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White House watching rising gas prices ‘very carefully’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

(CNN) — The White House is watching rising gas prices “very carefully,” as President Joe Biden’s top advisers are briefing him regularly on the situation, a senior administration official told CNN.At present, top advisers to Biden believe the situation is steady, the official said, considering it’s the height of air conditioning and driving season and given the strength of the economy, which drives up demand for travel and energy usage.“The irony is the strength of the economy brings higher prices,” the official told CNN. “The better the president (and his agenda) performs, the higher the price is going to go.”The average price of retail gasoline nationally rose two cents per gallon Friday to $3.73, according to AAA, after seeing the biggest one-day spike since June 2022 earlier in the week. The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline climbed to $3.69 on Wednesday, according to AAA, up by 5 cents from Tuesday. That jump came just a day after a 4-cent increa...

Fire leads to evacuation at assisted living facility in Lauderhill; no injuries

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

A fire that broke out inside an assisted living facility in Lauderhill led to some frightening moments for its residents.The blaze ignited in an apartment at the facility, located along Rock Island Road, Sunday morning.Some residents were evacuated from the four-story building, while others had to shelter in place.Fortunately, no one was hurt.The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

‘The family feels like he got trapped’: How a low-profile Mar-a-Lago employee got tangled up in Trump’s legal problems

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

(CNN) — A day after he was named as a co-defendant in the criminal case against Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents, a picture is starting to emerge of Carlos De Oliveira, the little known Mar-a-Lago employee accused of trying to delete security camera footage at Trump’s Florida resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for it last year.A number of people close to Trump, as well as people who know De Oliveira personally, describe him as someone outside of the former president’s inner circle who has been caught up in Trump’s legal problems. Unlike Walt Nauta, Trump’s former White House aide and valet who is also charged in the documents case, De Oliveira is not someone who is known by Trump’s close confidants or, according to people who spoke to CNN, anyone who was typically in close proximity to the former president.In conversations with eight current and former Trump aides and allies who frequently visited Mar-a-Lago, De Oliveira, who is listed as the “Pro...

The EU’s reply to Qatargate: Nips, tucks and paperwork

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

STRASBOURG — The European Parliament’s response to Qatargate: Fight corruption with paperwork.When Belgian police made sweeping arrests and recovered €1.5 million from Parliament members in a cash-for-influence probe last December, it sparked mass clamoring for a deep clean of the institution, which has long languished with lax ethics and transparency rules, and even weaker enforcement. Seven months later, the Parliament and its president, Roberta Metsola, can certainly claim to have tightened some rules — but the results are not much to shout about. With accused MEPs Eva Kaili and Marc Tarabella back in the Parliament and even voting on ethics changes themselves, the reforms lack the political punch to take the sting out of a scandal that Euroskeptic forces have leaped on ahead of the EU election next year.“Judge us on what we’ve done rather [than] on what we didn’t,” Metsola told journalists earlier this month, arguing that Parliament has acted swiftly where it could. While t...

Michael Gove wants Britain to have more houses — but isn’t meeting the builders

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

LONDON — He may be promising to tackle the U.K.’s housing crisis, but homebuilders say Michael Gove keeps giving them the cold shoulder.According to quarterly transparency data published by his department, Britain’s housing secretary did not log a single meeting with any of the U.K.’s major house builders or their industry groups in the first quarter of this year.Industry reps expressed dismay at the data, accusing Gove of “pandering” to Conservative MPs spooked by local anger at developments. His department pushed back strongly, and pointed to a string of meetings between junior ministers and the sector.British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — alongside Gove — made a major announcement last week in which the pair promised to meet a Conservative manifesto promise to have delivered one million new homes by the next election.The announcement was widely viewed as an attempt to jolt the government’s faltering efforts to tackle a long-running housing short...

Why Ukrainians see no sense in negotiating with Russia now

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs.One can safely assert that the Ukrainian people and their leaders want a durable peace with Russia, more than the West and others around the world. So, then why is it that Kyiv is not at the forefront of exploring a compromise with Moscow?The truth is that Russia’s current war against Ukraine can’t easily end via negotiations. It falls into a long historical pattern of Russian behavior, part of a larger pathology making stable peace unfeasible — or at least most Ukrainians and other Central Europeans believe it to be so.The present-day attack is neither Moscow’s first assault on the Ukrainian nation, nor is it the Kremlin’s only ongoing expansionist operation in Russia’s former empire.Powerful lessons from Ukraine’s own past, as well as its neighbors’ history and present, have taught Ukrainians that Moscow can’t be trusted. And according to their experi...

Nigel Farage, the ‘disingenuous grifter’

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. Britain’s elite Coutts Bank pinned several labels on Nigel Farage when deciding to drop him as a customer earlier this month — including those of “racist” and “xenophobe.” But it’s really the characterization of him as a “disingenuous grifter” that the former politician has done everything to prove since being de-banked.After all, a grifter isn’t only a swindler and a con artist but also the operator of a circus sideshow, and since Brexit — when he was front and center — the populist provocateur has struggled to attract a crowd and move his act back to the main stage.Farage has cast around for a compelling soapbox issue since Britain left the European Union, failing to gain much traction with his various campaigns, including, for a time, migrants crossing the English Channel and his opposition to lockdowns during the pandemic. But nothing took flame. The pandemic came and went, and Britain has somewhat moved on from worrying a...

Police investigating after man fatally shot in Dorchester

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

An investigation is underway in Dorchester after police say a man was fatally shot Sunday night.Officers responding to a reported shooting at the intersection of Blue Hill Avenue and Washington Street around 8 p.m. found a person suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound, according to police.The victim was taken to a nearby hospital, where they were later pronounced dead. Their name has not been released.No additional information was immediately available.This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.

July keeps sizzling as Phoenix hits another 110-degree day and wildfires spread in California

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

PHOENIX (AP) — Phoenix sizzled through its 31st consecutive day of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) and other parts of the country grappled Sunday with record temperatures after a week that saw significant portions of the U.S. population subject to extreme heat. The National Weather Service said Phoenix was expected to climb to 112 F (44.4 Celsius) before the day was through.July has been so steamy thus far that scientists calculate it will be the hottest month ever recorded and likely the warmest human civilization has seen. The World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on Thursday proclaimed July beyond record-smashing.The historic heat began blasting the lower Southwest U.S. in late June, stretching from Texas across New Mexico and Arizona and into California’s desert. On Sunday, a massive wildfire burning out of control in California’s Mojave National Preserve spread rapidly amid erratic winds, while firefighters r...

2 shot — 1 critically — in road rage incident on Lake Shore Drive

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:23:08 GMT

CHICAGO — A woman is in critical condition after two people were shot in a road rage incident on Lake Shore Drive Sunday evening, according to the Chicago Police Department.Police said a 37-year-old woman and a 26-year-old man were driving northbound in the 2200 block of South Lake Shore Drive around 8:08 p.m. when a 2015 Nissan sedan cut them off in traffic.The victims beeped at the driver of the Nissan sedan, who then pulled up alongside the victim's vehicle and someone inside the Nissan opened fire.The 37-year-old woman was shot in the neck and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in critical condition. The 26-year-old man was grazed in the back by a bullet and refused medical attention on scene. Two teens in the hospital, one critical, after shooting in Austin neighborhood, CPD says Police have no in custody.If you or someone you know has information that could help police make a breakthrough in the investigation of this incident, anonymous tips can be filed online with CPD...