Author: Admin

Bloomberg – by Matthew Philips

In its quest to spend more without raising taxes, Congress has found a new piggy bank. It’s buried deep underground, protected by armed guards, and filled with a valuable commodity worth billions of dollars. It’s not a gold vault—it’s the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country’s emergency stockpile of crude oil. Created in 1975 after Arab oil producers cut off exports to the U.S., causing gasoline prices to spike, the SPR was designed to immunize the country against supply shocks. Today it stores about 695 million barrels of crude in salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana.   Continue reading “Legislators propose tapping the government’s stockpile of crude.”

Yahoo News

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — A pair of small explosions just 20 minutes and a few miles apart shocked congregants Sunday morning at two churches in southern New Mexico.

There were no injuries or deaths from the blasts outside Calvary Baptist and Holy Cross Roman Catholic in Las Cruces, Las Cruces police spokesman Danny Trujillo said. Each building sustained minor damage.

Authorities are working to determine who planted the explosives, what materials were used and whether the blasts were related.   Continue reading “Explosions shock congregants at 2 New Mexico churches”

The Hill – by Timothy Cama

The Obama administration on Sunday unveiled a tougher climate change rule for power plants, demanding that generators cut their carbon dioxide output 32 percent in the first ever limits on the pollutant.

The historic regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the main pillar of President Obama’s climate agenda. It is the biggest piece of his drive to create a legacy and go down in history as the first United States president to take comprehensive action against climate change by cutting emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.   Continue reading “Obama doubles down on climate rule”

ABC 13 News

HENRICO COUNTY, VA (KTRK) — An 82-year-old woman says she was awakened by a stranger in her bed. She then fought him off.

Reba Shook tells WTVR-TV that she was asleep in her Henrico County, Virginia house when a man got inside by crawling through a window. That man then climbed into her bed.   Continue reading “82-Year-Old Virginia Woman Fights Off Bedroom Intruder”

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Business Insider

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Tujia, a Chinese vacation rental company similar to home rental firm Airbnb Inc, said on Monday it had raised $300 million from a group of investors to expand its business overseas, increase marketing and offer new products.

The deal values Tujia at more than $1 billion, the Chinese company added without disclosing the size of the stake the investors bought. By comparison, Airbnb, which operates around the world, is valued at $20 billion.   Continue reading “China’s Airbnb-like Tujia raised $300 million to expand overseas”

ABC News

A manhunt continued Sunday following the fatal shooting of a Memphis police officer who was killed the previous night during a traffic stop,Tennessee police officials said.

Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said during a news conference that police were alerted about 9:18 p.m. Saturday that an officer had been shot multiple times. Armstrong said the officer was transported in critical condition to a hospital, where he died.   Continue reading “Manhunt in Memphis Continues After Officer, 33, Fatally Shot”

USA Today – by Kate Seamons

(NEWSER) – On Tuesday night, a 62-year-old Ohio woman started mowing her lawn. She never finished the task. Police says Linda Ciotto was shot in the head while mowing the grass at her Willard home around 9pm, and her neighbor stands accused of the crime.

James Blair, 50, was allegedly angered by the late-night mowing; he and his mother live next door to Ciotto, and his mother told sheriff’s deputies that her son had told her that his agitation with Ciotto had been building as she mowed, report WKYC. A neighbor tells WOIO he heard one shot, and the Huron County Coroner tells the AP that the gunshot occurred at a close distance. Coroner Jeffrey Harwood also observed a severe left arm wound that he says could have been caused by a mower blade. That jibes with reports that Blair allegedly mowed over Ciotto after shooting her.   Continue reading “Man allegedly kills neighbor over late-night mowing”

NBC News – by Elizabeth Chuck

Two Oklahoma teenagers have been formally charged with murdering five family members following a horrific attack in their home in an upscale suburb of Tulsa.

Robert Bever, 18, and his 16-year-old brother were arrested after their parents and three of their siblings were found stabbed to death in Broken Arrow on July 22. The teens were officially charged on Friday as adults, reported NBC affiliate KFOR.    Continue reading “Oklahoma Teens Formally Charged With Murdering Family”

Reuters

Three members of former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s family were killed when a private jet crashed in southern England on Friday, British police said on Saturday.

The Embraer Phenom 300 jet with four people on board was flying from Milan’s Malpensa airport to Blackbushe airport in southern England when it crashed at a nearby car auction site. All died in the crash.   Continue reading “Three members of bin Laden family killed in UK jet crash: police”

Investopedia

The Pentagon awarded $4.83 billion in new defense contracts Wednesday — all but $495 million of which was contained in one single award. The lucky winner of this award — all $4.34 billion of it — is the Reston, VA “applied technology” contractor Leidos (NYSE: LDOS). The company has been hired by the U.S. Navy to modernize its Defense Healthcare Management System, providing the Navy with an off-the-shelf electronic health records “solution” and to integrate and deploy said solution “across the Military Health System.”   Continue reading “Guess Who Just Won a $4.3 Billion Defense Contract”

Reuters – by Ami Miyazaki and Krista Hughes

Pacific Rim trade ministers failed to clinch a deal on Friday to free up trade between a dozen nations after a dispute flared up over auto trade between Japan and North America, New Zealand dug in over dairy trade and no agreement was reached on monopoly periods for next-generation drugs.

Trade ministers from the 12 nations negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would stretch from Japan to Chile and cover 40 percent of the world economy, fell just short of a deal at talks on the Hawaiian island of Maui but were confident an agreement was within reach.   Continue reading “Pacific Rim free trade talks fall short of deal”

Chron – by Jeff Chiu and Haven Daley, Associated Press

LOWER LAKE, Calif. (AP) — Blazes raging in forests and woodlands across California have taken the life of a firefighter and forced hundreds of people to flee their homes as an army of firefighters continue to battle them from the air and the ground.

Twenty-three large fires, many sparked by lightning strikes, were burning across Northern California on Saturday, said state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Daniel Berlant. Some 8,000 firefighters were attempting to subdue them, something made incredibly difficult by several years of drought that have dried out California.   Continue reading “Firefighter killed, hundreds flee as California blazes burn”

Reuters – by TIMOTHY GARDNER AND VALERIE VOLCOVICI

The U.S. Senate Energy Committee on Thursday narrowly passed a bill to lift a 40-year-old ban on the export of crude oil, but the measure faces an uphill battle in getting passed by the full Senate.

The bill to allow the United States to export oil and boost state revenue-sharing for offshore oil and gas drilling passed along party lines by a vote of 12-10.   Continue reading “Senate energy panel votes to lift oil export ban”

Defense One – by Marcus Weisgerber

Just two weeks after Western nations and Tehran struck a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program, the Pentagon says Saudi Arabia wants to buy 600 new Patriot missile interceptors.

The $5 billion-plus purchase is likely just the first of many more as America’s Middle Eastern allies arm themselves in response to the nuclear deal, which would lift Iran’s conventional-arms embargo sanctions in five years and sanctions on long-range missile projects in eight.   Continue reading “Saudi Arabia Responds to Iran Deal: Give Us 600 Patriot Missiles”

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Yahoo News – by JOAN LOWY and LORI HINNANT, AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Air safety investigators have a “high degree of confidence” that a photo of aircraft debris found in the Indian Ocean is of a wing component unique to the Boeing 777, the same model as the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared last year, a U.S. official said Wednesday.   Continue reading “US official: Debris in photo belongs to Boeing 777”

Fox News

CLEVELAND –  U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents told Ohio sheriff’s deputies weeks ago not to detain a man who is in the U.S. illegally and now suspected of killing a woman and wounding another during a crime spree, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Lake County sheriff’s deputies questioned 35-year-old Juan Emmanuel Razo on July 7 after finding him alone in a car in Painesville, about 30 miles east of Cleveland. Unsure of Razo’s status, the deputies contacted Border Protection officials and were told he is from Mexico and in the U.S. illegally but they didn’t want him detained.   Continue reading “Ohio murder suspect in country illegally; ordered not to be detained in earlier traffic stop”