{"question_id": "20220722_0", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/21/politics/joe-biden-covid-19/index.html", "text": "CNN —\n\nPresident Joe Biden said Thursday that he’s tested positive for Covid-19 but will continue to work while in isolation at the White House despite his mild symptoms.\n\nIn a video posted to Twitter, Biden told Americans that he is “doing well” and that his symptoms continue to be mild.\n\n“I guess you heard, this morning I tested positive for Covid. But I’ve been double vaccinated, double boosted. Symptoms are mild and I really appreciate your inquires and concerns. But I’m doing well, getting a lot of work done. Going to continue to get it done and in the meantime, thanks for your concern and keep the faith. It’s gonna be OK,” Biden, who was unmasked while standing outside on the Truman Balcony, said in the 20-second video the White House says was filmed by a masked and socially distanced videographer.\n\nThe mild symptoms and diagnosis protocol for Biden – a double-boosted 79-year-old at high risk for experiencing severe illness – will mean isolating and “working and resting” at the White House residence for the rest of the day, according to a senior administration official. This is the first time Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, and he last tested negative on Tuesday, per White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.\n\nBiden has called several people in the hours since his diagnosis. He wrote on Twitter Thursday afternoon that he is “doing great” following the positive test and said he called Pennsylvania politicians to send his regrets about having to cancel a scheduled trip to the commonwealth. The tweet was accompanied by an image of the President smiling at a desk, without a mask, in the residence of the White House.\n\nUS President Joe Biden is seen in this photo shared to Twitter, after he tested positive for Covid-19 on Thursday, July 21. White House\n\nIn a memo that was sent to staff obtained by CNN, White House chief of staff Ron Klain said Biden will be working over the phone and on video conference for the next few days following the positive result.\n\n“I’ve spoken to him several times this morning already about an array of matters, and he is focused on our pending business,” Klain wrote on Thursday.\n\nDay Zero\n\nBiden tested positive for Covid-19 Thursday morning and has begun taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid, which is available via emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment of mild to moderate Covid-19 in people 12 and older who are at high risk of severe illness. It requires a doctor’s prescription.\n\n“Consistent with (US Center for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines, he will isolate at the White House and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement.\n\nThursday marks “Day 0” of the President’s Covid-19 timeline – meaning he will be in isolation until at least next Tuesday in accordance to the CDC’s guidelines.\n\nThe President’s symptoms include “rhinorreha (or ‘runny nose’) and fatigue, with an occasional dry cough, which started yesterday evening,” according to a letter from the President’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor. Biden did not have a fever Thursday morning, White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told CNN.\n\nJha later told reporters that Biden’s oxygen levels were “normal” as of Thursday morning and that Biden’s Covid-19 virus sample has been sent to a lab to identify the specific variant he is infected with. Results are expected in “less than a week.”\n\nBiden first tested positive for Covid-19 on an antigen test Thursday morning as part of routine screening, and the positive result was later was confirmed by a PCR test, his physician said.\n\nO’Connor also noted that the President met the FDA’s criteria for use of the antiviral Paxlovid, adding, “I anticipate that he will respond favorably, as most maximally protected patients do.”\n\nDue to his age, Biden is at an increased risk for a more severe case of Covid-19, although the CDC says older adults being fully vaccinated and boosted significantly reduces their risk of hospitalization and death.\n\nJha said Thursday that Biden has the “full set of protections” to deal with Covid-19 at his advanced age.\n\n“The bottom line is given how much immunity he has from vaccines, given that he was started on treatments right away … I think all of those things very dramatically reduce his risk of serious illness,” Jha told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny during the White House press briefing. “And that’s really the goal here, is to prevent serious illness, to keep that risk as low as possible. I think he’s gotten that full set of protections.”\n\nBiden received his first two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine ahead of his inauguration in January 2021, his first booster shot in September and his second booster vaccination on March 30.\n\nStaff takes measures to adapt, Harris and first lady keep their previous schedules\n\nVice President Kamala Harris and first lady Jill Biden tested negative on Thursday.\n\nJean-Pierre indicated that the West Wing will continue to practice its current protocols but that the White House residential staff will be taking measures to create a “very minimal footprint” to avoid infecting others.\n\nThe number of aides who staff the White House residence will be reduced to the “bare minimum” in light of Biden’s positive Covid-19 diagnosis, an official told CNN.\n\nAnd a mid-level West Wing aide who works in close proximity to Biden and was on his recent trip to the Middle East also tested positive for Covid-19, according to two sources familiar. The person is not considered a close contact of the President and tested positive earlier this week.\n\nHarris is expected to keep her normal schedule while Biden isolates. The senior administration official said there are no plans and no need to transfer executive powers to Harris – as was done last November for 85 minutes, when Biden was under anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy.\n\nHarris has been identified as a close contact of Biden, a White House official told CNN. Harris last saw Biden on Tuesday and tested negative on Thursday. She is a close contact, an additional aide says, because they spent more than 15 minutes together while being briefed on the presidential daily brief. The White House official added that Harris will follow CDC guidelines for those who are vaccinated, including wearing a well-fitting mask while around people for 10 days from the date of the last close contact.\n\nThe first lady and the vice president said they had both spoken to the President on Thursday following the diagnosis.\n\nJill Biden told reporters in Detroit earlier Thursday that she had spoken to the President and that “he’s doing fine. He’s feeling good.”\n\nThe first lady, her spokesman Michael LaRosa told CNN, will keep her original schedule on Thursday, which includes a stop in Georgia before heading to Wilmington, Delaware. She is also double boosted, LaRosa said.\n\nAnd Thursday afternoon, Harris said at an event in North Carolina that the President “is in good spirits.”\n\n“He is working from the White House residence and when he spoke he was very pleased that we are all together today,” she told her audience, adding that Biden told her to “tell everybody hello.”\n\nUpcoming presidential travel canceled\n\nA White House official told CNN that Biden’s scheduled travel to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, later on Thursday for a speech on crime prevention has been canceled. A DNC fundraiser Biden was scheduled to headline Thursday night has been postponed, officials said.\n\nIt’s yet to be determined whether the event will be rescheduled or if donors will be asked to make their pledged contributions.\n\nBiden was also scheduled to travel to Orlando and Tampa, Florida, on Monday, but now he’s expected to be isolating.\n\nBiden has ramped up his engagement with the public over the past year as the White House has shifted its approach toward the pandemic. On Wednesday, Biden traveled to Somerset, Massachusetts, for an event on climate executive actions, where he was seen shaking hands and greeting attendees in the outdoor crowd.\n\nThe President’s positive diagnosis comes less than a week after a swing through the Middle East, where he held meetings with world leaders in Israel and Saudi Arabia. While abroad, Biden was seen shaking hands, bumping fists and embracing other leaders.\n\nThe White House is currently working on contact tracing for those who may have been close contacts of Biden, per an official, since his positive Covid test. They plan to inform any close contacts on Thursday, including members of Congress and the press.\n\nAt least one member of Congress who was a close contact after seeing Biden in Massachusetts received a contact tracing call from the White House on Thursday.\n\nThe White House reached out to the lawmaker’s office Thursday afternoon, according to a source familiar, and advised the member of Congress to follow the CDC recommendations for what an individual should do when they’re determined to be a close contact.\n\nOne of the recommendations, for example, for someone who is fully vaccinated and was a close contact is to wear a well-fitting mask while around other people for 10 days from the date of last close contact.\n\nWhite House prepared for this moment\n\nWhite House officials have been preparing for months for what many viewed as the inevitability that Biden would come down with Covid.\n\nA wave of cases – including among Harris, White House staffers and members of Congress – has swept Washington through the spring and summer. And as more and more of his top officials and members of his family contracted Covid, officials came to believe it was possible the President himself would get sick, even as they took steps to shield him from the virus.\n\nKlain, in his Thursday memo to staff, wrote that White House officials “have said for some time that there was a substantial possibility that the President – like anyone else – could get Covid, and we have prepared for this possibility. We are now executing on our plan so that the President can continue to work seamlessly from the Residence.”\n\nBiden last underwent an annual physical in November at Walter Reed National Medical Center. O’Connor wrote in a memo at the time that the President remained “fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations.”\n\nOfficials had a loose plan in place for the day Biden tested positive, including informing the public when the tests were confirmed and releasing a letter from Biden’s physician – which both took place on Thursday.\n\nThen-President Donald Trump issued a 1 a.m. ET tweet on October, 2, 2020, announcing that both he and then-first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for Covid-19. And Biden officials have been mindful of how the previous administration handled Trump’s diagnosis and have been intent on being more forthcoming about Biden’s condition.\n\nNow, more than two years into the pandemic, Biden has become the second sitting US president to test positive for Covid-19. His mild symptoms so far stand in stark contrast to Trump’s diagnosis before a vaccine was available in 2020 – a Covid infection that led to a multi-day hospitalization at Walter Reed.\n\nCovid emergency continues\n\nThe President’s infection comes as Covid cases are once again on the rise in the US, driven by the most contagious strain of the virus yet – BA.5. More than 1 million people have died of Covid-19 across the country since the pandemic began.\n\nThe Biden administration is continuing the Covid-19 public health emergency as it seeks new funding from Congress for treatments and vaccines. The public health emergency declaration allows many Americans to obtain free Covid-19 testing, therapeutic treatment and vaccines. Medicare has also relaxed the rules governing telehealth so that many more seniors can access such services during the declaration. And states are not involuntarily disenrolling residents from Medicaid during the declaration, in exchange for receiving more generous federal matching funds.\n\nThis story has been updated with further developments on Thursday.", "authors": ["Maegan Vazquez Betsy Klein Kate Sullivan", "Maegan Vazquez", "Betsy Klein", "Kate Sullivan"], "publish_date": "2022/07/21"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_1", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/weather/europe-uk-heatwave-wildfires-france-spain-intl/index.html", "text": "Paris CNN —\n\nExtreme heat has engulfed parts of western Europe, with wildfires raging in France and Spain, a worsening drought in Portugal, and the third hottest day on record in the UK on Monday.\n\nFire has spread across 27,000 acres in the Gironde department of southwest France, forcing 32,000 people to evacuate, the local prefecture said Monday night.\n\nThe nearby town of Cazaux recorded 42.4 degrees Celsius (108.3 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday, the hottest it has seen since its weather station first opened more than 100 years ago in 1921, according to French national meteorological service Météo France.\n\nMajor cities in Western France, such as Nantes and Brest, also hit new heat records, it said.\n\nIn Finistère, on the country’s Atlantic coast, fires had first been reported on Monday afternoon; less than eight hours later, the flames had decimated more than 700 acres of land, prompting the evacuation of several villages.\n\nIn Spain, wildfires swept the central region of Castile and Léon, as well as the northern region of Galicia Sunday, Reuters reported. Fire also forced the state railway company to suspend service between Madrid and Galicia.\n\nMore than 70,000 hectares have been destroyed in Spain because of fires this year, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday. “Seventy-thousand hectares, to give you an idea, is almost double the last decade’s average,” he said.\n\nThe heat wave in Portugal has intensified a pre-existing drought and sparked wildfires in central parts of the country, including in the village of Memoria, in the Leiria municipality. Paulo Cunha/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock\n\nThe country’s Carlos III Health Institute on Monday estimated a cumulative total of more than 510 heatwave-related deaths in the country, based on statistical calculation of excess deaths.\n\nHundreds have also died in neighboring Portugal, where sweltering temperatures exacerbate a severe drought.\n\nOn Saturday, Portugal’s Health Ministry said 659 mainly elderly people had died in the previous seven days, Reuters reported.\n\nAn elderly couple also died Monday after their vehicle overturned while fleeing wildfires in northern Portugal, the country’s state broadcaster RTP reported.\n\nIn total, over 1,100 people are thought to have died due to the ongoing heatwave in southern Europe.\n\n‘Peak of intensity’\n\nThe blistering heat wave is expected to peak early this week.\n\nAs the heatwave moves across the country, French capital Paris is expected to reach 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.\n\nIn the UK – where Monday’s temperatures reached 38.1 degrees in eastern England’s Santon Downham, making it the third hottest day on record – officials warned things would likely get worse.\n\nThe head of the UK's Met Office said the country could experience the \"hottest day\" on record Monday. Alberto Pezzali/AP\n\nTuesday is “expected to be even hotter,” according to the Met Office’s CEO, Penelope Endersby.\n\n“It’s tomorrow that we’re really seeing the higher chance of 40 degrees and temperatures above that,” Endersby told BBC Radio on Monday.\n\n“Even possibly above that, 41 is not off the cards. We’ve even got some 43s in the model but we’re hoping it won’t be as high as that.”\n\nIn France, the heat wave is expected to move away from the western part of the country on Tuesday, heading toward the center and eastern part instead, including Paris.\n\nBelgium’s Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI/IRM) has issued a “code red” weather warning for heat in two provinces on Tuesday, forecasting temperatures up to 40 Celsius in the west and southwest.\n\n“With such very high temperatures certain measures will be necessary: drink regularly, wear lighter clothes, spend the day in cooler rooms, monitor the state of your health regularly, eat easily digestible food (and in smaller portions), keep doors and windows closed to keep the heat out. Pets and animals also need extra care,” it warned residents.\n\nFacing drought\n\nNearly half of Europe’s territory, including the UK, is “at risk” of drought, researchers at the EU Commission said Monday.\n\nThe Joint Research Centre highlighted that the drought in much of Europe is “critical” as the “winter-spring precipitation deficit … was exacerbated by early heatwaves in May and June.”\n\nWater supply may be “compromised” in the coming months, according to the report.\n\nSpeaking to CNN on Monday, Oxford University Professor Myles Allen warned that such heatwaves will be inevitable if mankind doesn’t soon reduce its carbon emissions.\n\n“This isn’t a new normal because we’re just on a trend towards ever hotter temperatures,” Allen told CNN on Monday.\n\nThe solution, he said, is sweeping change across the energy industry. Individual companies are unlikely to change their business models unilaterally due to concerns over losing competitiveness with rivals, he added.\n\n“It’s got to be a regulation on the industry as a whole,” said Allen.", "authors": ["Joseph Ataman Jimmy Hutcheon Xiaofei Xu Zahid Mahmood Sana Noor Haq Jorge Engels", "Joseph Ataman", "Jimmy Hutcheon", "Xiaofei Xu", "Zahid Mahmood", "Sana Noor Haq", "Jorge Engels"], "publish_date": "2022/07/18"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_2", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/17/entertainment/jennifer-lopez-ben-affleck-married/index.html", "text": "CNN —\n\nJennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have officially tied the knot, a source close to Lopez tells CNN.\n\nThe couple wed Saturday, during an “intimate ceremony in Las Vegas,” the source said.\n\nLopez confirmed their Vegas wedding in her newsletter Sunday, ending the letter with a new name: Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck.\n\n“Last night we flew to Vegas, stood in line for a license with four other couples, all making the same journey to the wedding capital of the world,” Lopez wrote. “We barely made it to the little white wedding chapel by midnight. They graciously stayed open late a few minutes, let us take pictures in a pink Cadillac convertible, evidently once used by the king himself (but if we wanted Elvis himself to show, that cost extra and he was in bed).”\n\nLopez wrote she wore a dress from an old movie and Affleck wore a jacket from his closet.\n\n“We read our own vows in the little chapel and gave one another the rings we’ll wear for the rest of our lives,” she wrote. “In the end it was the best possible wedding we could have imagined.”\n\nThe Bennifer love saga is one that’s been more than 20 years in the making. The couple initially met in December 2001 on the set of the rom-com “Gigli,” where they played criminals stuck on a job together and the pair strike up real-life friendship.\n\nBy November 2002, the two were engaged, but postponed their wedding in September 2003 citing “the excessive media attention” surrounding their wedding.\n\nThey never made it down the aisle and officially called off their engagement in January 2004.\n\nIt then took another 17 years – with children and marriages – before Lopez and Affleck found their way back to one another.\n\nAffleck proposed to Lopez again in April while she was soaking in a bubble bath.\n\n“I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time trying hard to get my head around the fact that after 20 years this was happening all over again, I was quite literally speechless and he said, ‘is that a yes?’ I said YES of course that’s a YES,” she wrote in her newsletter.", "authors": ["Chloe Melas Amir Vera", "Chloe Melas", "Amir Vera"], "publish_date": "2022/07/17"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_3", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/20/business/baby-formula-farmworkers/index.html", "text": "New York CNN Business —\n\nFor one group of workers, the baby formula shortage is a multi-pronged crisis that threatens not only the well-being of their young children — but also their own livelihoods.\n\nMany shoppers’ weekly grocery trips don’t require much more than a short car ride into town. But that’s not how it plays out for women farmworkers, many of whom live in food desert areas close to their jobs. They must travel significant distances away from home to get even the most basic food essentials.\n\nThat’s the case for women like Maria, 26, who has an 8-year-old daughter, a 3-year-old son and a 1-year-old boy. Originally from Guanajuato in central Mexico, Maria has been a farmworker in the US since 2017.\n\nMaria is struggling to feed her sons, who need specialized lactose-free formula because of digestive issues that prevent them from getting the nutrients they need from cow’s milk.\n\n“Both of them throw up a lot because of this problem,” Maria said. But her formula supply is stretched thin and she’s currently struggling to find more amid the ongoing formula shortage in the US.\n\nThe family lives in Salton Sea Beach in Southeast California, a hot and dry area that’s not the most comfortable place to live, she said. But the fertile land around the lake, where seasonal crops such as cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, lemons and grapefruit are grown, provides robust farm work.\n\nMaria asked to not include her last name, and it’s not surprising she’s reluctant. “The reality is that more than 60% of [women] farmworkers are undocumented,” said Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director and co-founder of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national organization that represents more than 700,000 women farmworkers across 20 states.\n\nAccording to government estimates, at least half of all farmworkers in the US are undocumented immigrants.\n\nWomen farmworkers bear the brunt of the formula shortage in ways that other consumers can’t begin to understand, said Treviño-Sauceda.\n\n“Even if they want to breastfeed, they can’t. They work between nine to 13 hours a day with few breaks. They travel long distances to their low-pay jobs,” said Treviño-Sauceda. “They don’t have adequate healthcare or other support to even pump at work.”\n\nTheir home lives aren’t any easier, either: “Many women live together, three to four in one household, often in a small trailer home. Where do they have the privacy or the infrastructure to even store any breastmilk?”\n\nPaying for trips to find formula\n\nEven with the Biden administration facilitating additional shipments of formula from abroad, formula stock rates in the US are not improving. More than 21% of formula products — powder, ready-to-drink and liquid — were out of stock during the week ending June 19, compared with a typical rate of 10% before a nationwide infant formula recall by Abbott Nutrition in February.\n\nMaria has scoured local store shelves for formula. But it’s been a futile and expensive exercise lately. If her husband, who is also an hourly farmworker, is unable to drive her to the nearest store 45 minutes away, she pays someone $20 to $25 to take her. The round trip takes her two hours, and she takes her children with her because she can’t afford childcare.\n\nShe is currently taking a break from work to tend to her youngest child — but she worries about what will happen when she has to go back. What will happen if she or her husband are forced to miss work to drive far and wide to locate more formula? The family can’t afford to lose a paycheck, she said.\n\nWith stores out of stock of the formula she needs for weeks at a time, Maria has sometimes relied on a risky, unpredictable and expensive solution: Maria has asked her brother to cross the border to try to find formula in Mexicali, a city in Mexico about 90 minutes from where she lives.\n\n“It’s $13 a can there, and $18 a can here,” she said. “He doesn’t do this a lot but [we do it] when I really need it.”\n\nAccess to formula critical for farmworkers\n\nOther women farmworkers can relate.\n\nAlma, 27, who also didn’t want her last name included, is a farmworker from Homestead, Florida, who works for a family-run plant nursery.\n\nShortly after her infant daughter’s birth, Alma said she had to take medications that stopped her from breastfeeding her child. Her now six-month-old baby relies on formula, she said.\n\n“It’s very difficult to find. I look at Walmart, Publix and the shelves are empty,” she said. She’s scared to try changing the formula for fear that her daughter will get sick.\n\nRecently she had only two cans left, but felt fortunate to find and purchase online for pickup two more cans at a Walgreens an hour away from where she lives. “When I got there they had already sold it to someone [else], even though I had paid for it online,” she said.\n\nAlma said she has spent hours traveling to faraway stores trying to find even a single can. She’s missed work — sometimes a few hours or even a full day. She’s scared she could lose her job.\n\nShe’s tried to get the formula through WIC (the special supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children) but said she couldn’t get the exact kind her daughter needs.\n\nAbout half the baby formula purchased in the United States is purchased through the WIC program. Families who use WIC can only buy formula at retailers that accept their benefits. Also, WIC recipients can’t use their benefits to buy formula online at retailers like Amazon or Walmart.com. This means families have to drive, sometimes for hours, to find formula on the shelves of stores that will accept their benefits.\n\nSaid Alianza Nacional de Campesinas’ Treviño-Sauceda: “The irony is that these women work the land to produce food for everyone else, while they’re struggling to feed their own children.”", "authors": ["Parija Kavilanz"], "publish_date": "2022/07/20"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_4", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/presidio-tunnel-tops-parkland-san-francisco-california/index.html"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/presidio-tunnel-tops-parkland-san-francisco-california/index.html"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/presidio-tunnel-tops-parkland-san-francisco-california/index.html"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_5", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/energy/gas-less-than-4-dollars-a-gallon/index.html", "text": "New York CNN Business —\n\nGasoline for less than $4 a gallon is back, at least in some spots.\n\nNearly one in five gas stations is charging under the $4 mark for a gallon of regular gas, according to OPIS, which surveys US gas stations to compute price averages for AAA. That’s about 24,000 stations nationwide, mostly in the Southeast and in oil patch states like Texas and Oklahoma.\n\nIn fact, $3.999 was the most common price Monday among the 130,000 stations OPIS surveys, as station owners play the game of charging one-tenth of a cent less than $4 to try to get customers’ attention.\n\n“Almost no one cuts their price to $4.009, even though it’s not much different,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for OPIS.\n\nStill, the AAA-tracked national average is still well above that mark at $4.52 a gallon. And all 50 states have an average price of more than $4, with South Carolina at the cheapest average of $4.02.\n\nWhat’s more, Kloza cautioned that drivers shouldn’t assume prices will keep falling from here.\n\n“This is more of an intermission,” he said.\n\nOverall, the national average has fallen 10%, or 50 cents, since hitting the record high of $5.02 a gallon seven weeks ago. It’s the biggest percentage drop in gas prices since the bottom fell out of the market in early 2020, when stay-at-home orders at the start of the pandemic caused gasoline usage to plunge and crude oil prices to briefly turn negative.\n\nThe reason? Oil prices have declined once again. Worries about a potential global recession crashing the demand for oil is a major factor driving oil and gasoline futures lower.\n\nBrent oil futures have fallen about 20% from early June through Friday’s close. But those futures were slightly higher Monday. The lack of any promise by Saudi Arabia to increase oil production following President Joe Biden’s visit to that country last week, coupled with a slight lessening of recession fears on stronger than expected bank earnings, helped to lift future prices.\n\nMeanwhile, gas for less than $4 remains a regional phenomenon.\n\nBack on June 14, when gas prices hit a record national average of $5.02 a gallon, there were only a few dozen stations nationwide charging less than $4. But now, there are two states, South Carolina and Texas, where 61% of stations are selling gas for less than $4 a gallon. And more than half the stations in Georgia and Mississippi are selling below that benchmark.\n\nThere are another seven states — Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas and North Carolina — where more than a quarter of stations are below $4.\n\nAverage gas prices are typically inflated because some stations are selling gas for well above the local market price — and even a handful of high-priced stations can unduly affect the average. Imagine nine stations selling gas for $3.99 a gallon, and one station selling for $4.25. The average of those ten stations would still be $4.02.\n\nOn the other extreme, in half the states nationwide — including most of the Northeast and West Coast, along with Alaska, Hawaii and Washington DC — gas at below $4 a gallon at only 1% or less of stations.\n\nIn California, which has the highest statewide average at $5.90 a gallon, there are virtually no stations selling gas for less than $5 a gallon.", "authors": ["Chris Isidore"], "publish_date": "2022/07/18"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_6", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/politics/jill-biden-olena-zelenska-ukraine/index.html", "text": "Washington CNN —\n\nUkrainian first lady Olena Zelenska is at the White House on Tuesday to privately meet with first lady Jill Biden and take part in a larger bilateral meeting with American officials.\n\nZelenska was greeted at the White House by President Joe Biden and Jill Biden. The President handed a large bouquet of flowers to Zelenska when she got out of the car and the two first ladies hugged.\n\nAccording to the White House, the first ladies “will discuss the United States’ continued support for the government of Ukraine and its people as they defend their democracy and cope with the significant human impacts of Russia’s war, which will be felt for years to come.”\n\nZelenska will first attend a private meeting with Biden, followed by an expanded bilateral meeting with Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Deputy Administrator of the US Agency for International Development Isobel Coleman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Toria Nuland and US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.\n\nDuring the bilateral meeting, the White House says, the first ladies “will discuss how the United States can continue to alleviate suffering through support and humanitarian assistance to the Ukrainian people, and the need to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes and other atrocities.”\n\nBiden and Zelenska first met in person in May, when Biden made a stealth trip to Ukraine. The first ladies had been in communication prior to their meeting, which was the first time Zelenska emerged from hiding since the start of the Russian invasion in February. During their one-hour closed meeting, Zelenska shared with Biden her concerns for the emotional health of Ukrainian children.\n\nIn opening remarks to welcome Zelenska to the White House, Biden recalled that visit.\n\n“When I came back, one of the things that I said was you cannot go into a war zone and come back and not feel the sorrow and pain of the people that I met,” Biden said in the Blue Room alongside other US officials.\n\n“You asked me then to talk about mental health issues, and so, I came back and I talked to my team,” she continued. “I think you received my letter about what we’re doing to help with mental health for the mothers and the children who have really suffered such tragedy and the atrocities, and so I’ve been working on it. The team has been working on it.”\n\nBiden said each of the agencies in the room would tell Zelenska what they had specifically been working on to address her concerns.\n\nZelenska is in Washington this week to highlight the human cost of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. She met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and USAID Administrator Samantha Power on Monday, and is scheduled to deliver remarks to members of Congress on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning.\n\nState Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement on Monday that Blinken, in the meeting, “emphasized the United States’ comprehensive and enduring commitment to support Ukraine’s victory in Russia’s unjust and unprovoked war.” Blinken and Zelenska also “spoke about the immense and growing human costs of Russia’s full-scale invasion.”\n\nZelenska’s visit to the White House comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired several high ranking officials from Ukraine’s intelligence agency, the SBU.\n\nAmong those sacked is the deputy head of the SBU, Volodymyr Horbenko. Zelensky also sacked the heads of the regional offices in Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Sumy, Zakarpattia and Zhytomyr.\n\nZelensky also recently suspended the head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, and filed a resolution with the Ukrainian parliament for his dismissal, launching an investigation into the presence of Russian collaborators among the ranks of his organization.\n\nWhile the thrust of the Russian offensive in Ukraine is focused on the Donbas region, Zelenska’s visit focused the human cost of the war also comes as missile attacks have picked up in southern Ukraine.\n\nNataliya Humeniuk, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s Operational Command South, said that six Russian Kalibr missiles had hit a village in Odesa region, striking residential buildings close to a school and a cultural center. Six people had been injured.\n\nHumeniuk alsop said the Russians were using civilians as human shields, “as well as to keep them in that territory for the so-called referendum.”\n\n“The occupiers are gradually releasing people in the direction of Zaporizhzhia,” she said.\n\nCORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the day of the week Zelenska visited the White House.", "authors": ["Maegan Vazquez Kate Bennett", "Maegan Vazquez", "Kate Bennett"], "publish_date": "2022/07/19"}, {"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/08/politics/jill-biden-ukraine-visit/index.html", "text": "Uzhhorod, Ukraine CNN —\n\nFirst lady Jill Biden spent part of Mother’s Day making an unannounced trip to Uzhhorod, Ukraine, a small city in the far southwestern corner of Ukraine, a country that for the last 10 weeks has been under invasion by Russia.\n\nAt a converted school that now serves as temporary housing for displaced citizens, Biden met with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, who has not been seen in public since the start of the war on February 24.\n\n“I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Biden said to her Ukrainian counterpart, the two women seated at a small table in a classroom of a former school that is now a source of temporary housing for displaced Ukrainians, including 48 children. “We thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people this war has to stop. And this war has been brutal.” Biden added, “The people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”\n\nZelenska, who early on in the Russian invasion sent a letter to Biden, has exchanged correspondence with her American counterpart in recent weeks, US officials tell CNN.\n\n“First of all, I would like to thank you for a very courageous act,” said Zelenska, speaking through an interpreter to Biden. “Because we understand what it takes for the US first lady to come here during a war when the military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day, even today. We all feel your support and we all feel the leadership of the US President but we would like to note that the Mother’s Day is a very symbolic day for us because we also feel your love and support during such an important day.”\n\nThe meeting of the two women included a closed-door bilateral, which lasted for about one hour and took place at what was a school before the war. The building has been transformed into a refuge, a collaboration between the government of Ukraine and the International Organization for Migration, the UN migration agency. Dozens of internally displaced persons now live in the building, on a leafy property near the city center of Uzhhorod.\n\nBiden, who is three days into a four-day visit to Europe to spend time with refugee families in Romania and Slovakia, traveled about 15 miles into western Ukraine from the Slovak border town of Vysne Nemecke to Uzhhorod.\n\nThe first lady is the latest high-profile American and the first family member of President Joe Biden to visit the war-torn country in recent weeks. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv last month; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was there last Saturday.\n\nThe first lady has spent the last two days in Europe meeting with humanitarian aid organizations and government officials in both Romania and Slovakia, as well as interacting with displaced Ukrainians in both countries, her focus primarily on the health and emotional welfare of women and children.\n\nBiden’s visit to Ukraine is the first time a United States first lady has visited a war zone since Laura Bush made a secret, 10-hour visit to Afghanistan in 2008. Bush made her first visit to that country, an active combat zone, in 2005. Both of Bush’s visits centered around her interest and support of Afghan women.\n\nAs second lady in 2010, Jill Biden accompanied then-Vice President Joe Biden on a trip to Baghdad, Iraq, over the July 4 holiday.", "authors": ["Kate Bennett"], "publish_date": "2022/05/08"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_7", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/investing/google-alphabet-stock-split/index.html", "text": "New York CNN Business —\n\nOne share of Google’s parent company Alphabet is suddenly a lot more affordable for Main Street investors — following a massive stock split that took effect Monday.\n\nAlphabet (GOOGL) split its two classes of shares (GOOG) by a 20-to-1 margin, a move that reduced the price of one share from just over $2,200 on Friday to about $110 on Monday.\n\nThe stock split doesn’t change Alphabet’s market capitalization. The company is still worth nearly $1.5 trillion, making it one of the most valuable firms on the planet.\n\nBut the split has two potential benefits. First, it may make Alphabet shares more enticing for everyday investors. Second, it increases the odds that Alphabet could eventually be added to the prestigious Dow Jones Industrial Average.\n\nThat’s because the Dow, which lists only 30 stocks, is weighted by price — in contrast to the S&P 500 and many other indexes that weight by market value. So if the Dow were to include a stock with a super high price, that would heavily skew the index’s daily performance.\n\nInsurer UnitedHealth (UNH), which trades at more than $525 a share, currently has the highest weighting in the Dow, making up about 11% of the average. Meanwhile Apple (AAPL) is the 13th biggest Dow component, despite the fact that it has a market value of $2.4 trillion, nearly five times that of UnitedHealth (UNH).\n\nApple was added to the Dow in 2015, but only after a stock split in 2014 reduced its share price.\n\nThe list of Dow components is the subject of some discussion. Even though Dow includes Apple, Microsoft (MSFT) and business software giants Salesforce (CRM) and IBM (IBM), some critics think the century-old market barometer still needs a further revamp for the 21st century. That could mean adding Alphabet as well as Amazon (AMZN), another market behemoth that recently split its stock 20 to 1.\n\nAmazon (AMZN) now trades at about $115 a share, down from pre-split levels above $2,000. But the company is still worth about $1.2 trillion, nearly double the combined market valuations of retail giants Walmart (WMT) and Home Depot (HD), both of which are in the Dow.\n\nSeveral other high-profile companies have also recently announced intentions to split their stocks, including Tesla (TSLA) and meme favorite GameStop (GME). That could lead to more interest from average investors, especially those who look for momentum plays on social media sites like Reddit.", "authors": ["Paul R. La Monica"], "publish_date": "2022/07/18"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_8", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/20/politics/what-we-learned-trump-187-minutes/index.html", "text": "CNN —\n\nThe House January 6 committee’s final prime-time hearing Thursday is all about 187 minutes.\n\nThat’s the period of a little more than three hours as the riot unfolded in the US Capitol that the House select committee has argued then-President Donald Trump was derelict in his duties. The committee says it plans to show, minute-by-minute, how Trump failed to make any effort to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol or to try to help lawmakers – and then-Vice President Mike Pence – as they were forced to flee the House and Senate chambers.\n\nIn the previous hearings, the committee has sought to tie Trump to the violence at the Capitol, showing how he was warned by his aides that his claims the election was stolen were baseless and that there was a risk of violence on January 6, 2021. The committee’s final hearing in this series will attempt to illustrate how the former President “refused to act to defend the Capitol as a violent mob stormed the Capitol,” according to committee aides.\n\nLike past hearings, the committee is likely to rely on witness testimony of those who were around Trump on January 6 or nearby in the West Wing, in order to tell the narrative of what happened through the words of Trump’s inner circle.\n\nThe committee has spoken with numerous individuals around Trump on January 6 – including Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, former Pence national security adviser retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and former Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.\n\nTwo witnesses are slated to testify in person on Thursday, and both resigned in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 attack: Former Trump deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and former Trump deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews.\n\nTrump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has not testified before the committee – the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. But Meadows selectively turned over more than 2,300 text messages to the panel, which CNN obtained, and the texts provide key insights into the frantic messages the chief of staff was receiving from Republican allies in Congress and even Trump’s son urging the President to act.\n\nHere are some key questions and answers about the 187 minutes of January 6 ahead of the final hearing:\n\nSupporters of President Trump storm the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post/Getty Images\n\nWhen do the 187 minutes begin and end?\n\nThe 187 minutes began at 1:10 p.m. ET on January 6, 2021, as Trump was wrapping up his speech at the Ellipse. This is when he told his supporters to march to the Capitol, so they could pressure lawmakers to overturn the election while they met for a joint session of Congress to formally certify President Joe Biden’s victory.\n\n“So, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue … and we’re going to the Capitol,” Trump said. “We’re going to try and give our Republicans – the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help – we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So, let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”\n\nExactly 187 minutes later, at 4:17 p.m. ET, Trump posted a video on Twitter. In the clip, he said for the first time that his supporters should leave the Capitol. He also heaped praise on the rioters and repeated his debunked lies about the election, which had spurred the riot in the first place.\n\n“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt,” Trump said at the time. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time.”\n\nProtesters supporting then-President Donald Trump storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty Images\n\nWhy do the 187 minutes matter to the committee?\n\nThis timeframe is central to the committee’s mission. Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s GOP vice chair, has repeatedly said that the evidence obtained by the panel about these 187 minutes provides a clear example of Trump’s “supreme dereliction of duty” throughout the insurrection.\n\nThe panel’s Democratic chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said earlier this year, “The President was told, ‘You need to say directly to your people to go home, leave the Capitol.’ And so, it took over 187 minutes to make that simple statement. Something’s wrong with that.”\n\nThursday’s hearing will be led by Rep. Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican. Luria said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that the hearing would “go through pretty much minute-by-minute” of what went on during the 187 minutes of the Capitol insurrection.\n\n“The President didn’t do much but gleefully watch television during this time frame,” Kinzinger said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.\n\nVideo Ad Feedback Jan 6 member previews 'minute by minute' account of Trump's inaction on Jan. 6 05:57 - Source: CNN\n\nWhat do we already know about the 187 minutes?\n\nAfter leaving the stage at the Ellipse, Trump got into his motorcade and angrily tried to convince his drivers to take him to the Capitol, according to testimony from Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. The agents refused, telling him that the scene was too dangerous and unstable.\n\nTrump then watched TV news coverage of the chaos unfolding at the Capitol, according to a book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, and according to then-White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who said Trump was “gleefully” watching the news.\n\nWhite House Counsel Pat Cipollone told Trump’s chief of staff that Trump needed to intervene, or else “people are going to die,” according to Hutchinson’s testimony. Meadows responded by telling Cipollone that Trump “doesn’t want to do anything” and that he even agreed with the rioters who were seen chanting about hanging Vice President Mike Pence.\n\nTrump posted three tweets during this critical timeframe. The first tweet criticized Pence for refusing to overturn the election. The second and third tweets told the rioters to “stay peaceful” and to “respect the law” – but notably Trump did not instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.\n\nHe also spoke by phone with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who pleaded with Trump to call off the mob. But during the call, Trump took the rioters’ side and said they cared about the election more than McCarthy did, according to previous reporting.\n\nDuring the 187 minutes, a wide array of Republican lawmakers, former Trump officials and conservative media personalities texted Meadows, saying Trump needed to intervene, CNN has previously reported. This included Donald Trump Jr., Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, former Trump administration officials Mick Mulvaney and Reince Priebus, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican.\n\nCassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, is sworn in to testify last month. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters\n\nWho was with Trump and what have they said about it?\n\nThe committee has taken video depositions from multiple people who were with Trump on January 6 and is likely to use those interviews to try to explain what the President was doing when rioters breached the Capitol.\n\nIn addition to Ivanka Trump, Kellogg, Cipollone and McEnany, the committee has played clips at previous hearings of video depositions from a long list of White House aides, including former Trump personal assistant Nick Luna, former White House staff secretary Derek Lyons, former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, former Ivanka Trump chief of staff Julie Radford and former Meadows deputy Ben Williamson.\n\nThe testimony from many of those inside the White House are likely to be played in order to help tell the story of what Trump was doing during the afternoon of January 6.\n\nThe committee has previously played clips from both Pottinger and Matthews, the two in-person witnesses Thursday, reacting to Trump’s tweet attacking Pence.\n\n“I remember us saying that that was the last thing that needed to be tweeted at that moment,” Matthews said in a clip from her video deposition. “The situation was already bad. And so it felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire by tweeting that.”\n\nPottinger told the panel that Trump’s tweet was what prompted him to resign. “I read that tweet and made a decision at that moment to resign,” he said in his video deposition. “That’s where I knew that I was leaving that day once I read that tweet.”\n\nAt the end of the committee’s last hearing, Cheney previewed what the committee had planned for its upcoming session by playing a clip from Cipollone deposition, which the committee had just taken days beforehand.\n\n“Was it necessary for you to continue to push for a statement directing people to leave all the way through that period of time until it was ultimately achieved?” Cipollone was asked in the video deposition.\n\n“I felt it was my obligation to continue to push for that and others felt it was their obligation as well,” the former White House counsel responded.\n\nThe committee’s testimony – along with reporting from CNN, other news organizations and several books about the Trump presidency – have filled in key details about what was going on inside the West Wing. Kellogg told the committee, for instance, about how he encouraged Ivanka Trump to speak with her father on January 6 to act, and that she did so multiple times that day, according to committee documents.\n\nThe committee has also spoken to numerous West Wing officials who didn’t see Trump directly as the violence was unfolding but were reacting to what was happening on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.\n\nWilliamson, Meadows’ top aide, told the committee how he texted Meadows encouraging Trump to tweet because things were “getting a little hairy” at the Capitol. Williamson told the panel that he went to speak to Meadows in person, and the White House chief then went toward the Oval Office, according to court filings.\n\nFormer White House Counsel Pat Cipollone is seen in a video interview during a House select committee hearing in the Cannon House Office Building earlier this month. Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images\n\nWhat are the big unanswered questions?\n\nWhile lots of details about Trump’s response on January 6 are already known, there are still lingering questions about what the former President was doing on January 6.\n\nFor instance, Trump spoke with at least two Republican lawmakers during the early stages of the insurrection: McCarthy and Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville.\n\nWhile there has been previous reporting about McCarthy’s heated phone call, including that Trump told him that the rioters were “more upset about the election than you are,” McCarthy has not spoken at length about the conversation. The committee issued a subpoena to McCarthy and four other lawmakers in an unprecedented move earlier this year, though McCarthy has not agreed to testify or hand over documents.\n\nQuestions also remain about who else Trump spoke with by phone on January 6 during the period when the Capitol was breached. There are gaps in the White House call logs on January 6, providing incomplete public accounting of the conversations Trump had that day.\n\nAnother key question the committee is likely to dive into is how it was Pence – and not Trump – who ordered the National Guard to respond to the riot. At a hearing last month, the committee played testimony from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley saying it was Pence who gave him “very direct, unambiguous orders” to get the Guard to the Capitol.\n\nBut Milley testified that Meadows told him to say that it was Trump, not Pence, who gave the order. “He said: We have to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all the decisions,” Milley said in his video deposition about what Meadows told him. “We need to establish the narrative, you know, that the President is still in charge and that things are steady or stable, or words to that effect.”", "authors": ["Jeremy Herb Marshall Cohen", "Jeremy Herb", "Marshall Cohen"], "publish_date": "2022/07/20"}]}
{"question_id": "20220722_9", "search_result": [{"url": "https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/business/kfc-chicken-nuggets/index.html", "text": "New York CNN Business —\n\nKFC is trying out a new type of chicken nugget in an effort to attract younger consumers.\n\nStarting Monday, the chicken chain is offering Kentucky Fried Chicken Nuggets in restaurants in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a limited time. The nuggets are made with white meat and KFC’s signature 11 herbs and spices, and they come in servings of eight, 12 or 36 pieces.\n\nKFC already offers a few different types of chicken, including popcorn nuggets, on its menu. But it’s betting nuggets will be a draw for the younger set.\n\n“We’re targeting younger customers, like Gen Z and Millennials, who are interested in boneless chicken options,” said a KFC spokesperson.\n\nKFC is testing out new chicken nuggets for a limited time. KFC\n\nGen Z, which includes those currently between the ages of 18 and 24, is an important demographic for restaurants.\n\n“The earlier you can engage with a consumer, the more potential you have for building loyalty and building frequency over the course of more years,” Robert Byrne, director of consumer and industry insights at the restaurant consulting firm Technomic, previously told CNN Business. It’s hard to develop loyalty “once somebody’s past that window,” he said.\n\nBut Gen Z is less interested in dining out than other generations were at their age, making it even more important for restaurants to try to grab their attention.\n\nCreating buzz and selling snacks\n\nAmong all consumer groups, competition in the fast food world is tight. One way for brands to stand out is to test new items and make changes to menus whenever possible, creating buzz along the way.\n\nEarlier this year, KFC offered a plant-based fried chicken nugget alternative for a limited time. That launch “elevated the brand and boosted relevance,” David Gibbs, CEO of KFC’s parent company Yum Brands (YUM), said during a May call with analysts.\n\nThe new nuggets have another potential advantage: They’re perfect for snacking, a trend that’s seeing a comeback as consumers adapt to hybrid work or return to the office. Nuggets could be a way for KFC to remind customers that they sell food that can be eaten on the go.\n\nOther brands have also revamped their chicken lineups lately. Last year, Popeyes launched its own nuggets in an attempt to capitalize on the success of its blockbuster chicken sandwich. And earlier this year, McDonald’s brought chicken nuggets back to the menu at some of its locations for a limited time.", "authors": ["Danielle Wiener-Bronner"], "publish_date": "2022/07/18"}]}
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