This Halloween, thanks to the time change the day before, sunset will occur at 5:31 p.m. There also won't be a moon that night, so good working flashlights should accompany parents and trick-or-treaters. Reflective tape is also a good idea, especially on darker costumes, as are chemical lighting sticks that can be worn as a necklace with any costume.

"Children should trick-or-treat with an adult and only go to homes of people they know. They should wear light-colored costumes with a reflective coating so they can be easily seen by drivers."

Those results led Democrats in Congress to demand a new windfall profits tax. "Big oil behemoths are making out like bandits, while the average American family is getting killed by high gas prices, and soon-to-be record heating oil prices," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said President Bush opposes such a move and is instead considering a wide range of proposals to help cushion consumers, including the creation of an emergency reserve of gasoline and other refined products.

Thursday's outsized earnings are a result of surging oil and natural gas prices that pushed pump prices to record territory after Hurricane Katrina. They come on the heels of similar eye-popping gains reported this week by BP PLC (BP), ConocoPhillips Inc. and Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) Chevron Corp. (CVX) reports its earnings on Friday.

Bathroom monitoring is just one of a number of "incredibly stupid ideas" being floated by automakers, said Sandy Munro, CEO of Munro & Associates, a manufacturing consulting firm in Troy. Munro said a number of suppliers have told him that Ford and General Motors Corp., which is also trying to battle back from deep losses, are beginning to explore small ways to save money.

"It's a giant throwback to the bad old days of the '70s and '80s, when you squeezed the guy at the bottom of the heap any way you could," Munro said. "That only causes lots of discontent, and only someone from Harvard could think of something as stupid as monitoring bathroom time."

Ford spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari said the 48-minute bathroom break limit is spelled out in the UAW contract that covers local plant rules.

"We are managing our business according to the local agreement," Gattari said.

The vehicle, shown at the Tokyo auto show, can travel on three or two wheels and is built for use on sidewalks and roads. Its body is made of polyurethane and covered in fabric ? to soften the impact if it bumps into people, Toyota says.

Imagine driving around in the i-swing and its artificial intelligence, which will pop up as a mascot character in a display at the driver's shoulder, will point out a noodle shop that's sure to match your palate, says Hideo Miwa, a Toyota designer.

These positively buoyant vessels use their forward momentum and the downward lift of their wings to literally fly below the water's surface. This radical departure from the typical method of sinking below the surface allows the Dolphins to achieve an unparrallelled level of freestyle performance.The idea of underwater flight was first invented by Tom Rowe who developed the concept with his amazing "Bionic-Dolphin."

The first Dolphin to be designed and built by Innespace was Sweet Virgin Angel. She was completed in 2001 and has been performing at shows and events for two years. The Innespace Dolphin is a fully functional show ready watercraft, able to perform sustained dives, huge jumps, barrel rolls, and many other amazing acrobatic tricks.

Five U.S. oil refineries remained completely shut in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita Wednesday, accounting for 1.31 million barrels per day (bpd) of fuel production, or 7.7 percent of the nation's capacity, Reuters reported.

At least one of those plants, Motiva's 275,00 bpd refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, was gearing up for restart sometime this week. The others were expected to remain idle longer.

Yahoo's directions were a bit pokey, but they got me to my destination. ....

Following MapQuest directions the trip took 16 minutes out and 25 minutes back, for a total of 41 minutes, compared with the Web site's estimated 29 minutes. ....

Using the MSN directions took 24 minutes out and 21 minutes back, for a total of 45 minutes, compared with the estimated 24 minutes total travel time. Google's directions took 16 minutes to get to Lopez and 26 minutes to get back to the office, for a total of 42 minutes, compared with 24 minutes estimated.

Americans angrily grit their teeth as they pump $3-per-gallon gas. They think $2 is about right. In Britain, $3 sounds fanciful ? people there pay about $6.40 a gallon and think $5 would be fair.

AP-Ipsos polling in the United States and eight of its allies turned up wide disparities in people's thoughts on the cost of filling up.

Spaniards would like to see gasoline for just over $3 a gallon. People in France, Italy, Germany and South Korea put the fair market price $4 or a little more. Australians and Canadians would like to see it just under $3 a gallon.

Now a software issue is causing Hiroshi Okuda's Toyota Motor to recall a 160,000-strong armada of Prius cars sold mainly in the U.S. and Japan because the gas-electric hybrid vehicles were stalling. A Toyota spokesman said there were no safety concerns, but that the company has decided to fix the fault free of charge. The problem may cause the gasoline engine to stall, but does not affect the electrically powered brake and steering functions, he added.

The recall follows hot on the heels of an investigation by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into customer gripes about problems with the popular fuel-efficient vehicle. In June, the agency said it had received 33 reports of engine stalling in 2004 and 2005 Prius vehicles.

OK, forget all you know of Holland, the tulips and wooden clogs and windmills, and replace it with this Audi-powered supercar. The ?143,000 Spyker C8 Spyder borrows the S8's 4.2 liter 400-hp V8 and puts it to good use at the rear of a splendidly-finished and unique-looking frame (unique in a good way). A better power to weight ratio than a Modena or GT3 helps the C8 Spyder hustle to 60 in about 4.5 seconds, but the gearbox isn't really suited for such a powerful machine; first and second gear are very short short, and the overall tight stack yields 4000 rpms for a 100 mph sixth-gear cruise, not that anyone should ever drive that fast, anyway.

Strapped in with the four-point racing harness there is no way the driver can reach the handbrake, for instance, you need to have a co-pilot. You can't see the front of the car either, which makes manoeuvring it rather stressful, and the turning circle - I am not exaggerating - is about the same as a stretch limo's. Also, the steering is way too light, and, oh yes, the brakes don't seem to do much.

"It's kind of hard to be arguing to conserve gasoline when you're driving around in a Ford Expedition that guzzles it down at a 6- to 8-mile per gallon clip," Bush said last month.

"You need to practice what you preach," Richardson said.

At stake is the survival of Delphi, a global giant with 185,000 employees and annual sales of $28 billion, and the wages, benefits and jobs of its 33,000 unionized workers across the United States.

In its Chapter 11 filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, Delphi said a "substantial segment" of its U.S. manufacturing base will be sold off or phased out over the next two years. The company will also move to slash union wages up to 60 percent, cut health care benefits and free itself of pension obligations to tens of thousands of employees inherited when Delphi was spun off from General Motors Corp. in 1999.

"They just snatched the American dream from thousands of people," said Don Thomas, a veteran of 29 years at a Delphi plant in Rochester, N.Y. "Nobody wanted to believe it until it happened."

His bleak assessment was echoed by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who said she was "profoundly disturbed" by Delphi's decision to file for bankruptcy. The loss of hundreds of thousands of factory jobs in recent years has left the state with a 6.7 percent jobless rate -- one of the nation's highest.

The three-seater car comes with a number of user-friendly technologies, including Nissan's Around View Monitor which reduces blind spots by displaying the outside surroundings on screens mounted on the inside of the car's A-pillars located on either side of the windshield. A dash-mounted infrared (IR) commander allows the driver to operate the navigation and stereo systems with simple finger movements without letting go of the steering wheel.

Pivo is powered by Nissan's compact, high-performance lithium-ion battery and its unique Super Motor, resulting in zero emissions.

Sales of large gas-guzzling SUVs for GM and Ford declined significantly last month as U.S. gasoline prices soared well over $3 a gallon in many parts of the country.

"There is legitimate pressure on some utility categories and I would describe those as the traditional truck-based utilities," GM's Ballew said.

SUV and truck sales at GM were off 30 percent. Sales of its large Chevrolet Suburban SUV were down nearly 57 percent.

Sales of traditional SUVs at Ford were off 51 percent compared with last September. Sales of Ford's large Expedition SUV fell 60 percent, while its mid-size Explorer was down 58 percent. Its F-Series pickup trucks were down 30 percent.

"How long before we return to normal? It's hard to know, because we have not yet got an assessment" of damage from Rita, Bodman said in an interview with USA Today on Friday. He said it will be two to three weeks before the assessment is done.

"We're going to go through a very challenging time the next six months, is my guess," Bodman said. "Most of us have viewed energy availability as a kind of right of citizenship," he said, and might have to rethink that as refineries are restarted, pipelines repaired and natural gas processing resumed. "Both in terms of gasoline availability and (prices of) natural gas and heating oil, we're going to have some problems."

The government conservation plan will ask Americans to turn off lights, change thermostat settings, drive slower, insulate homes and take other steps.