By Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) — If you rely on postmarks when casting your ballot, filing your taxes or paying bills, a new US Postal Service rule makes it clear that you should plan ahead.

Postmarks – which include a date stamp from the USPS – can offer proof that a piece of mail, such as a ballot, was turned in by a legal deadline.

But the new rule, which went into effect last week, clarifies that a postmark does not “necessarily” reflect the date the USPS “first accepted possession” of the piece of mail.

That’s because most postmarks are applied at regional mail-processing hubs, and the USPS has undertaken a major overhaul that includes eliminating multiple daily trips between post office locations and those facilities.

As a result, people in some parts of the country – particularly in rural areas far away from regional processing hubs – can experience delays between dropping off their mail and having it postmarked.

The Postal Service said it has not changed its postmarking practices but issued the new rule to make clear to the public what a postmark denotes.

Voting by mail grew more widespread during the pandemic and made up about 30% of the turnout in the 2024 election, according to federal data. That’s down from a high of about 43% in 2020. Currently, 14 states – including the presidential battleground of Nevada – accept regular mailed ballots received after Election Day, provided they are postmarked on or before that day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The changes at the Postal Service – and the potential impact on mail ballots – come against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s drive to sharply curtail mail-in voting. He has railed against the practice as rife with fraud, despite no evidence of widespread wrongdoing.

An executive order the president signed in March sought to mandate changes to mail-in balloting and other election practices, but has been blocked, in part, by the courts. In 2025, four states – Ka

By Ella Nilsen, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration ordered an aging coal-fired power plant in Colorado to stay open on Tuesday, a day before it was set to be retired.

The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright will keep the nearly 50-year-old Craig Generating Station Unit 1 in northwest Colorado operating until the end of March, with an option to extend it further.

It’s the Department of Energy’s sixth such move this year; Wright has also ordered two coal plants in Indiana, one in Michigan and one in Washington state to stay open past their retirement dates, as well as a Pennsylvania power plant that runs on oil.

“Keeping this coal plant online will ensure Americans maintain an affordable, reliable, and secure supply of electricity,” Wright said in a statement.

Colorado’s governor and its top energy official pushed back on Wright’s claim that keeping Craig open would boost affordability, saying it would only raise electricity prices.

In a statement, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said the order would pass “tens of millions in costs to Colorado ratepayers, in order to keep a coal plant open that is broken and not needed.”

According to Polis’ statement, Craig 1 “isn’t even operational right now” and would require repairs costing millions of dollars to get it up and running before it could even produce power. CNN has reached out to Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the power supply co-op that owns Craig 1, for comment on the plant’s operational status.

It would cost at least $20 million to keep Craig 1 operational for 90 days and approximately $85 million to run the unit for a year, according to a report from power sector consulting firm Grid Strategies, prepared for the Sierra Club. Those costs are mostly from the purchase of coal. However, the price tag could balloon to $150 billion per year, depending on how much the DOE requires the plant to run, the Grid Strategies report said.

Colorado Energy Office executive director Will Toor said Tri-State has already built gas and renewables projects to replace the power the unit produced. Toor said the North American Electric Reliability Corporation has not forecast any reliability risks in the region.

In other words, Toor said, Craig 1 is simply not needed to bolster the state’s grid.

“We think there would be a very significant cost to ratepayers for no benefit,” Toor told CNN.

In addition, Toor said, Craig 1 was built near a coal seam that has had all of its coal mined. Procuring more coal from elsewhere would incur additional costs.

Wright’s order “is purely for the purpose of trying to keep coal in the system for ideological reasons, while driving up cost to customers,” Toor said. “At the same time, they are actually taking steps to reduce the reliability of the grid by making it far harder to deploy the resources that you can quickly build, which are wind and solar.”

Keeping other coal plants open past their retirement dates has foisted tens of millions of additional costs on ratepayers.

Consumers Energy, the utility running a retiring Michigan coal plant that Wright forced to stay open in June, recently reported that it cost $80 million to keep the plant open from late May to late September — largely from the purchase of additional coal — which will raise residential electricity bills in Michigan and 10 other states the plant serves.

By Mauricio Torres, Gonzalo Zegarra, Germán Padinger, Jhasua Razo, CNN

(CNN) — In a perpetually changing Latin America, there was only one certainty in the last 25 years: a socialist and oil-rich Venezuela and its constant confrontation with the United States.

This year, tensions reached unprecedented levels following a US military buildup in the Caribbean, attacks on boats allegedly carrying drugs that Washington linked to Caracas, and President Donald Trump’s maximum-pressure campaign on his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, and on oil, the country’s lifeline.

How did we get here?

The following is a deep look at contemporary Venezuela, its history, its riches, its alliances and its delicate internal balance of power amid growing tensions with the US.

General information

Official name: Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Geography: Venezuela has a land area of 912,050 square kilometers (352,144 square miles), according to the World Bank. It is bordered to the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, to the west by Colombia, to the south by Brazil and to the east by Guyana.

Population: At the end of 2023, the country had a population of 33,800,393, according to Venezuela’s National Institute of Statistics, which projected an increase to 34.4 million by the end of 2025.

Migration: At least 7.9 million Venezuelans have migrated from the country in search of safety or better living conditions, according to UN figures. Most of these migrants have settled in South American countries such as Colombia, Peru and Chile.

Presidents

Maduro was sworn in on January 10, 2025, for a new term that is expected to last until 2031. His inauguration followed a declaration of victory in a July 2024 presidential election, which was disputed by the opposition and several governments in the region. He has been in power for almost 13 years since the death of his “political father,” Hugo Chávez, who ruled for nearly 14 years.

These are the presidents who have governed the country since 1958, when the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez fell:

Resources and wealth

Venezuela’s main economic driver is oil, in a production model that is not very diversified. The country has the world’s largest reserves of extra-heavy crude, a variety that requires a more complex and expensive refining process but which is also compatible with US refineries.

Despite sanctions, crude oil exports rose in 2025 to an average of more than 900,000 barrels per day, according to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), exceeding production levels of the previous three years. However, this figure is less than half of what Venezuela pumped in 2013, and less than a third of the 3.5 million barrels per day produced before Chávez came to power in 1999.

Associated with this industry (and also characterized by low investment and exploration) are natural gas exports. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that Venezuela has reserves of 5.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, representing 73% of the reserves in South America.

In the last decade, faced with the fall in oil revenue, the government tri

* WHAT…Southeast winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts 35 to 45 mph.

* WHERE…A portion of southwest California.

* WHEN…From 4 PM this afternoon to 3 PM PST Thursday.

* IMPACTS…Gusty winds will blow around unsecured objects. Tree
limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may result.
Winds this strong can make driving difficult, especially for high
profile vehicles. Use extra caution.

The post Wind Advisory issued December 31 at 9:18AM PST until January 1 at 3:00PM PST by NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard CA appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

* WHAT…Southeast winds 20 to 35 mph with gusts up to 55 mph
expected.

* WHERE…Interstate 5 Corridor and Northern Ventura County
Mountains.

* WHEN…From 7 PM this evening to 7 AM PST Thursday.

* IMPACTS…Gusty winds will blow around unsecured objects. Tree
limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may result.
Winds this strong can make driving difficult, especially for high
profile vehicles. Use extra caution.

The post Wind Advisory issued December 31 at 9:18AM PST until January 1 at 7:00AM PST by NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard CA appeared first on News Channel 3-12.