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Libyan Unrest Fuels Oil Price Rise

Weekly gas prices skyrocketed, according to the Department of Energy, driven by the popular revolts spreading across the Middle East.

The U.S. weekly average price per gallon is $3.19, up 54 cents from a year ago, and slightly higher than last week's $3.14. This was the highest price posted during the month of February since 1990, when the data became available. The most expensive regions again are New England at $3.23 and California at $3.56.
Oil settled at $93.57 in New York trading, up 8.5 percent since Friday's close, the biggest one day jump in nearly three years.
Daniel O'Connell, vice president of energy at MF Global, said he does not suspect gas and oil prices to continue to accelerate for very long.
"It's going way up way too fast," said O'Connell. "We're not going to break any new level as far as $94 is concerned. I suspect it will return to that $88 range sooner than later."
And why are gas prices going up?
"In a word: Libya," says petroleum expert Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston. He has been following gas prices one way or another for more than 30 years.
As protests seemed to subside in Egypt, anti-government unrest continued in Bahrain and Libya. In a speech today, defiant Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi said he maintains control of the country despite the spread of anti-government protests from the city of Benghazi to the capital, Tripoli, yesterday.
Unlike Egypt and Bahrain, Lipow says, Libya is a significant exporter of light sweet crude.
Most of that gets exported to Europe: Italy, Germany, France and Spain. So, how does it affect the United States? We import 40 percent of our crude from Europe, refine it, and then export back to them the distillates, including gasoline and diesel. So, any disruption in Europe gets felt in the 50 states.

Woman turned into sex slave after internet meeting

A Wisconsin woman who said she agreed to cook and clean for a man she met on the internet in exchange for a free place to stay allegedly ended up as his sex slave, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The 27-year-old woman met New York resident John Hopkins on the website Craigslist before spending nine days trapped in his apartment, where she claims she was repeatedly raped, according to a district attorney's statement.

The woman -- whose name has not been released -- was treated for injuries at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. The details of her condition are not clear.
Authorities charged Hopkins with rape, assault, forcible touching and unlawful imprisonment, arresting him at his Brooklyn apartment on Saturday. He is currently being held on $350,000 bail.
The woman claims that she was looking for work in New York and found an advertisement that Hopkins posted on Craigslist, listing a room for rent, according to the complaint.
The pair agreed that the woman could stay rent free if she cooked and cleaned for Hopkins, who then paid for her airfare to New York on February 4, 2011.
Upon arriving at his apartment, Hopkins allegedly told the woman that she was going to be his slave, the complaint said.
The woman claims she was repeatedly raped between February 4 and February 12, and was also tied with a rope, gagged and handcuffed to a radiator, it said.
On the ninth day, she said she managed to call her mother and alert her of the alleged abuse.
Police found the woman bruised and bound in Hopkins' apartment, according to the district attorney statement.
Authorities said the victim was shaking and had marks on her body, according to the complaint.

Hopkins is expected to appear in court Friday for a preliminary hearing. If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in prison.

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Lara Logan: President Obama calls

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is resting at her Washington, D.C.-area home with her husband and two children after being sexually assaulted and beaten in Tahrir Square on the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned, a close friend of Logan's said.
According to a White House aide, President Obama called Logan this afternoon. The White House did not provide details of the phone call, but Press Secretary Jay Carney reiterated that "violence against journalists was unacceptable, and that the perpetrators of violence needed to be held accountable."

Soccer: Real Madrid becomes highest earning sports team ever

For the sixth consecutive year, Real Madrid tops the Deloitte Football Money League, and in doing so, became the highest earning sports team ever, reports Business Insider. Despite not winning any trophies, the club's earnings jumped from $541 million for the 2008/09 season to $592 million for the 2009/10 season, enabling them to continue funding Cristiano Ronaldo's most extravagant purchases. Like exclusive yet unenforcable baby rights.  

Barcelona came in right behind Real for the second straight year (even though the standings were the other way around in La Liga) and the first time ever, the combined earnings of Deloitte's 20-club Money League topped $5.4 billion.
By comparison, the top earning NFL team, the Dallas Cowboys, made $420 million according to Forbes and the top earning MLB team, the New York Yankees, made $441 million. That would only put them fifth and fourth, respectively, in Deloitte's list of football clubs.
The biggest chunk of Real Madrid's revenue came from their ongoing $1.4 billion TV rights deal, but they also make nearly as much from numerous sponsorships and matchday earnings. And if there's one thing Real like more than making money, it's spending it. Over the last decade, they've spent more than $1 billion on player transfers as they keep breaking their own transfer records for individual players to fill out club president Florentino Perez's live-action fantasy team. 

Here's the full Football Money League top 20...
1. Real Madrid -- $592 million
2. Barcelona -- $537 million
3. Manchester United -- $472 million
4. Bayern Munich -- $436 million
5. Arsenal -- $370 million
6. Chelsea -- $345 million
7. AC Milan -- $318 million
8. Liverpool -- $308 million
9. Inter Milan -- $303 million
10. Juventus -- $277 million
11. Manchester City -- $206 million
12. Tottenham Hotspur -- $198 million
13. Hamburger SV -- $197 million
14. Lyon -- $197 million
15. Marseille -- $190 million
16. Schalke 04 -- $189 million
17. Atletico Madrid -- $168 million
18. Roma -- $166 million
19. Stuttgart -- $155 million
20. Aston Villa -- $148 million

Well, away from the list, these figures don't look so good when you look at how quickly those earnings disappear. As the Andersred Blog points out, just one of the seven English clubs on Deloitte's list turned a profit (Arsenal). Barcelona had to take out a loan to pay player wages last summer and Real's debt is in the hundreds of millions. So keep that in mind when imagining club executives diving into warehouse-sized safes full of gold coins like............. Scrooge McDuck.