Media Today

[Rick Plant]

U.S. gas prices just hit a 2-month low—the national average is now under $4.50 a gallon

U.S. gasoline prices have soared in 2022 amid the reopening of the global economy postpandemic, the ongoing European energy crisis, and the war in Ukraine.

On June 14, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas rose to a record $5.01, according to the American Automobile Association. Since then, however, a new trend has emerged that should help Americans struggling with the rising cost of living caused by four-decade high inflation.

Gas prices have experienced a 35-day skid, and are now down more than 10% from June’s record high to a two-month low of $4.495. Some industry analysts predict that prices will continue to decline.



Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said on Twitter this week that he expects gas prices will continue falling over the coming months, eventually reaching a national average of $3.99 per gallon by August.

The recent dip in gas prices follows oil’s decline over the past month. Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, is down roughly 15% since its June 8 highs of over $123 per barrel to just $105 per barrel on Tuesday.

Oil prices briefly slipped below $100 per barrel last week as well, giving up all of the gains the critical commodity made since Russia invaded Ukraine in late March, but this past week has seen a slight rebound in prices.

The Biden administration has released 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to counter rising gas prices, questioned oil and gas company CEOs over their firms’ record profit margins, called on gas stations to reduce prices at the pump, and even floated the idea of a federal gas tax holiday.

Some of the drop in gasoline use likely is a response to price. But it also reflects shifting labor practices after the pandemic.

"Up until the pandemic, work from home was kind of considered an outlier," said Bill O'Grady, chief market strategist of Confluence Investment Management.

Under today's more flexible arrangements, "when the gasoline price goes up, instead of coming in five days a week, you may only come in three or two," O'Grady said.

Will prices keep falling?

A White House memo predicted gasoline prices would continue to fall through the "near term," highlighting Biden's actions such as a historically large release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve -- which analysts think had its primary impact as soon as it was announced in late March.

The White House memo also noted that the decline in gasoline prices has gotten a fraction of the media coverage that the run-up in prices earlier in the spring received.

"Despite the data, you wouldn't know gas prices are coming down from watching the evening news or reading the paper," the memo said.

Kilduff also expects gasoline prices to fall further, noting a long-running seasonal trend that typically sees gasoline prices retreat after July 4.

"My forecast is for prices to continue to slide lower into the fall," Kilduff said, adding that prices will remain high by historical standards.

While O'Grady thinks prices will continue to fall, he added that there is always a risk in late summer that Gulf of Mexico hurricanes could impair key refineries.

"That can send gasoline prices up significantly," he said.

AFP

[Rick Plant]

President Biden got Mexico to pay for border security to curb illegal immigration. An historic achievement.

Mexico agrees to invest $1.5B in 'smart' border technology

Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador agreed to spend $1.5 billion over the next two years to improve "smart" border technology during meetings Tuesday with President Joe Biden — a move the White House says shows neighborly cooperation succeeding where Trump administration vows to wall off the border and have Mexico pay for it could not.

A series of agreements the two countries hammered out as their leaders spoke called for several other concrete moves, including expanding the number of work visas the U.S. issues, creating a bilateral working group on labor migration pathways and worker protections and welcoming more refugees. Both also pledged to continue joint patrols for Mexico and Guatemala to hunt human smugglers along their shared border.

But the Biden administration hailed securing border funding from Mexico after years of failed attempts by former President Donald Trump.

"Borders that are more resilient, more efficient, and safer, will enhance our shared commerce," Biden and López Obrador said in a joint official statement. "We are committed like never before to completing a multi-year joint U.S.-Mexico border infrastructure modernization effort for projects along the 2,000-mile border."

The agreements came after López Obrador began the discussions by talking for more than half an hour as reporters looked on. His far-ranging discourse touched on everything from American drivers heading south for cheaper prices at the pump at Mexican gas stations to the New Deal politics of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He also chiding conservatives and said the U.S. and Mexico should reject the "status quo" on the border.

López Obrador said both countries "should close ranks to help each other" amid spiking inflation and border challenges brutally underscored by 53 migrants who died last month after being abandoned in a sweltering tractor-trailer on a remote back road in San Antonio.

"Increasing inflation impacts the well-being of families in both our countries, and requires strong, immediate, and concerted action," the joint statement said. "That is why we have committed to jointly combat inflation by accelerating the facilitation of bilateral trade and reducing trade costs."

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/mexico-agrees-to-invest-1-5b-in-smart-border-technology/

[Rick Plant]

'Hasta la vista, baby,' says UK's Boris Johnson as he exits parliament



LONDON (Reuters) -British Prime Minister Boris Johnson bowed out of his final showpiece parliamentary appearance with a round of applause from his party, jeers from opponents and an enigmatic exit line: "Mission largely accomplished ... hasta la vista, baby."

Johnson was forced to announce his resignation earlier this month after a mass rebellion against the latest in a string of scandals that his party decided had undermined his ability to lead the country any longer after three turbulent years in charge.

Speaking in his final "Prime Minister's Questions", the weekly fixture of the political calendar which pits the prime minister against his opponents in rowdy debate, Johnson sought to shape his legacy around the COVID-19 response and his support of Ukraine in its defence against Russia.

"We've helped, I've helped, get this country through a pandemic and help save another country from barbarism. And frankly, that's enough to be going on with. Mission largely accomplished," Johnson said.

"I want to thank everybody here and hasta la vista, baby."

The line, borrowed from Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1991 movie "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and translated as "see you later", prompted a round of applause from most on his own side.

Only two weeks ago, some of those clapping had resigned from his government, criticised his leadership and demanded he quit. Reporters in the debating chamber said his predecessor, Theresa May, did not stand to clap.

Opponents did not join in the applause either, having earlier used the question-and-answer session to take him to task over a range of policies, from the as-yet unfinished Brexit to his response to soaring living costs.

With an eye on an election due in 2024, opposition leader Keir Starmer sought to highlight division in the ruling party, listing criticisms of government policy set out by the lawmakers from Johnson's own side who are vying to replace him

"He's decided to come down from his gold-wallpapered bunker for one last time to tell us that everything is fine. I am going to miss the delusion," Starmer said.

Johnson said the criticism was "completely satirical".

His parting speech gave advice to his as-yet-unnamed successor: Stay close to the United States, support Ukraine, cut taxes and deregulate, don't let the finance ministry constrain ambitious projects, and pay attention to the electorate.

"Remember, above all, it's not Twitter that counts, it's the people that sent us here," he said.

© Reuters

[Rick Plant]

Prime-time Jan. 6 hearing to detail 'minute-by-minute' account of Trump's inaction during riot

The committee will present new witnesses and evidence Thursday about what Trump was doing during the attack on the Capitol. More hearings are expected this year.



One hundred and eighty-seven minutes.

It’s the more than three-hour period during which the Jan. 6 committee says then-President Donald Trump refused to call off a violent mob of his supporters who were attacking police, ransacking the Capitol and hunting down lawmakers and his own vice president.

Committee members will be talking a lot about those 187 minutes during Thursday’s prime-time hearing — the finale in a series of eight televised public hearings but hardly the last of the year.

“The story we’re going to tell tomorrow is that in that time, President Trump refused to act to defend that Capitol as a violent mob stormed the Capitol with the aim of stopping the counting of the electoral votes and blocking the transfer of power,” a Jan. 6 committee aide said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters.

Trump was “directing a mob that he, the former president, knew was armed, pointing them toward the Capitol, telling them to ‘fight like hell’ and march to the Capitol and spurring them down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Committee aides said there will be new information presented at the 8 p.m. ET hearing, some of it recently obtained by the special House panel.

The roughly two-hour hearing will be led by Reps. Elaine Luria, D-Va., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. It will provide a “minute-by-minute” account of what was happening inside the West Wing and what Trump was doing during the 187 minutes, aides said. That’s the period from the end of Trump’s speech at the Ellipse at 1:10 p.m. to 4:17 p.m., when he tweeted a video telling rioters to “go home.”

Committee members on Thursday will build on details laid out in previous hearings. They will demonstrate, aides said, that Trump not only wanted to join his supporters at the Capitol after his speech Jan. 6, but he also continued expressing a desire to go there even after his security team told him it wasn’t safe and took him back to the White House.

The hearing will discuss Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, his family members, allies and GOP lawmakers.

The committee also will examine a 6:01 p.m. tweet by Trump that day that was deleted. He had suggested that the Capitol attack should be blamed on widespread election fraud.

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever!” Trump wrote before deleting the tweet.


Rioters gather outside the Capitol's Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021

In another development, aides said Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., will lead the hearing “remotely” after testing positive earlier in the week for Covid. Committee members had said that they have the capability for Thompson to appear via video conference.

“He is feeling OK. He is vaccinated and boosted, but of course, we will observe Covid protocols,” an aide said.

The hearing will feature live testimony from a pair of former Trump White House aides, Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, who have already testified behind closed doors.

Both Matthews and Pottinger resigned over Trump’s actions Jan. 6, with Pottinger saying in testimony already aired by the committee that he was driven by Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet that day. In it, Trump wrote that his vice president lacked courage as a mob in the Capitol searched for him and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” 

“President Trump had the power to call off the mob. He was the sole person who could have called off the mob, and he chose not to,” an aide said.

The Jan. 6 panel plans to hold more hearings later this year.

Committee investigators had hoped to receive a tranche of text messages from the Secret Service this week that might have provided more details about Trump's actions Jan. 6. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson had told the committee that she was told Trump had tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential SUV and got into a physical altercation with his top security official after he was told he was not going to the Capitol.

The Secret Service turned over more than 10,000 pages of documents to the Jan. 6 panel Tuesday but only a single text message related to the riot itself, according to a letter from the Secret Service to the committee. That message was from then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to the Secret Service, asking for help.

The Secret Service told the committee that agents' text messages Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, were deleted as part of a preplanned system migration. Employees were told how to preserve relevant texts and other data, but the Secret Service said it has no messages being sought by the committee or an agency watchdog.

Committee members are furious over the Secret Service's explanation.

“We have concerns about a system migration that we have been told resulted in the erasure of Secret Service cell phone data. The U.S. Secret Service system migration process went forward on January 27, 2021, just three weeks after the attack on the Capitol in which the Vice President of the United States while under the protection of the Secret Service, was steps from a violent mob hunting for him," Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., wrote in a joint statement Wednesday.

The "procedure for preserving content prior to this purge appears to have been contrary to federal records retention requirements and may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act," they said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/primetime-jan-6-hearing-detail-minute-minute-account-trumps-inaction-r-rcna39196

[Rick Plant]

Testimony Depicts the Trump as Content to Let the Riot Rage

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol portrayed former President Donald Trump at its prime-time hearing Thursday as failing to call off the rioters, and on some occasions encouraging them, during the 187 minutes between his speech to his supporters that day at the Ellipse and the release of a video late in the afternoon calling them to go home.

“Our hearings have shown many ways in which President Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days leading up to January 6,” said Rep. Elaine Luria (D., Va.), who with Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) led questioning of witnesses at the hearing, the eighth and last such session this summer. “With each step of his plan, he betrayed his oath of office and was derelict in his duty.”

In more than two hours of recorded and live testimony, the committee portrayed a president sitting idly by, watching the events on television, while aides, family members and security officials grew increasingly fearful and pleaded for him to take action to quell the violence.

In a series of messages on his Truth Social service, Mr. Trump challenged the testimony. He said the committee presented "so many lies and misrepresentations" and questioned how the witnesses could say they knew he was watching TV during the attack on the Capitol.

Watch Video in Link

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/jan-6-hearing-today-trump

[Rick Plant]

Watergate prosecutor: Fox News' efforts to hide the J6 hearings from their partisan viewers is a futile cause
https://www.rawstory.com/fox-news-j6-hearings/

[Rick Plant]

NASA’s James Webb Telescope takes First Images of the Universe



Washington, D.C. – The dawn of a new era in astronomy is here as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

The full set of the telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data, which uncover a collection of cosmic features elusive until now, released Tuesday, are available at:

nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

"Today, we present humanity with a groundbreaking new view of the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope – a view the world has never seen before,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These images, including the deepest infrared view of our universe that has ever been taken, show us how Webb will help to uncover the answers to questions we don’t even yet know to ask; questions that will help us better understand our universe and humanity’s place within it.

“The Webb team’s incredible success is a reflection of what NASA does best. We take dreams and turn them into reality for the benefit of humanity. I can’t wait to see the discoveries that we uncover – the team is just getting started!”

NASA explores the unknown in space for the benefit of all, and Webb’s first observations tell the story of the hidden universe through every phase of cosmic history – from neighboring planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.

“This is a singular and historic moment,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “It took decades of drive and perseverance to get us here, and I am immensely proud of the Webb team. These first images show us how much we can accomplish when we come together behind a shared goal, to solve the cosmic mysteries that connect us all. It’s a stunning glimpse of the insights yet to come.”

“We are elated to celebrate this extraordinary day with the world,” said Greg Robinson, Webb program director at NASA Headquarters. “The beautiful diversity and incredible detail of the Webb telescope’s images and data will have a profound impact on our understanding of the universe and inspire us to dream big.”

Webb’s first observations were selected by a group of representatives from NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. They reveal the capabilities of all four of Webb’s state-of-the-art scientific instruments:

- SMACS 0723: Webb has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far – and in only 12.5 hours. For a person standing on Earth looking up, the field of view for this new image, a color composite of multiple exposures each about two hours long, is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. This deep field uses a lensing galaxy cluster to find some of the most distant galaxies ever detected. This image only scratches the surface of Webb’s capabilities in studying deep fields and tracing galaxies back to the beginning of cosmic time.

- WASP-96b (spectrum): Webb’s detailed observation of this hot, puffy planet outside our solar system reveals the clear signature of water, along with evidence of haze and clouds that previous studies of this planet did not detect. With Webb’s first detection of water in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, it will now set out to study hundreds of other systems to understand what other planetary atmospheres are made of.

- Southern Ring Nebula: This planetary nebula, an expanding cloud of gas that surrounds a dying star, is approximately 2,000 light-years away. Here, Webb’s powerful infrared eyes bring a second dying star into full view for the first time. From birth to death as a planetary nebula, Webb can explore the expelling shells of dust and gas of aging stars that may one day become a new star or planet.

- Stephan’s Quintet: Webb’s view of this compact group of galaxies, located in the constellation Pegasus, pierced through the shroud of dust surrounding the center of one galaxy to reveal the velocity and composition of the gas near its supermassive black hole. Now, scientists can get a rare look, in unprecedented detail, at how interacting galaxies are triggering star formation in each other and how the gas in these galaxies is being disturbed.

- Carina Nebula: Webb’s look at the “Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula unveils the earliest, rapid phases of star formation that were previously hidden. Looking at this star-forming region in the southern constellation Carina, as well as others like it, Webb can see newly forming stars and study the gas and dust that made them.

"Absolutely thrilling!” said John Mather, Webb senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The equipment is working perfectly, and nature is full of surprising beauty. Congratulations and thanks to our worldwide teams that made it possible.”

The release of Webb’s first images and spectra kicks off the beginning of Webb’s science operations, where astronomers around the world will have their chance to observe anything from objects within our solar system to the early universe using Webb’s four instruments.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched on December 25th, 2021, on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, South America. After completing a complex deployment sequence in space, Webb underwent months of commissioning where its mirrors were aligned, and its instruments were calibrated to its space environment and prepared for science.

The public can also view the new Webb images Tuesday on several digital screens in New York City’s Times Square and in London’s Piccadilly Circus beginning at 4:30pm CDT and 10:30pm GMT, respectively.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

NASA Headquarters oversees the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages Webb for the agency and oversees work on the mission performed by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other mission partners.

In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the project, including the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, and others.

For a full array of Webb’s first images and spectra, including downloadable files, visit:

https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images

https://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2022/07/24/nasas-james-webb-telescope-takes-first-images-of-the-universe/