News From Around the Web
#1 Discount Gas Stations Praised by Trump Sold $4M of Stolen Fuel, Lawsuit Claims - Coral Murphy Marcos for The Guardian, Gee Tee, CNBC, Citydweller, Merribeth Herbert, and Robert Dionisio on X
The company that supplied fuel to the discount gas stations praised by Donald Trump is being sued for allegedly stealing nearly $4m worth of gas. Mansfield Oil Company of Gainesville sued KRSM and its president, Syed Kazmi, for allegedly picking up about 1.1 million gallons of fuel from 21 May to 7 July, worth more than $3,998,000, and not paying for it. KRSM sold some of the fuel to stations that are part of the Freedom Fuel Network, according to the suit. The dispute comes after the Trump administration promoted the Freedom Fuel Network, which offered gas for the low price of $3.47 per gallon in July, when drivers were facing higher oil prices amid the war with Iran, and the busy summer travel season was driving up demand...
#2 The U.S. Venezuela Oil Deal Won’t Lower Your Gas Prices. Here’s What You Need to Know - Julia Simon for npr, Bab, John Evdokias, dustin silvers, John E Tiffany, and Eyewitness News on X
The Trump administration announced an agreement with the Venezuelan government on Friday to develop a vast amount of Venezuela's oil reserves. The U.S. government says it is entering into a joint venture with a private Venezuelan company, according to an official who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the deal. The Trump administration says the U.S. would get 55% of the oil from the joint venture. That's equivalent to about 65 billion barrels of oil that's under the ground. On Truth Social, President Trump called it the "biggest oil deal in the world." But energy experts say there are many reasons to be skeptical...
#3 G20 Finance Chiefs Gather in North Carolina With Iran Sanctions and Tariffs in Focus - Yahoo Finance UK, John Healey, Chatty Catie, Pakistan TV, EU Today, and Muskonomy on X
The United States takes its turn chairing the G20 finance track this week under distinctly awkward conditions. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh are hosting counterparts in the North Carolina mountains, following a deputies meeting held over the weekend, with the formal agenda covering economic growth, global imbalances, sovereign debt restructuring, banking regulation, and energy security. Asheville was chosen deliberately. The city was devastated by Hurricane Helene in September 2024, a storm that killed more than 250 people and caused close to $80 billion (€69bn) in damage from Florida to the Carolinas, and Bessent has cited its rebuilding as a fitting backdrop for talks about economic growth...
#4 Dozens of Illegal Alien Truck Drivers Busted With Licenses From Deep Blue States - Leo Briceno for Fox News, Drew Grimaldi, JB, Populo Iratus, Dawn Wildman, and jay plemons on X
A multi-agency operation in Arizona’s Yuma Sector led to the arrest of 95 illegal alien truck drivers earlier this month, striking at the heart of human and drug smuggling operations at the U.S. southern border. All 95 drivers had acquired state-issued commercial driver’s licenses; 76 from California, six from New York, and the rest from a handful of other states, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The apprehensions continue to demonstrate the high volume of narcotics and human trafficking smuggling operations that are alive and well at the border — even as immigration numbers have plummeted in recent months...
#5 Hollywood Celebrities Are Backing a Terrorist Murderer — Read the Facts - Nitsana Darshan-Leitner for New York Post, Aviva Klompas, Steve Edison, Ken Benneth/APADRA, Donna Divine, and Brian Eno on X
More than 20 actors from the Marvel universe — including Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, and Tilda Swinton — have joined a campaign calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti. These Hollywood celebrities portray him as a Palestinian political prisoner and compare his imprisonment to that of Nelson Mandela. This is what happens when Hollywood’s woke celebrity club substitutes ideology for facts. Barghouti, the convicted head of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, is not in an Israeli prison because Israel disagrees with his politics or because he wrote an anti-Israel manifesto; he was charged with five murders, attempted murder, and membership in a terrorist organization. He received a fair trial in an Israeli civilian court and was convicted, receiving five life sentences...
#6 Death Toll in Nepal Floods Tops 900, as Number of Missing Nearly Doubles to Over 4,200 - Rudy Chinchilla for NBC News, Scott Wong, barkha dutt, Mojo Story, Awesome/Ghulam Mustafa, Md Hafizur Rahman, and TRT World on X
The death toll in last week’s devastating flooding in Nepal has risen to 903 people, officials said Monday, as the number of those listed as missing nearly doubled to 4,247. Among the missing are 592 foreign nationals, Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said in an update early Monday. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told Fox News on Sunday that about 85 Americans were still unaccounted for. Rescuers continue to struggle to reach devastated communities days after the massive flooding that stemmed from a glacier collapse on the Nepal-Tibet border region on Wednesday...
#7 Urgent Search for Missing People Underway in Grand Canyon After Deadly Flash Flooding - Tristan Maglunog and Bill Hutchinson for ABC News, South Florida Sun Sentinel, WSAZ NewsChannel 3, Creatorskid, Diana Nunez, and 이권상훈 Sang Hoon ( Peter Damiano) Lee on X
One person died and at least 14 others "may be missing or unaccounted" for at the Grand Canyon in Arizona after dangerous flash flooding over the weekend, according to officials. Air evacuations continued on Sunday afternoon, a day after a "significant flash flood" swept through campgrounds and hiking trails at the bottom of the national park, authorities said. The Grand Canyon National Park Service said in an update Sunday evening that one person was recovered from the river in the park. The identity of the deceased individual has not been released. NPS said there are at least 14 other individuals "who may be missing or unaccounted" following Saturday's flash flood...
#8 NASA Launches Its Roman Space Telescope to Explore the Hidden Universe - William Harwood for CBS News, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, SpaceX, Nick Sortor, ABC News, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on X
NASA's $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday, kicking off a three-month voyage to a point in space a million miles from Earth where it will map the large-scale structure of the cosmos with a wide-field 300-megapixel camera. Using a Hubble-class mirror originally built for a spy satellite, Roman will search for clues about the nature of repulsive dark energy, which is accelerating the expansion of the universe, along with probing the distribution of equally mysterious dark matter, which holds galaxies together and accounts for most of its mass...
#9 Trump Promises NBC’s Welker Will Be Reported to FCC ‘For Rebuke or Punishment’ - Elliott Davis for The Hill, The Washington Post, Eric Daugherty, Fox News, I retweet a lot! MAGA is Fascism., and Owen Gregorian/Commentary Donald J. Trump Truth Social Posts On X
President Trump said Sunday that NBC News’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker will be reported to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after she reportedly said that Trump-endorsed candidates have had mixed results this election cycle. “Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm,” the president wrote on Truth Social...
#10 The House Is Back in Session. Many Republicans Hope It Won’t Be for Long - Mia McCarthy and Jordain Carney for POLITICO, DC Cajun, Chad Pergram, #silentmajority, and Steve Ferguson on X
The House is back in session Monday for the first time in five weeks. It’s not clear how long members will stick around. Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to tick the lone essential item off the chamber’s to-do list in lawmakers’ first days back: sending a shutdown-averting spending bill to President Donald Trump’s desk. Otherwise, the Capitol Hill agenda is devoid of must-pass legislation until later in the year. Meanwhile, the thin GOP majority has had trouble opening the House floor for debate on any number of legislative priorities, and many Republicans lawmakers are simply eager to get back home ahead of the November midterms rather than endure more headaches in Washington...
