's plans include laying in additional gasoline supplies for cities that may face evacuation, plus preparing back-up power generators for those cities.

"If we suffer major blows similar to the ones we had last year, we will face similar problems," Bodman said.

"But this year we will be ready to respond better than we did last year," he added.

Bodman also said that a proposal from six U.S. senators to sue the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for price fixing was "not realistic."

"Many oil producing countries do not operate in a manner consistent with U.S. federal law, but they are not based here," Bodman said.

He said he is working on getting countries that have benefited from high oil prices to invest in expanding production capacity to keep prices down, a strategy he said is working.

The "Petroleum Industry Antitrust Act of 2006" received the backing of six senators on Thursday including Republican Arlen Specter, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl.

It would allow the U.S. attorney general to sue oil producing cartels for limiting production or setting prices -- a provision seen as targeting OPEC, which pumps about a third of the world's crude oil.

"It is much better to have an effective working relationship with these countries and you cannot do that if you are suing them," Bodman said. "Suing someone is a matter of last resort and it is not wise to sue someone if they are holding the ultimate tickets."

- When housing prices are flat or falling, there is no Angel, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny or Santa Claus you can call, to refill the ATM machine when it runs out of cash;

- Home equity can suddenly shift from a market reality to a purely existential concept. The homeowner is now engaged in an "Existential Equity Extraction" or "EEE". An example of this in today's world is when a home, with equity taken out, is routinely appraised for a mortgage refinancing at 5 to 10 percent higher than it would be appraised for an actual sale;

- Home prices are under horrible pressure. There are probably a few million property owners, including speculators, flippers, and second-home buyers, who are in way over their heads. We've all heard stories about second-home buyers who really couldn't afford the luxury and high expense of a second-home priced at $200,000, yet they purchased one for $250,000 and rationalized its affordability because "the value would only go up to $300,000 or more". Besides, they naively believed "it could always be sold quickly in a bidding war for a profit". In resort areas - given the number of days people actually use their second home - staying at the Ritz for $500 a night could be a much better deal. Do the math; it's not pretty.

- Demand for over-priced housing is slowing and new buyers are taking their time, being picky, and even renting. Homeownership, as a percentage of the population, is already at a record-high. This level was achieved by using every trick in the mortgage lending book, regardless of income or down payment. Virtually every borrower was approved for a loan of some kind. Fifty percent of mortgages written over the last two years have been adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) and many buyers qualified for a mortgage because of the low teaser rates. In addition, sub-prime mortgage lending has reached $700 billion, or 12 percent of total mortgages. As interest rates adjust up, housing prices are forced down.

Given these statistics, it should be no surprise that the affordability index for the first time buyer is at a 20-year low, or that the University of Michigan's Home Buying Index is approaching an all-time low. In the housing crash of 1991, that index low was set once the housing price crash was well underway and more than a year old!

- Speculative buyers have stopped buying and many potential buyers are canceling orders and leaving deposits on the table.

- In many states, property insurance is up 25 to 30 percent, right up there with soaring heating and air-conditioning costs.

But compassionate work by the likes of Medas and Bowser has met resistance from a group of neighborhood residents who argue the park is "languishing under an identity crisis." Pressure has also come from nearby Virginia Commonwealth University, where officials have also used their clout to pressure the city to privatize the park. The University has developed its own strategic plan to "address [the] need for more green space" for its students.

Medas said there has been an increased police presence at Food Not Bombs meals, and the group recently received a parking ticket for unloading in a spot it has used for years without any problems.

Donna Mills, a homeless woman helping Bowser serve HOPE Ministries' Sunday meal, sees the treatment of the community's poor as part of a long history of economic injustice. "[They] always run folks off of everything they want; they've been doing that ever since the beginning of time," Mills told TNS. "There's enough for everybody, but you just got one or two group of people [that] just want the whole dang gone thing - don't want to share nothing; want to keep you down and keep their self up; keep their self separated."

Battle in Downtown America

Whether it's public parks or private shelters, homeless people have fewer and fewer places to go. According to a survey of 24 cities by the US Conference of Mayors, requests for emergency shelter assistance in 2005 increased by 6 percent. The survey also found the number of homeless families seeking shelter increased by about 5 percent, with about one in three reporting unmet needs due to a lack of existing shelter resources.
Stoops believes the increase in the homeless population is feeding the rise in city ordinances and polices that target those populations.

Without enough temporary shelter for the needy, homelessness becomes more visible, leading to what homeless-rights advocate Michael Stoops described to The NewStandard as "a big battle in downtown American between the interests of low-income people and the interests of the business community."

Richmond's libraries have also become a front in that battle. In February, the city enacted new codes of conduct allowing library staff to banish people who bring in more than two book bags, bags over 18 inches in length, plastic bags, bed rolls or luggage. People whose "personal hygiene is offensive so as to constitute a nuisance to other persons" or who change their clothes in the bathroom can also be removed from the library. The revised codes further state that failure to comply with the library's rules may result in arrest.

In explaining the city's new policies at a recent press conference, Richmond Mayor Douglas L. Wilder said, "The purpose of the libraries is to satisfy the needs of society that wants to enrich its cultural involvement relative to reading, writing, to youngsters, for older [people], for anyone else that wants to come there to learn."

The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) has been tracking anti-homeless initiatives for more than a decade, and has published several comprehensive reports on criminalization of the homeless. Using information, surveys, and interviews from 224 cities, the 2005 report designates the top 20 "meanest" cities for the homeless.

Since the last survey in 2002, the NCH found a 12 percent increase in laws prohibiting begging; an 18 percent increase in aggressive panhandling laws; and a 14 percent increase in laws prohibiting sitting and lying in public places.

Stoops believes the increase in the homeless population is feeding the rise in city ordinances and polices that target those populations.

"I think some Americans are tired of the issue, and they simply want the homeless to go away," said Stoops, acting executive director of NCH. "Business people put pressure on the mayor and the police and that's why we see sweeps and the passage and enforcement of what we call 'anti-homeless' laws."

A Punitive Response

A number of cities, including Richmond, Houston and San Francisco have decided that the homeless use of libraries has become such a problem that it merits stronger regulations for behavior and enforcement.

Public library access has become such an issue that the American Library Association (ALA) has created a subcommittee on library services to poor and homeless people. ALA president Lesley Burger said that libraries, like any public institution, have certain rules for conduct, for example prohibiting food and beverages, cell phones and profane language.

But on the issue of targeting the homeless, Burger said, "I think we need to be very cautious about mass stereotypes or using stereotypes to paint a broad brush about a whole group of people who may be innocent." Moreover, she said, libraries can serve as a valuable source of information on jobs and social programs for people trying to get back on their feet.

Mayor Wilder has also suggested rerouting bus routes off of the main downtown thoroughfare that passes by an upscale hotel, the Library of Virginia, the new courthouse, and VCU's medical school. "We can't have all those people lying around outside the Library of Virginia, that beautiful building that I insisted be on Broad Street when I was governor," Wilder told the Richmond Times Dispatch.

Darrick, an artist and homeless Richmonder who preferred not to give his last name, said he experienced first-hand the city's crackdown on homelessness when police hassled him for lying in the park and working on a drawing. The officer, he said, accused him of "camping out."

"He said, 'You got that bag, doesn't that have your clothes and stuff in it?' I said, 'No, it has my art supplies in it,'" Darrick told TNS. "They harass you."

Both Darrick and NCH President Stoops emphasize that one of the key problems for homeless people is that there is nowhere to go during the day. But instead of funding accessible "day centers" - facilities with indoor seating, showers, laundry, and referral services -- many places try to sweep the homeless to less visible areas. In Richmond, city officials are trying to move homeless services away from downtown to a blighted industrial area near the parole office and city jail.

In San Francisco, complaints about homeless people congregating in front of the library compelled the city to implement the "Homeward Bound" program, which has given nearly 1,000 homeless people one-way bus tickets out of town.

And in Atlanta - the fourth "meanest" city in the NCH's study - local lawmakers banned panhandling in the downtown area and at bus stations, the airport and sports arenas. The ordinance also prohibits people from "requesting a donation of money" in business-district areas.

"It sounds like a Jim Crow law," said Stoops.

Anti-poverty and free-expression advocates raise constitutional concerns surrounding restrictions on begging and inhabiting public spaces. The NCH points out that courts have struck down laws that criminalize necessary activities for homeless people, like sleeping in public, citing the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Beyond laws and ordinances, some city governments and businesses have used physical barriers to restrict not just the homeless, but people in general from taking up public space. Physical implements like seat-less bus stops, metal spikes on ledges, and metal barriers over subway grates have all cropped up to make urban spaces less accommodating.

President Bush's $2.77 trillion 2007 budget proposal includes numerous cuts to programs for poor and homeless populations, including the Community Development and Social Services Block Grant programs, which fund low-income housing, childcare and child-welfare programs.

While the NCH notes that the budget proposal does boost funding for Homeless Assistance Grants and Housing for People with AIDS, the organization says it does so at the expense of other housing initiatives that could prevent or alleviate homelessness. Congress could vote on budget resolutions this week, before the Easter recess.

For the programs and communities that do receive federal funding for homeless and poverty programs, the NCH advocates requiring cities to opt for more supportive initiatives over criminalization of the homeless. The group states that any federal funding for homelessness and poverty should be "conditioned on local government agreement not to punish homeless persons for conduct related to their status."

"I think the American people have grown accustomed to seeing people living on our city sidewalks and streets," said Stoops. "And that's why we don't give it a second thought or stop or even say 'hello' when we see people in the streets. We just walk on by."

The department said Lockheed Martin Corp.'s multiple launch rocket system, being co-developed with Britain, Italy, France and Germany, was more than 15 percent over budget. That is below the 25 percent threshold risking cancellation but enough to require Congress be advised.

The notifications were required under a newly tightened, 24-year-old law known as Nunn-McCurdy.

The filing, known as Selected Acquisition Reports and due to Congress 60 days after President Bush's fiscal 2007 budget proposal, covered 89 major arms programs.

Programs running 25 percent or more over budget risk termination unless certified by the secretary of defense as vital to national security and meeting three other conditions.

Those additional conditions are that no alternatives exist, that costs are under control and that the management structure is adequate to keep costs under control.

The Pentagon has 60 days -- until June 5 -- to certify conditions have been met for Global Hawk and the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) or terminate them.

Global Hawk is a high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle. It entered limited production in March 2001. The program, valued at more than $6 billion, was restructured twice in 2002.

The $8 billion NPOESS system is designed to increase the accuracy of weather forecasts so that five- to seven-day forecasts are as reliable as those now looking three days out.

Under the Nunn-McCurdy rule changes enacted in January, the Pentagon also said 25 other programs were more than 50 percent over their original "baseline." In the case of the oldest program, Boeing Co.'s C-17 cargo plane, this harked backed to 1981.

Eleven other programs were reported for unit-cost breaches of more than 30 percent but less than 50 percent of their original "baseline" estimate.

The Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group that represents many U.S. military contractors, said on Thursday that these baseline "breaches" reflected the stepped-up reporting requirements, not programs gone awry.

Of course, money has always been important in war. For centuries, a king who wanted to go to war had first to trot down to his Schatzkammer, or treasury, and see how many thaler he had piled up. If the cupboard was bare, he wasn't going anywhere.

But saying, as the U.S. Army has, that its center of gravity is the resource process is going a great deal further. The great 19th century German military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz defines a center of gravity as "the hub of all power and movement, on which all depends." If that were true of money, then the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would not be happening. The U.S. Army's resources, not to mention those of the rest of the Defense Department, are so vastly greater than those of our Fourth Generation opponents that they would not be able to stand against us for an hour.

The Military Reform Movement of the 1970s and '80s put it differently. It said that for winning in war, people are most important, ideas come second and hardware is only third. How does the Army affect its people, ideas and hardware by making resources its center of gravity? In each case, negatively.

Within the officer corps, the focus on acquiring and justifying resources corrupts, not in the sense of people taking money under the table but in the more profound sense of corruption of institutional purpose.

Officers whose focus and expertise is combat are shunted aside while those who are most adept at the resources game are promoted. Worse, a swarm of vultures is drawn by the resources, in the form of a secondary army of contractors. Because their goal is not truth but the next contract, intellectual corruption is added to corruption of purpose. At its higher levels, the whole system becomes Soviet, Gosplan in or out of uniform. The outside world, the battlefield, is an irrelevant and unwelcome distraction.

Ideas are similarly corrupted. In general, poverty begets ideas, while an excess of resources brings intellectual laziness. The illusion that the organization can simply buy its way out of problems spreads. The ideas that are valued are those that justify still more resources, while ideas that promise battlefield results with small resources are dismissed or seen as threats.

Again, the FCS is a wonderful example. From a military standpoint it is a joke, a semi-portable Maginot Line doomed to collapse of its own complexity. But in terms of justifying resources, it is a tremendous success because for the first time the Army has a program that costs even more than Navy or Air Force programs.

That leads to hardware, where complexity becomes the rule because simplicity does not cost enough. The more complex a system, the less it is able to deal with threats not envisioned by its designers.

Thus we see what Iraq has illustrated time and again, expensive, complex systems nullified by imaginative, simple countermeasures based on people and ideas. Worse, because hardware best justifies more resources, hardware becomes the Army's top priority with both people and ideas left far behind. In the end, the Army loses to opponents who have kept their priorities straight.

The Army should not be blamed for coming out of the closet and stating up front that resources are its center of gravity. The scandal is that for all the American armed services, the resource process is the center of gravity and has been for a long time -- the most recent to make it so was the Marine Corps, in the mid-1990s. To return to Clausewitz's definition, one might say that when a military defines resources as its center of gravity, it creates a hub of all weakness and stasis, on which all fatally depends.

"Asia is a preferred healthcare destination and is set to grow further, fuelled by the relatively low-priced healthcare services available," Abacus president Don Birch said.

According to the report, medical tourism -- which refers to trips combining treatment and check-ups with leisure -- is growing by 20 to 30 percent each year with the industry now worth around half a billion dollars a year in Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and India.

"Asia is an ideal growth environment ... with competitively-priced quality healthcare service in major tourist cities," Birch said.

Thailand welcomes more than one million medical tourists each year because of the variety of procedures available, Abacus said.

Bumrungrad International Hospital for example offers a full spectrum of surgical services performed by certified doctors all under one roof.

Singapore, on the other hand, is known for delivering cutting-edge medical treatment and attracts medical tourists with its competitively priced services.

For example, hip-replacement surgery costs two-thirds less in Singapore than in the United States, the report said.

The city-state attracts 370,000 medical tourists each year and is targeting one million medical visitors and 1.6 billion dollars in revenue by 2012.

India, whose medical tourism business is growing at 30 percent per year, currently draws about 150,000 visitors each year. It is forecast to generate at least 2.2 billion dollars by 2012.

"India (is) providing first-class service at a third-world price", the report said. It cited the low death rate for coronary bypass operations as evidence of quality healthcare.

Malaysia, which drew 100,000 patients in the first half of 2005, expects its medical tourism receipts to reach 590 million dollars in five years' time.

Although most of these tourists are from Asia, Birch said that some come from the United States and Europe as well.

"The long haul market is important and growing (but) much of the business is intra-Asia," Birch said.

The key sources of patients are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Middle East and China, he added.