Searchable News & Info From Reliable Online Sources.
- Oil Prices Surge as Expanding Middle East War Squeezes Global Crude Supplies
Global oil prices are facing renewed upward pressure as widening conflict in the Middle East disrupts crude supplies and threatens some of the world’s most important energy transportation routes. The instability is creating additional uncertainty for businesses and consumers, including trucking companies already dealing with elevated diesel costs. The conflict involving the United States and Iran has significantly disrupted normal oil movements through the region. The Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy corridors, remains a major concern because a substantial portion of global petroleum supplies traditionally moves through the waterway. Pressure on energy markets has increased further as instability spreads to other parts of the Middle East. Iran-backed Houthi forces have expanded their activities around Yemen and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, another critical shipping route connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. The developments have raised concerns about the availability of secure export routes for major Middle Eastern oil producers. The growing supply concerns have pushed crude prices sharply higher. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, recently moved above $100 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate also approached triple-digit levels. Brent settled at $101.21 per barrel on September 9, while U.S. benchmark crude finished at $96.05. Energy markets have remained highly volatile throughout the conflict. Prices have repeatedly risen or fallen in response to military developments, shipping activity, infrastructure disruptions, and signs of possible diplomatic negotiations. This uncertainty has made it difficult for businesses to predict where fuel expenses could move next. Saudi Arabia and other major producers are also facing logistical challenges as instability affects multiple shipping corridors. Disruptions involving pipelines and maritime routes can limit the amount of crude reaching international markets even when producers have oil available for export. For the U.S. trucking industry, the effects extend beyond crude markets. Higher oil prices can eventually translate into higher diesel fuel costs, increasing one of the largest operating expenses for motor carriers. U.S. diesel prices were recently averaging around $5.94 per gallon, while gasoline averaged approximately $4.22. Owner-operators and smaller fleets can be particularly vulnerable to sudden fuel increases because they often have fewer opportunities to negotiate bulk purchasing agreements or hedge fuel expenses. Larger fleets may rely on fuel programs and surcharges to offset part of the increase, but prolonged high prices can still pressure operating margins. Higher transportation costs can also spread throughout the economy. Trucks move food, retail… [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - WRN Daily: Tiffany won’t fly for a few days, Crowley campaign doesn’t fly
Candidate for Wisconsin Governor Tom Tiffany plans to keep all campaign commitments this week following his close call over the weekend – but the congressman won’t be in Washington right away. Tiffany briefed media in Wausau on Sunday after he and his pilot were rescued from Lake Wausau Saturday night when their light plan stalled […] Source: WRN.com [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - Cycling California’s North Coast
This route takes both budding and experienced riders to redwoods, secluded beaches, scenic towns and the reborn Klamath River. [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - Who Enabled Trump’s Second Act?
It’s become settled wisdom that Donald Trump’s first term as president might have been much more disastrous for democracy had patriotic Americans, many of them either Republicans or non-partisan figures in government, the courts, or the military, restrained his excesses at key moments. The epitome of this defiance was his vice president’s refusal to reject the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election in 2020, despite pressure from Trump and the hooting mob he summoned to intimidate lawmakers engaged in what should have been a routine rubber-stamping of the results. But there were a host of similar if less dramatic refusals to bend laws and the Constitution to the turbulent president’s will, as Jacob Weisberg notes in the introduction to his study of the vastly diminished resistance that met Trump’s intensified excesses when he reentered the White House in 2025. Certainly, Democrats fought Trump 2.0 tooth and nail from the get-go, with largely futile opposition in Congress and hundreds of lawsuits from state and local elected officials. Almost entirely missing in 2025, however, was internal resistance in the administration and the GOP. There was also much more complicity and capitulation in key business and civic power centers that had shown backbone the first time around. These are the developments that Weisberg examines in his new book: Profiles in Cowardice, which identifies men and women who might have put roadblocks in Trump’s path but didn’t. Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era by Jacob Weisberg.Penguin Press, 286 pp. The title, of course, is an allusion to then Senator John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning (if largely ghost-written) Profiles in Courage, celebrating eight fellow U.S. senators—from John Quincy Adams to Robert Taft—who took principled yet unpopular and costly stands during their careers. Weisberg, conversely, chooses eight ignoble enablers or bystanders who imperiled democracy in 2025. His targets are diverse, and I’d bundle all but one of them into three groups. First, the hasty capitulators: Super-lawyer Brad Karp of the firm Paul Weiss and Dartmouth College President Sian Beilock did seem to lack fundamental courage when they immediately caved to White House extortion measures (thus exposing others to horrific pressure to do the same). Second, pure opportunists: Steven Schwartzman, the financier, and Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and chair and owner of Blue Origin and The Washington Post, snuggled up to Trump to secure business advantages and protection from reprisals. And… [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - Barney Frank’s Last Harsh Warning to the Left
For more than 30 years, Representative Barney Frank was one of the nation’s most visible liberal lawmakers. The Massachusetts Democrat who died earlier this year was the first member of the House to come out publicly as gay, and the first in Congress to marry a same-sex partner. He fought for funding to combat AIDS, helped end the ban on openly gay members in the military (the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”), and pushed to pass legislation expanding the federal definition of hate crimes to include acts based on gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Frank also led the biggest overhaul of the nation’s financial system since the New Deal. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he brought a renegade banking industry to heel as co-author of the eponymous Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Among other reforms, the legislation tightened federal oversight and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which the Trump administration has tried to dismantle). Given his legacy of tenacious advocacy to advance progressive ideals, the opening of Frank’s posthumous new book is jarring: Mea culpa. This book seeks to undo the damage inflicted by a tragic historical irony. Well-intentioned but deeply flawed choices made by those most deeply committed to liberal values—my fellow and sister members of the democratic left—are largely responsible for the political strength that xenophobic populism has come to enjoy in the developed world. Frank, who died in May at age 86, had begun to hint at his repudiation of the left when he entered hospice care this spring for congestive heart failure and revealed to journalists he was writing a final polemic. (The Atlantic called Frank’s stand against his party’s progressive wing a “second coming-out.”) The result is a slim volume: The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy. The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy by Barney Frank. Yale University Press, 144 pp. Written in the blunt and acerbic style that defined his political persona, The Hard Path to Unity is an unsparing and timely indictment of the ascendant left that all liberals would do well to read—and heed. Left unchallenged, Frank warns, left-wing dominance of the Democratic Party will doom it to political failure, thereby leaving Trumpist populism unchecked. Through its insistence… [TheTopNews] Read More.5 days ago - Trump’s See-No-Evil AI Policy
Not long ago, most of Washington was scrambling to be as friendly as possible to the rise of artificial intelligence. Lawmakers from both parties saw a chance to bolster the nation’s economy—and their campaign coffers. But rarely has public opinion flipped so quickly and so thoroughly as it has on AI in recent months. While AI was making some tech leaders unfathomably rich, many Americans in states both red and blue grew alarmed by the proliferation of loud, electricity-guzzling data centers, convinced that AI would first make life more expensive and then, for good measure, eliminate their job. In the past few days, some of the top voices in the AI industry have gone further, warning that unless development of the technology is slowed, and slowed soon, all of humanity could be made extinct.These fears have rattled markets and galvanized a bipartisan set of leaders into calling for the government to step in. AI has now become a central issue in the midterm elections. But President Trump, who first came to power by closely reading the mood of the country and shifting his views to meet those of the electorate, seems to have his fingers in his ears, ignoring it all and continuing to embrace AI, confident that everything will be fine because he is in charge. Unless, of course, the human race ends first.Trump would seem to have a perfect opportunity to try to contain this fast-moving political conflagration: Next week, he’s set to host China’s president, Xi Jinping, at the White House. The United States and China are the world’s leaders on AI and are in a race to develop the technology. The summit could be a venue, some in the industry hope, to order a pause in development or establish international safety guidelines. But Trump, at least for now, wants no part of a slowdown. AI growth has propped up Wall Street and sectors of the American economy for the duration of his second term, and the president has made clear that he doesn’t want to do anything that could burst that bubble.“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social today, as he made half a dozen posts, each seemingly more frantic than the last. He later compared the concerns about the technology to his own impeachments,… [TheTopNews] Read More.6 days ago
The Searchable USWebDaily.com and TheTopNews NewsBank Helps You Be Better Informed, Faster! Spread The Word.
