The four-engine Airbus A380 touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 12:10 p.m. EDT, to the cheers of onlookers gathered to watch the arrival. As the plane taxied, a pilot waved an American flag. Minutes later, a separate A380 arrived in Los Angeles, with just a crew and no passengers.

The first U.S. flights are a chance for the European plane builder Airbus and German airline Lufthansa AG to show off the jewel of Airbus' offerings to potential American buyers and to the airports they hope to turn into flight bases for the jet. The 239-foot-long A380 can seat as many as 550 passengers, hold 81,890 gallons of fuel, cruise at 560 mph and fly some 8,000 nautical miles.

Lufthansa Flight 8940 is meant to be a statement by Airbus that it can accommodate vast numbers of travelers comfortably and efficiently.

"We're talking about an airplane that is representing aviation in the 21st century in terms of efficiency," said Jens Bischoff, Lufthansa's vice president for the Americas.

It was one of the highest-profile maiden voyages since 1969, when the Concorde, the world's first and still only commercial supersonic transport, arrived at JFK from London. The European-made Concorde was retired from British and French service in 2005.

Airbus hopes the A380 designed to carry more people farther than any plane in history, though at subsonic speeds will dominate air travel for the next two decades.

Anthony Coscia, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said Monday's flight marked the beginning of an era in meeting the New York City area's transportation needs. He says the A380 will generate millions of dollars in economic activity each year.

Waiting in the wings, however, is Boeing Co., whose 747 jumbo jet has been the world's principal long-haul aircraft for the past 30 years and now has competitors to the A380 in early production.

LAX was reportedly in close competition with a New York airport over the behemoths plane's debut.

"We're planning for the largest turnout since the Concorde came in 1974," said Paul Haney, deputy executive director of airports and security for Los Angeles World Airports.

Various airlines have said they plan to begin using the huge, 555-seat planes for commercial travel within the next few years. Because it can hold so many passengers, the plane is expected to lower flight costs.

Retail gasoline prices rose in Texas this week for the sixth week in a row.

But the weekly AAA Texas gas price survey released today finds the upward trend slowed this week.

The statewide average price for regular-grade gasoline rose 3 cents this week to $2.41 per gallon. That's after an 11 cent increase the week before. Nationally, the price average rose 4 cents per gallon to $2.55 per gallon.

Auto club spokeswoman Rose Rougeau says strong consumer demand, a relatively high crude oil price and seasonal refinery conversions to warm-weather blends are behind the price spikes.

The most expensive regular-grade gasoline is in Amarillo, where the average price rose five cents this week to $2.51 per gallon. Drivers are paying an average of $2.40 a gallon in Austin and San Marcos. The cheapest gas is in Corpus Christi, where it rose a penny to $2.32 per gallon.

Suspected of conducting dubious financial transactions, Eric Yu, senior vice president at BenQ, has been detained by Taiwanese police and finance managers Alex Liou and Billy Liou were arrested and then released on bail.

BenQ made an announcement on Wednesday, saying that their offices in Taoyuan and Taipei had been raided by the police and the sudden check had something to do with the company's payment of bonuses to its overseas employees.
The BenQ spokesperson says that they will fully cooperate with the investigation.

In 2005, BenQ purchased Siemens' handset unit, but the company failed to build it into much of anything. Following the detention of Yu, BenQ's stock dropped dropped by 7% to its lowest level in years, as investors started to question the company's corporate governance.

Gasoline prices have jumped above $3 a gallon in some parts of California and Hawaii, and may hit that level other parts of the country when the busy summer driving season approaches.

''It kills me,'' said Gloria Nunez, 53, as she filled her Ford Explorer SUV at a San Jose gas station. Nunez, a clerk for a communications company, has started working a couple hours of overtime each week to help soften the blow.

''All of a sudden you kind of have to watch your pennies,'' she said.

Analysts say drivers should brace for more increases in the coming weeks. Crude oil, which makes up about half the price of gasoline, is trading above $60 a barrel. Higher demand, refinery maintenance and fears about springtime shortages are also driving up prices, particularly on the West Coast.

''The West Coast will certainly be the wild, wild West this year,'' said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service. Extensive maintenance work at West Coast refineries has curtailed supplies and exacerbated the typical ''preseason rally'' spurred by jitters about tight supplies.

''In the rest of the country it's just petro-noia. They're worried that they won't have enough gasoline,'' Kloza said. ''But on the West Coast the concern might be warranted.''

However, analysts said it's unlikely other parts of the country would see $3 gasoline before summer without a major disruption in supply.

Average fuel prices are still below their historical highs -- most of which were set in 2006 -- but are inching higher weeks earlier than usual.

Wailuku, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, currently has the highest average price for a gallon of regular unleaded at about $3.20.

On the mainland, the title goes to San Francisco, where a gallon averages $3.10, a jump of about 34 cents from a month ago but still off the high of $3.36 set in May 2006, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report for Wednesday.

The California cities of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Oakland are also all above $3 a gallon. Most other areas of the state are just a few cents away from cracking that milestone, and motorists say they're cutting back to save money.

''I take the bus,'' said Hector Esqueda, an 18-year-old justice administration student from Los Angeles who has stopped driving his gas-guzzling, older-model Lincoln Continental to save money. ''Other people are doing the same thing. The bus is packed.''

Nationwide, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded is up about 32 cents from a month ago, to $2.50, according to the AAA report. That's more than 55 cents shy of the all-time high recorded in September 2005, after hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged the Gulf of Mexico refinery infrastructure.

Part of the reason is rising demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that gasoline demand has averaged more than 9.1 million barrels per day over the past month, a 3.3 percent jump over the same period last year.

Oil prices jumped by more than $1 per barrel on Wednesday, settling at $61.82, after the agency also reported an unexpected drop in crude oil inventories as import levels reached their lowest point since 2005.

Across the country, drivers are grappling with how to manage the sudden spike.

Outside a Sunoco convenience store in downtown Philadelphia, T.J. Hawk, a 45-year-old retired Philadelphia police officer, recalled the good old days when it cost $5 to fill the tank.

These days, it takes at least $40 to fill his white Volvo. Most weeks, he only fills it three-quarters of the way to soften the hit to his wallet.

In Philadelphia, regular unleaded averaged about $2.57 a gallon early Wednesday morning, a 12 percent jump from a month ago but still well shy of the high of $3.358 a gallon set in September 2005.

Several customers at a Mobil station in St. Petersburg, Fla., were upset because there seemed to be no real reason for the price increase. Prices at the station range from $2.47 a gallon for regular to $2.69 for premium.

Lee Franc, a client manager from St. Petersburg, spent about $40 to put 16 gallons in her Toyota Highlander. She works at home and can go a week or two without filling up.

''Katrina, I can understand,'' Franc said. ''I didn't see a very good explanation this time. You hear so many excuses it gets to where you don't believe anything anymore.''

In Chicago, cab driver Nathan Michaels pays $25 each day to gas up his cab. That cost plus the $325 per week he pays to lease his cab makes it difficult to earn a living, even though he works six days a week.

He's been considering buying an SUV for personal use, but thinks with gas prices rising he'll start researching hybrid vehicles.

The rising gas prices also raise his anxiety in a more general way, he said. ''It contributes to an overall feeling of uncertainty about what's going on worldwide.''

"We come to celebrate a strategic partnership between the United States and Brazil ... A memorandum of understanding in the biofuels area was signed," Lula said. Lula said the agreement to promote the use of alternative fuels was important for mankind and should encourage other countries to diversify their energy sources.

Brazil and the United States would seek production partnerships with other countries in Central America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.

A plunge in Chinese stocks rippled across global markets Tuesday, triggering a massive wave of selling in the United States that sent the Dow Jones industrial average down 3.3 percent, or 416 points, its biggest decline since March 2003.

The news from Asia sparked the initial sell-off, but a confluence of other events, including news of rising real estate loan delinquencies, a surprisingly weak manufacturing report and a bombing near Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan, made an already difficult day worse.

For most of the morning the Dow declined steadily until it had fallen 300 points. Then, just before 3 p.m., it suddenly plummeted another 200 points before recovering slightly because of a trading glitch that led to a backlog of sell orders clearing at once. The Standard and Poor's 500-stock index, a broad measure of stock prices, also lost more than 3 percent by the close of the trading day, its biggest drop in three and a half years.