Exxon Mobil Corp. is pushing back against reductions of U.S. fuel exports urged by the Biden administration in August, arguing that restricting shipments would further squeeze global supplies and lift pump prices at home. Exxon told the Energy Department this week that the oil industry shouldn’t slow fuel shipments in favor of putting more in...
Vladimir Putin has again threatened to use nuclear weapons to protect Russia and its people. In his remarks Friday, he extended that nuclear deterrence over the 15% of Ukraine’s territory that Russia annexed after sham referendums that ended on Wednesday. That even includes some lands already liberated by the Ukrainian army. Mr. Putin’s threats constitute...
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—More than a dozen members of Burkina Faso’s army seized control of state television late Friday, declaring that the country’s coup leader-turned-president, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, had been overthrown. The spokesman introduced Capt. Ibrahim Traore as the new head of the volatile West African country that is battling a mounting Islamic insurgency....
Cash-strapped Americans have received relief from falling gas prices in recent weeks, but not Californians. The average gas price in the Golden State this week surged to $6.29 a gallon—$2.50 more than the national average—and the reasons are worth distilling since Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to export the state’s energy policies nationwide. California gas prices...
At least 19 people were killed in Iran on Friday during antigovernment protests in a southeastern province that is home to a restive ethnic minority, as unrest spread to remote regions of the country in a new challenge to the ruling Islamic establishment. Antigovernment protests erupted in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan, one of the...
Elon Musk showed off a new humanoid robot Friday at a Tesla artificial-intelligence event, part of the chief executive’s effort to shape public perception of the company as more than an electric-vehicle maker. Mr. Musk first laid out the vision for the robot, called Optimus, a little more than a year ago at Tesla’s first-ever...
Anyone looking for inflation relief in the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure didn’t find it on Friday, and that probably means more financial trouble ahead as the Fed tightens further. The personal-consumption expenditure price index, which the Fed uses when it assesses price pressures in the economy, rose 6.2% in August from a year earlier. That’s...
The Supreme Court kicks off its new term on Monday, and the welcome back isn’t universal. “Supreme Court term begins amid questions about its legitimacy,” says a headline over a news story in the Washington Post. We could cite a dozen similar takes. These articles offer no explanation for this pique other than that the...
The Labor Department’s Inspector General has updated its estimates of fraud in pandemic-era unemployment benefits, and it’s hard to know what’s worse: the shoddy systems that allowed crooks to bilk taxpayers, or the Biden Administration’s refusal to do anything about it. The IG first alerted Labor to the scope of the problem with reports in...
The Internal Revenue Code is riddled with excessive penalties for what are often honest mistakes. This year, taxpayers must prepare to deal with a newly emboldened Internal Revenue Service, to which Congress allocated an additional $46 billion for enforcement. The Supreme Court has the opportunity to protect taxpayers by hearing one of three cases that...