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The Layered Style of New York’s Christmas Tree SellersCHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. (WKBW) — With a Lake Effect Snow Warning issued for Southern Erie, Wyoming, Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties starting Friday and the possibility of the snow band shifting north on Saturday, city, county and state officials are preparing for whatever the weather system has in store for Western New York. “We don't know exactly where it's going to hit,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a news conference at the county’s salt barn on Harlem Road in Cheektowaga. “So we’ve got to be prepared that it's going to hit everywhere. And that's what we're prepared for.” Acting Buffalo Mayor Chris Scanlon asked residents to keep an eye on warnings about the weather and travel bans. “Now, these forecasts can switch very quickly based on wind and things of that nature," said Scanlon. "So make sure you're paying attention to any communication that's coming out.” Regarding the Buffalo Bills game on Sunday night against the San Francisco 49ers, Poloncarz said he’s been in constant contact with the team and that there are no plans in the works to move the game elsewhere. “Our concerns are two-fold,” Poloncarz said. “Getting people to and from the stadium. It's a later game, which means the lots open later...and also if it's really bad, you’ve got people stuck on the road. If you’ve got 70,000 people trying to get to the football stadium at a time we have heavy snow, that's a problem.” I also paid a visit to the Thruway Authority garage by the Walden Galleria in Cheektowaga where Matthew Lutko, Buffalo Division Director, discussed new technology and equipment aimed at keeping drivers and the plows safer. He told me that a new warning system will be in place for drivers using Waze or Google Maps while on the I-190. “As people are driving when they get within a distance, that will tell them [an alert that] there is a plow truck ahead to prepare them for it,” Latko said. “It's great new technology. We're hoping it helps keep everybody slow and safe and give that warning that there is a truck up ahead.” You may also notice new green lights added to the lighted arrows on the backs of Thruway snow plows. Plow driver Jordan Koziarski explained they are more visible from the road. “We’ve got those new lights, mainly so everyone can see us a lot better,” Koziarski said. “The green light stands out over the amber. It's new. So, people hopefully will slow down.” You can stay up to date and find the most recent weather information from the 7 Weather team here .
When fire threatened a California university, the school says it knew what to doPresident-elect Trump's nomination of Brendan Carr as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is bringing both hope and fear to the media industry. For media executives, the hope comes in the promise of industry consolidation. Companies such as Fox Television Stations, Nexstar Media Group, Tegna and Gray Media are eager to buy more TV stations to better compete against deep-pocketed tech firms that are aggressively pursuing viewers and ad dollars. Carr is expected to support revisiting the rule on ownership of TV stations. The trepidation comes from Carr's open criticism of broadcasters and tech firms on behalf of Trump, who is famously hostile to journalists and outlets that criticize him. Carr, a Republican nominated to the FCC during Trump's first term in 2017 and again by President Biden in 2023, wrote the chapter on the FCC in the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025. During the election, he jumped on social media when Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the Nov. 2 episode of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" to point out that the network also owed an invitation to Trump under the FCC's equal time provision. NBC obliged, giving Trump time at the end of a NASCAR race and following "Sunday Night Football." (Carr also received a public note from NBC parent Comcast congratulating him on his nomination.) Carr got the industry's attention again on Tuesday when he told Fox News that his recommendation on the Paramount Global merger with Skydance Media would consider recent accusations from Trump's camp that CBS News edited its "60 Minutes" interview with Harris to make her sound more coherent. "That news distortion complaint over the CBS '60 Minutes' transcript is something that's likely to arise in the context of the FCC's review of that transaction," Carr said. A representative for CBS had no comment on Carr's remarks. Big media companies are bracing for the possibility that he will do Trump's bidding when the president-elect threatens retribution against media outlets that are unfriendly to him. While the FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, Trump has suggested he wants to bring it under tighter White House control. During the campaign, Trump called for the agency to pull the broadcast licenses held by ABC, NBC and CBS because he was unhappy with their coverage. Carr recently said on X that he will ensure the FCC "will enforce" laws that call on broadcasters "to operate in the public interest." One station executive, who was not authorized to comment publicly, said there is active exploration within Trump's orbit about how the new administration should respond to the president-elect's belief that the media treated him unfairly during the campaign. (Some journalists are taking Trump's threats seriously. MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski — former Trump friends who became harsh critics of his presidency and behavior — visited the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago to reestablish a relationship with him.) But Jeffrey McCall, a media studies professor at DePauw University, thinks Carr's remarks are "saber rattling" and doubts that the nominee would use the commission's control over the public airwaves as a political weapon. "I have a hard time believing that you could hold up some sort of merger because of what '60 Minutes' did in one broadcast over one interview," McCall said. McCall said Carr is "savvy enough to know that he can say, 'I'll take it into consideration.' " But he doesn't see the commissioner punishing a company over an editorial decision. Broadcast executives are encouraged that Carr is calling for greater regulation of the tech industry, which he outlines in a chapter he wrote for Project 2025. Carr wants tech companies to be more transparent about their algorithm changes and their decisions to block or demonetize users. "We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans," Carr wrote on X after Trump appointed him. The stations believe they are at a disadvantage in having to following regulations not imposed on their digital competitors. Station ownership rules also hamper broadcasters as they try to compete with tech firms that are coming after more TV viewers and advertising dollars. The current rule says companies can own broadcast TV stations that reach no more than 39% of U.S. homes. The limit was set in 2004, years before streaming video started eating away at traditional TV's audience share. Media executives see this limit as antiquated in an age in which many consumers are fleeing traditional television for streaming. ©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Peering Into Hyatt Hotels's Recent Short Interest
Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president, has died at 100None
Guest column: Donald Trump hands Trudeau a crisis he could use to win another election
On October 14, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed bill Abx2-1 into law, empowering California regulators to set and adjust minimum petroleum product inventory levels for refiners in the state, in part to address the state’s fuel price volatility. Shortly after, refiner Phillips 66 announced plans to close its Wilmington refinery in Los Angeles by the end of 2025, citing uncertainty surrounding the long-term sustainability of the refinery. The new law empowers the California Energy Commission (CEC) to develop and impose minimum storage level requirements for refined transportation fuels for each refiner in the state. The law allows regulators to adjust minimum storage volumes based on regional and seasonal market conditions, refinery size, and storage capacity. It also empowers the CEC to consider the use of a tradable mechanism for compliance with the minimum inventory law, which the state has used in the past for programs such as its Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The bill is intended to prevent wide swings in the gasoline price. California retail gasoline prices are consistently among the highest in the country and regularly exceed the U.S. average price by more than $1 per gallon. While multiple factors contribute to higher retail gasoline prices in California, including higher crude oil costs and higher refining costs on the West Coast, the region has also historically maintained lower inventory levels relative to the rest of the country. Market participants often use inventories to assess the availability of petroleum products. If inventories drop too low, retailers can struggle to secure the product they need, which increases prices as product becomes scarce. After removing pipeline volumes from total inventories, gasoline inventories in California have been consistently lower than the U.S. average on a days-of-supply basis. Days of supply is a measure of inventory relative to demand and is taken by dividing stock levels (in barrels) by consumption (in barrels per day). California’s inventory has averaged just over 20 days of supply over the last five years (2019–23), compared with the U.S. average of 21.6 days. Shortly after the new California legislation was signed into law, refiner Phillips 66 announced on October 16 that it plans to stop refining operations at its 139,000-b/d Wilmington refinery in Los Angeles during the fourth quarter of 2025. In the announcement, Phillips 66 indicated it will continue to pursue other uses for the facility, which may include continuing to import fuels through its existing petroleum infrastructure. On October 29, Phillips 66’s Chief Executive Officer said the company’s decision to shut down its Los Angeles refinery in 2025 was not an immediate response to any policy changes in California but rather due to its expectation that refining business in the state would become increasingly challenging. Earlier this year, Phillips 66 completed the transition of its Rodeo refinery near San Francisco into a renewable diesel production facility that no longer processes crude oil. With the end of operations at its Wilmington plant, the company will officially stop all crude oil refining operations in the state. The Wilmington refinery accounts for less than 1% of U.S. refining capacity, about 5% of West Coast refining capacity, and about 8% of the refining capacity in the state of California, according to our Refinery Capacity Report. The West Coast possesses relatively less pipeline capacity and other infrastructure to transfer petroleum products between refining centers from elsewhere in the United States, such as the U.S. Gulf Coast. As a result, the lost petroleum product supply from the Wilmington refinery will likely need to be met through higher utilization of other California refineries and increased imports of products such as gasoline. Weak refinery margins have persisted on the West Coast and in the United States overall since the middle of this year. In May 2024, the crack spread for Los Angeles CARBOB (California Reformulated Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending)—an indicator of the profitability of refining gasoline from crude oil—dropped to 50 cents per gallon, about half of what it was the previous May. The Los Angeles spread hasn’t been below 50 cents per gallon on average in the month of May since 2019. Lower crack spreads in the second half of 2024 have been an issue for all U.S. refiners, not only those on the West Coast. The narrower spreads partly reflect global market conditions including more international refining capacity and weaker demand compared with the higher margin environment in 2022 and 2023. Refinery crack spreads on the West Coast are typically higher than they are in other parts of the country, in part because of tighter supply-demand balances in the region, reflected by the lower average days of supply. Refiners in California must comply with the state’s Cap-and-Trade program, which requires them to bid for emissions allowances, as well as the state’s LCFS, which requires refiners (and importers or wholesalers) to buy carbon credits according to the volume of carbon-emitting fuels (such as gasoline and petroleum diesel) that they supply to the market. The costs of compliance with these measures are partly reflected in the wider wholesale crack spreads. As a result, higher crack spreads alone may not necessarily indicate higher net profits for refiners in the state, although they do indicate relatively higher prices for gasoline overall. The West Coast also tends to have higher refiner acquisition costs for crude oil because crude oil production is limited in the region and routes to import crude oil are often longer. The higher acquisition costs do not directly affect the crack spread for gasoline, but they do contribute to higher overall fuel prices. Despite the growing share of electric vehicles in California, the state remains a major destination for consumption of gasoline, ranking as the second-largest source of consumption of the fuel among the 50 states. However, regional refiners have struggled with the relative profitability of producing distillate fuel oil and jet fuel, some volume of which must also be produced with each barrel of crude oil refined to make gasoline. The increased penetration of renewable diesel into California’s diesel market reduces demand for petroleum diesel in the region, presenting additional headwinds to overall profitability for refiners in the state. The disconnect in gasoline and diesel prices suggests that gasoline imports are likely to grow in importance as a source of future supply for the state. Unlike increasing in-state refinery production, importers can import gasoline when they expect it will be in demand without producing surplus volumes of other fuels with lower margins. However, importers face longer shipping times between when an order is placed from abroad and when a cargo of gasoline or another fuel ultimately arrives in the state. Importers must also locate foreign refiners capable of meeting the specifications on California’s unique gasoline formulation, CARBOB. Source: EIA
TikTok is challenging the federal government’s order to shut down its operations in Canada. The company filed in documents in Federal Court in Vancouver on Thursday. The government ordered the dissolution of TikTok’s Canadian business in November after a national security review of the Chinese company behind the social media platform. That means TikTok must "wind down" its operations in Canada, though the app will continue to be available to Canadians. TikTok wants the court to overturn the government’s order and to place a pause on the order while the court hears the case. It is claiming the minister's decision was "unreasonable" and "driven by improper purposes." The review was carried out through the Investment Canada Act, which allows the government to investigate any foreign investment with potential to harm national security. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement at the time the government was taking action to address "specific national security risks," though it didn’t specify what those risks were. TikTok’s filing says Champagne "failed to engage with TikTok Canada on the purported substance of the concerns that led to the (order.)" The company argues the government ordered "measures that bear no rational connection to the national security risks it identifies." It says the reasons for the order "are unintelligible, fail to reveal a rational chain of analysis and are rife with logical fallacies." The company's law firm, Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, declined to comment, while Champagne’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A TikTok spokesperson said in a statement that the order would "eliminate the jobs and livelihoods of our hundreds of dedicated local employees — who support the community of more than 14 million monthly Canadian users on TikTok, including businesses, advertisers, creators and initiatives developed especially for Canada." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 10, 2024. Darryl Greer and Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian PressCarson Beck completed 20 of 31 passes for 297 yards and four touchdowns as No. 10 Georgia pummeled UMass 59-21 on Saturday in Athens, Ga. Nate Frazier ran for career highs of 136 yards and three touchdowns, while Arian Smith caught three passes for 110 yards and a score as the Bulldogs (9-2) won their second straight game and 30th straight at home, dating back to 2019. AJ Hairston completed 7 of 16 passes for 121 yards and a score for the Minutemen (2-9), who dropped their third straight. Jalen John ran for 107 yards and a score and Jakobie Keeney-James caught three passes for 101 yards and a touchdown. Peyton Woodring kicked a 53-yard field goal to extend Georgia's lead to 31-14 on the first drive of the third quarter. But UMass wasted little time responding, as Hairston hit Keeney-James for a 75-yard touchdown to get the deficit down to 10. Georgia then finished its sixth straight drive with a score, as Frazier's 9-yard run up the middle gave the Bulldogs a 38-21 lead at the 8:44 mark of the third quarter. After UMass punted, Georgia played add-on in its next possession, with Frazier scoring from 15 yards out with 1:39 left in the third to lead 45-21. Frazier stamped his career day with his third touchdown run, a 2-yarder with 6:33 left, before Georgia capped the scoring with Chris Cole's 28-yard fumble return with 3:28 remaining. UMass took the game's opening drive 75 yards down the field -- aided by Ahmad Haston's 38-yard run -- and scored on CJ Hester's 1-yard run with 9:15 left. Georgia answered on its ensuing drive, as Beck's 17-yard passing touchdown to Oscar Delp tied the game at the 5:05 mark of the first quarter. Following a short punt by UMass, Beck connected with Smith for 49 yards, and a roughing-the-passer penalty put the ball at Minutemen's 14-yard line. Facing a fourth-and-4 from the 8-yard line, Beck found Cash Jones for a touchdown to take a 14-7 lead with 10:30 left in the second quarter. On UMass' next play from scrimmage, Raylen Wilson recovered John's fumble on the Minutemen's 28-yard line. Three plays later, Beck connected with Dominic Lovett for a 15-yard touchdown with 8:56 remaining. UMass then scored after a 14-play, 75-yard drive, finished off with John's 3-yard rushing score with 1:55 left in the first half. Georgia answered quickly, as Beck's 20-yard pass to Cole Speer set up a 34-yard touchdown pass to Smith with 43 seconds remaining, giving the Bulldogs a 28-14 halftime lead. --Field Level Media
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