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2. Low humidity and 40-mile-an-hour wind gusts³ are expected to make things tougher for crews battling wildfires in northern California. A blaze near Sacramento has already destroyed nearly 50 homes and buildings with another 275 threatened. Officials say the fire is about 60% contained.

3. Gasoline has reached another record. The national average is now $ 4.05 a gallon. The declining dollar and lower-than-expected oil stocks have pushed crude prices up again in New York.

4. And in Atlanta, a bizarre incident at a gas station. Witnesses say this man pulled in and started dancing naked on top of his car before getting back in, slamming his car into a row of gas pumps setting them on fire. Fire crews extinguished the blaze before it could spread to more pumps.

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. sandbag [intransitive and transitive] v.

to put sandbags around a building in order to protect it from a flood or explosion

2. levee [countable] n.
a special wall built to stop a river flooding

3. a dry spell

A dry spell originally refers to a period of time when there is no rain. Example: We've been having quite a dry spell lately; it hasn't rained in over two weeks.

Likewise, to have a dry spell is to go through a period of time when one is not getting something that one wants. Example: Sam is a great salesman, though lately he's been having a bit of a dry spell. Even the best professional atheletes have dry spells; periods of time when they don't play as well as they usually do.

4. gust² [countable] n.
a sudden strong movement of wind, air, rain etc

5. contain [transitive] v.
to stop something from spreading or escaping

6. pull in
if a driver pulls in, they move to the side of the road and stop

7. gas pump
petrol pump/gas pump (=for putting petrol into cars)

A Gasoline pump is a machine at a gas station that is used to put gasoline in vehicles. Gas pumps are also known as petrol pumps, fuel dispensers or (in Australian usage) petrol bowsers (after an early designer of petrol pumps, Sylvanus Bowser, and his company).