The gains could raise pressure on policymakers, but analysts say the higher prices may be short-lived as refineries in California and Washington restart production.Gasoline prices in the United States are creeping higher, reversing a monthslong streak of declines and chipping away at a potent talking point for the Biden administration, which had been emphasizing its success at easing pressure on drivers since the summer.Though the uptick has followed a rise in crude oil prices, analysts pointed to two new factors that are also pushing gasoline higher — a loss of refining capacity in California and Ohio, and rising demand in recent weeks.The national average price of regular gasoline stood at $3.891 a gallon on Friday, climbing for more than two weeks, according to data from AAA. That’s lower than the record of about $5.02 reached in June but still higher than usual for this time of year.Prices have made a particularly big leap in California. At about $6.39 a gallon, prices are close to the state’s June record of $6.44. Gas prices there and in other Western states, including Nevada and Arizona, jumped after several refineries in the region closed for maintenance.The rise, should it last, could increase pressure on the White House to act quickly to bring prices back down. A spike in gas prices, which followed a surge in crude oil and other energy costs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, became both a political liability and a policy headache as consumer prices rose across the board.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.President Biden, who over the summer responded to the increase in gas prices by chiding energy companies for profiteering on consumers, released oil from strategic reserves and encouraged Saudi Arabia to produce more oil. Gas prices eventually started to decline, as global oil prices tumbled amid rising concern about the slowing global economy and demand eased.As the streak of declines stretched to 98 days, the White House regularly pointed to the drop and the savings it would offer to drivers.The recent jump means White House officials have been pressed to address the issue again. Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, said on Thursday that energy companies needed to lower prices at the pump.“If you look at the gap between wholesale and retail prices, it has come down,” he said during a press briefing. “It hasn’t come down enough — right? — but it has come down.”Analysts say the refinery shutdowns will be temporary, and the fact that Americans tend to drive less in the winter could keep prices from climbing as sharply as they did in June. But a recent rebound in crude oil prices, which rose nearly 17 percent this week as the world’s major oil producers agreed to cut production, means predicting what’s next will be difficult.“This is not the Biden administration’s fault, but they know that if gas prices are back at $4.50 on Election Day, they’re in trouble,” said Tom Kloza, a founder of Oil Price Information Service, a price reporting agency, referring to the November midterm elections.Aside from the political consequences, a sustained rise in gas prices could affect how businesses and consumers view the economy. In July, falling gas prices were a key part of the better-than-expected reading of the Consumer Price Index, offering a brief glimmer of hope to those looking for signs that inflation has peaked.Among the West Coast refineries that have shut down is one in Washington State run by Phillips 66 and two near San Francisco that are run by Valero and Chevron. Not every shutdown is predictable. A fire at a BP-owned refinery near Toledo, Ohio, shuttered that facility in September. It may not reopen until early 2023, Bloomberg News reported late last month, citing unnamed sources. In Ohio, the average price of gas rose to $3.939 a gallon on Friday from $3.609 a month earlier.Chevron and Phillips 66 said they do not comment on the day-to-day operations of their refineries. BP and Valero didn’t immediately respond to questions about the refineries. The refineries do not typically release much detail about closings or when they expect to reopen, analysts said.Prices in California and other states have fallen slightly since Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week that the state could start producing its winter blend of gasoline early, which is cheaper for refiners to produce since it contains fewer of the additives that protect against environmental conditions in the summer. The introduction of the winter blend, paired with the potential for slowed demand in fall and winter driving seasons, could help bring prices back down, said Devin Gladden, a spokesman for AAA.On Friday, Mr. Newsom said on Twitter that he would call a special session of the California Legislature to weigh “a windfall profits tax” on energy companies that are profiting from high prices, a move that some Democratic lawmakers in Washington have also called for. Britain announced a similar tax on the “extraordinary” profits of oil companies in May.On Wednesday, the group known as OPEC Plus, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, said that it would slash oil production by two million barrels a day, a decision that drew an immediate condemnation from the Biden administration. On Thursday, Mr. Biden told reporters that he was “disappointed” by the decision, and the White House also said it would release more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country’s stockpile of crude oil.Though oil prices have climbed sharply this week, the recent increase in gas prices began in September, well before the OPEC Plus decision.The overall impact of the announcement remains “a big maybe,” Mr. Gladden said. It could lead to a short-term rise in prices, but whether or not it is sustained depends on how energy investors react to the cut, he said. Analysts have noted that several OPEC Plus members are already unable to meet production quotas.Crude oil prices account for more than half of the cost of gasoline. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, the U.S. benchmark stood at about $93 a barrel on Friday, well below its peak of $130 in March but still up more than 23 percent since the beginning of the year.“This really hasn’t been about crude,” Mr. Kloza, the Oil Price Information Service founder, said of the most recent gain. “It’s been about the inability to refine a lot of that crude for various reasons.”Mr. Kloza said he did not think an “extraordinary spike” in prices was ahead, particularly one comparable to what consumers experienced earlier in the year. Still, prices are subject to several variables —  many of which, including hurricanes or wildfires that lead to major refinery shutdowns, are unpredictable.“If we lost one of these big refineries that can run 500,000 barrels a day of crude or more, it can really haunt the markets,” Mr. Kloza said. More

We need to talk about that fly.It was a fly, wasn’t it? If not, it was a bug doing an ace interpretation of a fly, and about two-thirds of the way through the debate in Salt Lake City on Wednesday night, it took up residence in Vice President Mike Pence’s hair, a smudge of black against a shock of white, where it lingered for a few minutes before undoubtedly realizing that there was warmer, more demonstrably human real estate to be had.Off it flew, and on Pence droned. He never exhibited any awareness — not the subtlest glance upward, not the slightest flinch or twitch — that his head had been colonized. I first found this strange and then realized it was everything. Pence’s years of obsequiousness to Donald Trump had beaten all sensitivity and capacity for revulsion out of him.How could he be expected to register or exile an itty-bitty pest when he routinely puts up with a great big one? That fly was some crazy combo of metaphor, visitation and karmic joke.At this point, Pence is the poster boy for unflappability, an automaton of reflexive kudos for Trump in the key of smarmy. He’s bloodless. He’s ice. Add that constipated half-smile of his and he’s weirdly riveting.Fortunately for Joe Biden and Democrats in general, Senator Kamala Harris is plenty steely herself, while also exhibiting a discernible pulse. I think she had a very good night. She was too scripted, yes, and painfully evasive when it came to a question about whether Biden would or should pack the Supreme Court.But she pushed back forcefully whenever Pence tried to paint her and Biden as radical leftists. She kept returning to the subject of Covid-19. She repeatedly reminded Americans of the Trump administration’s sustained effort to abolish Obamacare, at one point staring directly into the camera to explain what that means.“If you have a pre-existing condition — heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer — they’re coming for you,” she said. “If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition, they’re coming for you. If you are under the age of 26 on your parents’ coverage, they’re coming for you.”She assailed Trump’s character on all the right fronts and with all the right passion, so that Pence’s assurances of the president’s integrity seemed as pallid as the rest of him. Was Pence marble or man? The bug, I’m confident, shared my bafflement.And his evasions were the rival of hers. He never did offer any explanation of how the United States ended up the world leader in recorded deaths related to the coronavirus. He instead tried to suggest that Harris, in calling out the country’s failures on that score, was insulting Americans.No, Vice President Pence. She was insulting you and your boss.It was a memorable debate even apart from the insect. (Now there’s a sentence I never imagined writing.) It was historic: Harris is the first woman of color on the presidential ticket of one of America’s two major parties. Her status as a trailblazer was openly acknowledged, and it informed — and gave extra force to — her disapproval of Pence when he wouldn’t acknowledge implicit racial bias in policing.She and Pence were separated not only by 12 feet but by plexiglass shields, which called to mind sneeze guards, conjured thoughts of salad bars and prompted me to wonder which ingredient each of the candidates represented. (I’m going with cottage cheese for Pence.)The Pence camp had resisted these droplet dams — which, truth be told, many public health experts said were of questionable use — but given how freely the coronavirus had been permitted to rampage through the White House, the Harris camp would have been justified in demanding that Pence debate from the inside of a giant Ziploc bag.Harris and Pence were squaring off little more than a week after Trump and Biden had, and one overarching question was how far they’d depart from and how fully they’d redeem that fiasco. The answer: very far and almost fully. In the context of the Trump-Biden debate, which had all the calm, dignity and exalted purpose of a fraternity hazing, this was practically a poetry reading.That’s not to say it was polite. On the subject of the pandemic, Harris unsparingly attacked Trump and Pence, the head of the administration’s coronavirus task force, saying, “The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.”And Pence kept talking over the moderator, Susan Page of USA Today, ignoring her alerts that his two minutes were up so that he could commandeer more time than Harris got. Page was left to sputter endlessly, “Thank you, Vice President Pence. Thank you, Vice President Pence. Thank you, Vice President Pence.” But more than a thanking he needed a spanking.Bullying comes in many different forms: red-faced and furious like Trump’s; chalk-faced and funereal like Pence’s. Shamelessness, too. Pence’s boasts and lies may not be as gilded and rococo as the president’s, but they’re fanciful all the same.He would not fess up to humankind’s role in climate change but said, preposterously, “President Trump has made it clear that we’re going to continue to listen to the science.” Continue? Science? Is this before or after the bleach injections?“This is a president who respects and cherishes all of the American people,” Pence said, making me wonder if I’d spaced out and missed an antecedent and he was talking about someone other than Trump.Pence also said: “Senator Harris, you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts.” This confused me, because Trump gets to have his own facts and Pence just beams at him.But I was most impressed by his audacity in addressing Trump’s anticipatory claims of voter fraud and refusal to say he’d accept the election results and participate in a peaceful transfer of power.He turned the situation completely around, suggesting Biden was the one to worry about and bringing Hillary Clinton — who has said that Biden shouldn’t concede too quickly, given Trump’s shenanigans — into the discussion.Hear that for what it was: a tacit admission that Trump, Pence and their supporters have utterly failed to make Biden as scary to voters as they did Clinton. The solution? Tug her back into the fray, even though she’s not really anywhere near it.Pence followed his orders when they were ludicrous, stuck to the script when it was laughable and never betrayed an iota of discomfort, because he never really betrays anything — except the supposed principles he once had.I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter (@FrankBruni). More

Meta said it would appeal the decision by the European Union, which said the company had abused its dominance in social networking to strengthen its shopping and classified ads service.​The European Union on Thursday fined Meta roughly $840 million for breaking competition laws with Facebook Marketplace, its shopping and classified ads platform, the latest action by regulators trying to limit the ability of tech giants to expand into new product areas.In issuing the 800 million euro fine, European regulators said Meta had given itself an unfair advantage over rival services by bundling Marketplace into Facebook’s wider social network, providing it with immediate access to millions of potential users. They added that Meta had abused its dominance in online advertising to impose unfair business terms on rival shopping services, allowing it to collect data that could be used to strengthen Marketplace.European regulators, led by Margrethe Vestager, the E.U. competition chief, have for years sought to limit the ability of tech companies to use their power in one area, like social networking, to gain a foothold in new markets such as shopping. Authorities in Europe have also accused Apple of using its dominance in smartphones to bolster music and payment services.In linking Marketplace to Facebook’s social network, the company gave itself “advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match,” Ms. Vestager said in a statement. “This is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules. Meta must now stop this behavior.”The company said it would appeal the decision, setting up a legal battle that could drag out for years. Meta said Marketplace, introduced in 2016, was created in response to consumer demand and had not hindered competition from companies such as eBay and Vinted.On Marketplace, people buy, sell and trade items with others, including furniture, clothing, sports equipment, cars and home goods.“Facebook users can choose whether or not to engage with Marketplace, and many don’t,” the company said in a statement. “The reality is that people use Facebook Marketplace because they want to, not because they have to.”Meta has been a target of efforts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to crimp the power of the largest technology companies. Last year, the company was fined 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.26 billion, for violating regional data protection rules. In the United States, the company is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations.Whether the United States and Europe will stay aligned on tech regulation with President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to office is an open question. Some of his supporters, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have raised concerns about the power of Silicon Valley firms like Meta and Google, while others have pushed for less regulation.The European Union started the Marketplace investigation in 2019. In 2023, the company reached a settlement with British regulators on a similar case, but was unable to find an agreement with E.U. authorities. More

The stabbing attack in a Sydney shopping center that left at least six people dead on Saturday was Australia’s worst act of mass violence since 2017, when a driver killed six people by deliberately plowing his car into pedestrians in Melbourne.In a country where mass stabbings and shootings are rare — in part because of strict gun laws — the latest attack has horrified Australians.Here is how it compares to other acts of mass violence in the country in recent years:June 2019: A gunman killed four people in a shooting spree across the main business district of Darwin, in the Northern Territory.January 2017: A man with drug-induced psychosis drove his car into a busy shopping street in Melbourne’s central business district, killing six people and injuring more than 20 others.December 2014: A gunman held 18 people hostage in a cafe in Sydney’s central business district. The standoff with the police, which lasted 16 hours, ended with the deaths of two hostages and the gunman. The authorities later labeled it a terrorist attack.November 2011: Fourteen people died when a nurse set fire to a nursing home in Quakers Hill, near Sydney.April 1996: Australia’s worst mass shooting occurred at Port Arthur, Tasmania, when a gunman killed 35 people. Just weeks later, the country’s leaders brought in strict gun laws. More