Gasoline now costs an average of $3.15 a gallon, seven cents shy of the record set last May.

Shigeru Kondo, a 55-year-old systems engineer for a food company based in northern Japan, easily surpassed the previous record of 2.7 trillion digits, set late last year by a French engineer.

The reinsurer Munich Re reported last month that the first half of 2010 set a loss record for natural disasters;