President Trump announced an agreement with Caracas giving the United States access to roughly 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude, the largest proven reserves on the planet. The White House says the oil will go toward refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and easing pump prices strained by six months of war with Iran. Skeptics note that Venezuelan heavy crude needs specialized refining and that barrels on paper are not barrels in a tank.
The AAA national average for regular has climbed to about $4.11 a gallon, roughly a dollar higher than a year ago, with 23 states now averaging above four dollars. The Fed's preferred inflation gauge held at 3.7% in July, driven overwhelmingly by energy costs tied to the Middle East conflict. It is the most expensive August at the pump since 2022.
Lawmakers come back from August recess tomorrow with a compressed to-do list before scattering to campaign ahead of the November 3 midterms. Speaker Mike Johnson has been barnstorming more than 30 districts across 17 states, while prediction markets currently give Democrats a strong edge in the House and Republicans a narrow one in the Senate. Cook recently moved Texas and Iowa Senate races into toss-up territory.
One police officer was killed and a second wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a suspect who carried an extensive criminal record. Investigators are still piecing together what precipitated the encounter. It is the kind of story that lands hardest in a small department where everyone knew the man.
Mudslides and flooding along the Nepal-Tibet frontier have now killed at least 676 people, with close to 3,000 still unaccounted for. Entire valley communities were buried, and washed-out roads have kept rescue crews from reaching some of the hardest-hit areas. The missing number means this toll is almost certain to rise.
A Russian strike on a warehouse in the village of Myla, in the Kyiv region, has killed at least 38 people. President Zelensky said the building was improperly being used as an ammunition depot and opened an investigation into what he called terrible negligence. Russian attacks have now destroyed roughly 90% of Ukraine's modern storage capacity for goods.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains well below normal even as Washington tightens sanctions and Trump insists the waterway is open. More than 70 attacks on international shipping have been logged in the Persian Gulf since the war began, and Tehran is reportedly seeking up to 400 Chinese shoulder-launched missile systems. Talks to fully reopen the strait remain unsettled.
The $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 7:26 a.m. Eastern this morning atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Headed nearly a million miles out to Lagrange point L2, Roman will survey more than two billion galaxies and hunt exoplanets to probe dark matter and dark energy. One month of its Milky Way observations would take Hubble about a century.
Croatian researchers have presented findings from a wreck off the island of Mljet dating to the late seventh or early eighth century. Divers recovered more than 1.3 pounds of gold coins and jewelry, the largest gold haul ever pulled from a Mediterranean shipwreck. The finds point to a wealthy Byzantine passenger who never made it to port.
Following Trump's August 27 executive order renaming Lake Ontario, the label "Lake America" has begun appearing for US users on Google Maps. Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca called the order unpresidential and says it violates the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua signed by George Washington. Al Michaels, meanwhile, hedged live on Thursday Night Football that a body of water below him was "Lake Erie, we think it's still called Lake Erie."
