Senate passes Bill to fund DHS early Friday morning

Fresh squeeze lemonade! Lemonade? Lemonade? Oh, nuts. Is your business struggling to be seen, not reaching the right customers? Yeah. Odyssey's here to help. Your one-stop shop for digital marketing. Wait, really? With targeted digital media plus SEO, SEM, social, OTT, and more. We help your business reach the right audience and drive results. Whoa, hey, one at a time. Stop missing out on valuable customers. Visit digitallocalads.com to learn more about our local advertising solutions. That's digital local ads.com. Okay, people. Mine starts here. The WBEN All Local. A daily look at what's happening in Buffalo, Western New York, and the world. I'm Susan Rose. I'm Brian Maserowski. Here are the stories we're following Friday, March 27th. The Senate overnight passing a bill to fund the TSA. Relief is finally in sight for airport workers and travelers. President Trump extending the deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. Could the rising cost of gas prices affect shipping rates in western New York? I'm Tom Puckett. One Shipper's answer coming up. Working well into the night, the Senate passed much of the funding for the Department of Homeland Security. I'm Michael Toscano in Washington. It took until after 2 a.m., but with senators facing the reality, they were not going to pass the entire DHS budget. They passed the parts both sides agreed on, including money for TSA and its officers and other parts, including the Coast Guard, by unanimous consent. Left out is money for ICE where Democrats are holding out for changes in operating procedures and parts of customs and border protection, the House. still needs to act before any money can flow. The House is scheduled to meet at 10 o'clock this morning. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor a little after 2 a.m. This long overdue agreement funds TSA, the Coast Guard, FEMA, Sisa, strengthens security at the border and the ports of entry and keeps Americans safe. This could have been accomplished weeks ago if Republicans hadn't stood in the way. While Chuck Schumer are blaming Republicans for not agreeing to reforms to ICE demanded by Democrats, DHS funding ran out more than 40 days ago. Democrats withholding support for any more funding until lawmakers could agree on a set of reforms. The package doesn't include any of those. Still needs to be approved by the House. And we'll have to go before the president for his signature. President Trump, again, pushing back the deadline that he set for Iran to lift its threats against ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz or face American bombing of Iranian power plants. The president appears hopeful a deal to end the war is possible. He's now extended the deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 10 days, threatening to bomb crucial power plants if Iran doesn't comply. They want to make a deal. The reason they want to make a deal is they have been just beat the .

Iran denies any talks have been held, but acknowledges trading messages with the U.S. through Pakistan. That is Sophie Flay, and that new deadline is now April 6th. The rising gas prices impacting the local shipping industry. Here's WBEN's Tom Puckett. The U.S. Postal Service announced an additional fee for shipping as gas prices near $4 a gallon in Western New York. At Lindhart Mnichip, what adjustments have been made? We adjust by adjusting to the rules that are at... play, but we are all subject to the increases like fuel. Andrew Knighthart has one big question in mind. The question that I'm concerned about, and I'm hoping that we can kind of control this now with the visibility is, what's a reasonable increase, right? And that's going to be something across the board that we as the consumers are hoping that we don't get taken advantage of. Will the hike and gas prices affect his rates? Hear his answer online. Tom Puckett, WBEN.com News. All right, Tom, thank you. A man is dead after he jumped into the Erie Canal while attempting to avoid a traffic stop early Thursday morning. Just after 1 a.m. Thursday, police attempted to pull a car over near Maine and Niagara Streets in the city of Tonawanda. The driver continued driving into North Tonawanda before the person got out of the vehicle around Webster Street and jumped into the canal. During a rescue attempt... The man went unconscious and was later pronounced dead. Police say the 36-year-old had warrants out for his arrest from two other agencies. A new bill in Albany would offer additional incentives for turning vacant buildings into homes, WBEN's Jim Fink, on the local support it's receiving. If New York leaders want to see vacant buildings converted into residential anchored projects, the state is going to have to sweeten the financial package for developers. And Assembly Majority Leader Crystal People Stokes has the answer. A new state program that will offer a menu of tax breaks and incentives for projects that turn vacant buildings into residential unit. solves the problem of housing. It certainly is one of the governor's main positions that she's had for the last two or three years. The incentives aren't just limited to downtown buildings, People Stoke said. Vacant buildings and neighborhoods would certainly be eligible. I'm sorry, it's just sending to the neighborhoods. So if there is a building on William Street that has the capacity to be converted to apartments, it could be considered. Governor Kathy Hochul backs the bill, too, as it fits into her development agenda of creating more housing options across the state. We certainly did that. In New York City, we did conversion of office buildings themselves, abandoned office buildings even, and converted that into housing, and it's been wildly successful. This is Jim Fink for WBEN.com News. All right, Jim, thank you. There may be a plea deal coming in the case of the man accused of killing several women and burying their remains in several parts of Long Island, including Gilgo Beach. Rex Hewerman has pled not guilty, but ABC News.

expects him to change his plea as part of a deal. Prosecutors say his DNA was linked to several of the murders, and they say they found a collection of torture pornography in his house and a planning document utilized by Heurman to methodically blueprint and plan out his kills. Families of the victims say they were told a plea deal is expected next month when Hewerman is due back in court. That's Andrea Fujee reporting. Federal judge ruling in favor of AI company Anthropic in... its dispute with the Pentagon. The judge's order temporarily blocks the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic as a supply chain risk. That after negotiations over a defense contract fell through because Anthropic was concerned its AI technology would be deployed in fully autonomous weapons or surveillance. The judge said the Pentagon could have just stopped using it, but instead appeared to punish Anthropic. She also blocked President Trump's directive, ordering all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic. It's Cammy McCormick reporting from Washington. Another price hike is coming from a popular streaming service. Not even the K-pop. Demon Hunters can stop the economics of streaming. The Oscar-winning Netflix movie hauled in the numbers, but not enough to offset price hikes. The streamer says it's increasing subscriber costs across three tiers ad-supported subscription goes up to $8.99, up to $8.99, the standard plan going up $2 a month to $199 and the premium plan, also going up from $24.99 a month to $26.99. This is the second price hike for Netflix in just over a year. Matt Wolf, CBS News. Again. Yeah, and more, paying more for, I always paying a little bit more. Maybe. It's become like a thing that's really eye-catching, like, wow, they're raising the price too. You almost expect it like every year or every six months for all these companies to be raising the price. Maybe that'll get us to make sure we're not. carrying streaming services that we're not watching. Yeah, I guess. Everything is so fragmented, though. You don't want to miss out on certain things. You kind of like, do I need this or do I need that? Or, you know, what can I watch here versus there? Can I get all of this done in a month so that I can drop it? Yeah. Now when it comes to sports, what Netflix just had a baseball game on the other day? You feel like you're going to miss out if you don't have a lot of these. packages to watch the games. I don't know. How about this? A judge in a Michigan catching a defendant.

with her hands on the wheel. You know, I never get sick of these stories. The woman who was being sued by a debt collection company was appearing on Zoom for her court hearing when the judge noticed she was in a car. You cannot be driving, ma'am. What are you going? Come on. I'm not driving. I'm a passenger in a car. Am I crazy or does it not look like you're driving that car? I will have my driver pull over. Hang on one second. I'm sorry. Now you're lying to me, right? No, I'm not, sir. You think I'm that stupid? I love it. I'll have my driver pulled over. You're sitting in the driver's seat. Oh my gosh. Are you appearing virtually from the UK? No, I know how a car works and what it looks like. What are you doing? The woman panicked. The judge saying he's not stupid ends up ruling in favor of the debt collection company. You're kidding. Surprise, surprise. I mean, not a good way to get a little favor with the judge. I can't believe she thought she was going to get away with that and that everything looked okay. Hey, it's the sports junkies. If anybody knows about die-hard sports fans, it's us. We get to live and breathe the excitement of the season all year long, right alongside the most passionate fans out there. For advertisers, that passion matters. It's exactly why sports radio performs for brands. That passion, that excitement and engagement, you don't get that kind of dialed in attention anywhere else. People who listen to sports on the radio via streaming or on sports podcasts are nearly three times more alike. to consider a brand that supports their favorite team. If you're interested in reaching sports fans, we have the playbook for you. Check out our comprehensive e-book, State of Audio, sports fandom. Learn where fans spend their time, why avid fans drive stronger brand results, and how categories like beverage, grocery, and quick-service restaurants are winning with sports fans on audio. If you want to reach the most valuable sports fans, check out stateofadio.com. The Second World War is the largest event in human history. A 20-part series with Tom Hanks. No part of the globe was untouched. No life unchanged. Experience the ultimate account of World War II. Every single person had a story. These are the stories that make us who we are. Listen to World War II with Tom Hanks on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don't know. Some people, but it's not the first time it's happened. You know, like some... Right. I've seen it before. Driving, you appear to virtual court. Come on. This is at least a... I don't even mind if you're in a car. It's got to be parked. Driving it? It's got to be parked. You've got to be paying attention to something. Your exclusive WBEN 7 weather forecast. Mostly cloudy may be a flurry or two this morning. We'll have sunshine this afternoon with temperatures in the low 30s. For tonight, partly cloudy, can't roll out of flurry. It's going to be cold with overnight lows tonight in the teens. A few flurries. Highs near 30 on Saturday, near 50 on Sunday. With your exclusive WBEN 7 weather forecast, I'm Chief Meteorologist Araminkowski. Joining us on the Bison Automotive Liveline, Patrick DeHan.

Gas Price Analyst with Gas Buddy taking a look at the world oil markets as well. Patrick, we're seeing the price increase just about every day. We're already up today from yesterday. Here in the western New York area, we're up about 20 cents, a little more than that from a week ago, nearly 90 cents from last month. What are we seeing in terms of any signs of slowing this down? Well, at least not a whole lot of those signs just yet this morning, oil up another 2.5%. So, you know, hard to know when this would potentially stop. A lot of it would be associated with any potential deal in the Middle East to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened. Until then, I think we will continue climbing. Certainly for gasoline diesel, also well over the $5 gallon mark nationally to its highest level since 2022. Just counting this morning, looking over in California, 20 cities in California where diesel averages are now over $7. Wow. President Trump announced late yesterday that he's extending the deadline that he set for Iran to lift its threats against ships going through the Strait of Hormuz by 10 days. What has that done to oil prices just since that announcement? Well, you know, President Trump can continue to extend it. I don't know that Iran is going to respond in the way that he's hoping. And, you know, we've tended to see that over the course of the weekend, there's been escalations the last few weekends. I think President Trump certainly is aware that stock markets are closed over the weekends. And so, you know, I get a little nervous as we get close to a Friday what that might mean over the weekend. The last weekend it was... talking about attacking Iran's power plants, which then Monday morning he decided against and issued this pause on attacks. But, you know, it's going to be very trying this negotiation back and forth. Iran has, you know, very little incentive to go along with anything that the U.S. really, you know, introduces. And they've, you know, continued to sow chaos in the strait and attack allies with... random missile attack. So, you know, I don't really see much improvement anytime soon. It doesn't look like the Iranians, you have much interest in sitting down to come to any conclusion. We've talked with you about this before, but every time gas prices shoot up, people want to know why are we so impacted by what's going on in this one straight in Iran, especially when there's all this talk about domestic production of oil increasing. Well, it really comes down to the fact that it's a global economy. Just like housing prices don't just go up on one street or one neighborhood. They go up everywhere because supply and demand is impacted everywhere. And it is a very globally connected economy. And the U.S. wouldn't be the world's largest oil producer if we suddenly fenced ourselves off from the global economy. In fact, millions of barrels of U.S. oil are now exported. The U.S. would not be the world's largest oil producer. if we were cut off from the rest of the world. So, you know, there's a lot of different coins and ways to look at this, the side of the coin. But an end, we are somewhat insulated from the disruptions. You know, some areas of Asia are physically running out of oil and gasoline and their rationing.

You know, our energy independence, quote unquote, you know, our oil production is helping to alleviate any potential issues here in terms of supply outages. But we can inflate ourselves from the global market, just like oil companies in the U.S. that can export product, they will take the highest bid for that barrel of oil. And right now, you're having a lot of countries in Asia that are looking for oil because they had been cut off via the Strait of Hormu shut down. And a lot of these countries in Asia are willing to pay $100 a barrel. They'd rather have it at a higher price than not have it. And that's unfortunately leading the oil companies to sell at that higher price to them. And that's how the global economy works. Is there another way to move that oil besides going through that channel? Well, there is in Saudi Arabia. They do have a pipeline that flows from the Persian Gulf over to the Red Sea, but that only carries approximately four million barrels a day under the best, under the most perfect circumstances. So there's a little bit of a way. But aside from that, you know, there's really no way. And that's why, you know, Iran has very little interest in doing much because... you know, at this point, they'll just watch the rest of the world suffer until the pressure becomes too much that they will get a deal potentially. That's in their favor. Either that or, I mean, we've heard the president talking about putting military assets and all these other ideas and none of those have occurred yet. And I don't know that any of them are really feasible. So we're going to continue to see gas prices go up as we probably will be stuck in this until somebody decides that. you know, I'm going to do the right thing instead of safe face. And that might be a, you know, it might be a week away. It might be several weeks away. Hopefully it's not months away because oil prices will continue to go up so long as the Strait of Hormuz is essentially in the state that it is now with Iran promising attacks on shifts that transit through. Well, gas prices have gone up. We all see it. As I mentioned here, locally, it's about $1 in the last month, about $4 a gallon all across the country when you look at the average. But diesel, on the other hand, has... rocketed up. I mean, they're up from around here. It was under $4 a gallon. Now we're above $560 a gallon on average. Why has diesel been impacted so much? Well, you remember back in late January, the weather got very cold and natural gas in some areas of the Northeast was shut off. And natural gas was then replaced by heating oil. And heating oil and diesel are essentially the same product. So we saw a big surge in demand for heating oil because of the cold weather, which caused inventories to decline. In addition, due to the nature of refining, diesel is generally produced at half the rate of gasoline. So there's less being produced. There was more demand for it because of a cold winter. And it's harder to refine diesel now that it has ultra low sulfur content. So it's more expensive to refine because of all the sulfur removed, higher demand because of the cold weather. And as I mentioned, diesel is something that's produced less than that of gasoline, just kind of due to the nature of physics, that heavier oil.

or, excuse me, lighter oil that we have plenty of in the United States generally will yield more light products. But it's the way the system's been designed. That is, gasoline has always been the biggest product coming out of a refinery. And refineries will tinker. They'll try to get more diesel yield with diesel prices higher, but, you know, you can't reinvent science. So that's... really the gist of it. And unfortunately, diesel is the fuel that powers the U.S. economy. So this is going to put the U.S. economy in a very difficult position. You know, trucks, trains, and tractors all run on diesel. And so the next time you go to the grocery store, this could lead to more inflation again. Patrick, thanks so much for explaining all of this. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That's Patrick DeHan. He's an oil industry analyst. That's the WBEN All Local. All new episodes are made available each weekday morning, produced by the award-winning WBEN Newsroom. Hey there, I'm Kendra Adachi and my show The Lazy Genius Podcast helps you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't and you get to decide what matters. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here to give you a new way to see. Episodes of the Lazy Genius podcast are full of compassionate time management tips and permission slips to do what makes sense for you. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow and listen to the Lazy Genius podcast on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.