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US

Iowa Shooting That Left Two Dead Was Likely Gang-Related, Des Moines Police Say

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Police are investigating a possible gang-related motive after two students were shot dead at an Iowa education center for at-risk youth.

Two male students, 18 years old and 16 years old, were fatally shot when a suspect pulled out a 9mm handgun and began firing just before 1 p.m. local time, a spokesperson for Des Moines Police said.

The gunfire broke out inside a common area used by the Starts Right Here education program in Des Moines. The organization’s president and founder

William Holmes,

a rapper who performs under the name Will Keeps, was injured in the shooting and remains hospitalized in a serious condition.

“The incident was definitely targeted, it was not random. There was nothing random about this,” Sgt.

Paul Parizek

said.

Mr. Walls and the two student victims were affiliated with rival gangs, he added.

Police later charged 18-year-old Des Moines resident Preston Walls with two counts of first-degree murder, along with attempted murder and gang participation. It was not clear who was serving as Mr. Walls’s attorney.

Two other suspects remain in custody.

First responders performed CPR on the victims found at the scene, according to Mr. Parizek. The students were brought to a local hospital but couldn’t be saved, he said.

The Des Moines incident comes after a mass shooting in California over the weekend left 11 people dead and another nine injured. Police are looking at a troubled romantic relationship as a possible motive for the state’s deadliest mass shooting in years. Also over the weekend, a nightclub shooting in Baton Rouge, La., injured over 10.

Des Moines police said Mr. Walls entered a common area at the Starts Right Here building where all three victims were. Mr. Holmes attempted to escort him from the area when Mr. Walls pulled away and began to shoot, Des Moines police said.

Police responding to reports of gunfire saw a suspicious vehicle leaving the area. The automobile was pulled over about 20 minutes later, roughly 2 miles from the education center, police said.

Two other people stayed in the car while Mr. Walls ran from the vehicle. A police dog helped track him down, Mr. Parizek said. Mr. Walls was taken into custody and a 9mm handgun was found nearby. Its ammunition magazine had a capacity of 31 rounds and contained three, police said. 

The Starts Right Here website said it works with at-risk youth in the Des Moines Public Schools. The nonprofit has Des Moines Police Department Chief

Dana Wingert

on its board of directors and Iowa Gov.

Kim Reynolds

on its advisory board. 

“I’ve seen first-hand how hard Will Keeps and his staff work to help at-risk kids through this alternative education program. My heart breaks for them, these kids and their families,” Ms. Reynolds, a Republican, said in a statement. 

Mr. Parizek said the program deals with children “with a variety of challenges, some that many of us can’t wrap our brain around.”

Write to Talal Ansari at talal.ansari@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the January 24, 2023, print edition as ‘Shooting Kills Two Students In Iowa.’

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Science

‘Galactic Panorama’ of Milky Way Details 3.3 Billion Celestial Objects

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Astronomers have identified 3.32 billion celestial objects in the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.

The galactic panorama of stars, gas, dust and a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* was captured by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Dark Energy Camera on a 4-meter telescope. It’s housed at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile, which sits at an altitude of 7,200 feet, allowing for one of the clearest views of the night sky. 

“This is quite a technical feat. Imagine a group photo of over three billion people and every single individual is recognizable,” said

Debra Fischer,

division director of astronomical sciences at the National Science Foundation. “Astronomers will be poring over this detailed portrait of more than three billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come,” she said. 

Gathering the latest batch of data from the project, known as the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey, took over two years. It involved around 260 hours of observation with 21,000 exposures, resulting in more than 10 terabytes of data. Along with an earlier data release in 2017, the project has now covered 6.5% of the night sky.

Researchers pointed the telescope at a region of the Milky Way with “an extraordinarily high density of stars,” said

Andrew Saydjari,

a graduate student at Harvard University who worked on the project. “Doing so allowed us to produce the largest catalog ever from a single camera, in terms of the number of objects observed,” he said.

Images released in the survey show part of the Milky Way’s spiral disk, where most of the stars and dust are located. 

The team targeted a region of the Milky Way with ‘an extraordinarily high density of stars,’ a researcher said.



Photo:

DECaPS2/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/E. Slawik Image processing: M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)

One small portion of the broader panoramic image is entirely filled with celestial objects, illustrating the challenges researchers faced identifying individual stars due to the sheer number that overlap one another. 

“By observing at near-infrared wavelengths, they were able to peer past much of the light-absorbing dust,” according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which is affiliated with the project. 

The survey data was published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement.

Write to Talal Ansari at talal.ansari@wsj.com

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Business

Crypto Entrepreneurs Fail to Capture Elon Musk’s Attention With $600,000 Goat Statue

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AUSTIN, Texas—Even as a cold night started to settle outside

Tesla

‘s headquarters here on Saturday, a group of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs had no plans to leave until

Elon Musk,

the man they named their currency after, accepted a 12,000-pound sculpture of a Mr. Musk-headed goat riding a rocket.

It is the latest stunt in the cryptocurrency space, where jokes and memes about digital currencies regularly flood social media. But a 6-ton sculpture as a marketing gimmick isn’t so common.

The creators of Elon GOAT say the name of their cryptocurrency was inspired by their respect for Mr. Musk. They and his other fans think he is the “greatest of all time,” or a “GOAT.” They took the admiration literally, spending $600,000 to create a sculpture of Mr. Musk’s head, wearing a gold-plated dogecoin necklace on a goat’s body. The rocket can move, pointing to the sky as if it is taking off. Gas lines run through it so that flames can shoot out of the back.

They trucked it to

Tesla Inc.’s

headquarters, in hopes Mr. Musk would accept the gift. The creators are calling called the event “GOATSgiving.”

Elon Musk has warned of dire financial challenges facing Twitter, the social-media company he took over for $44 billion in October. WSJ’s Mark Maurer explains how the company is trying to fix its finances and avoid a potential bankruptcy. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann

But about two hours after the co-founders of Elon GOAT parked the sculpture right outside the Tesla building, there was no sign of Mr. Musk.

Dustin Dailey, a security officer at Tesla, walked over to a group of about 15 people and said they couldn’t accept the sculpture on Mr. Musk’s behalf, but would find a spot for it on their property if Mr. Musk gave the thumbs-up.

But so far Mr. Musk hasn’t given any indication he would accept it or whether he knew the sculpture was there. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment

“I am fairly certain he does know about it,” said Mr. Dailey of the sculpture. “It’s all over Twitter.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think of the Elon Musk goat sculpture? Join the conversation below. 

Alec Wolvert, an Elon GOAT co-founder and chief marketing officer, said they were planning on camping out on a piece of public land off a toll road that overlooks the headquarters until Mr. Musk accepted the sculpture.

“We’re gonna stay here as long as possible,” Mr. Wolvert said. “I even heard some people say they were going to strap themselves to it.”

The idea of the sculpture came together last year. “It was an evening joke that kind of just came to fruition,” said

Ashley Sansalone,

an Elon GOAT co-founder.

Metal sculptor Kevin Stone spent nearly six months working on the sculpture of Elon Musk.



Photo:

Kevin Stone

The cryptocurrency entrepreneurs asked Kevin Stone, a metal sculptor in British Columbia, Canada, to make the giant sculpture with Mr. Musk’s head. The goal: to get Mr. Musk to tweet about the sculpture to his more than 118 million followers and draw attention to their cryptocurrency, the Elon GOAT.

“Elon tweeting us would legitimize the token,” said Mr. Sansalone, 40 years old.

Mr. Sansalone said he works on the token full time and previously ran a construction company and traded energy. Unlike bitcoin, ether or dogecoin, the Elon GOAT token is far from a household cryptocurrency name. It is ranked well outside the largest cryptocurrencies by market value, according to CoinMarketCap.

Mr. Musk’s head, which took nearly six months to complete was made by Mr. Stone. The goat body and rocket were made by others in Phoenix to speed up the project, Mr. Sansalone said. Then all the pieces were put together and attached to the back of a 70-foot long semi-truck trailer.

“When I first saw the statue my jaw dropped,” said DeMarco Hill, 51, who spotted it in September in Goodyear, Ariz., where he lives. He grabbed his 12-year-old son and they followed it. “It was something you’ve never seen before in your life.”

Mr. Hill, a trucker who owns his own company, Stay Ready Trucking, thought the stunt was so entertaining that he found Mr. Sansalone and asked if he could participate. Mr. Sansalone said Mr. Hill was needed because only someone with a special license could drive around the heaping pile of metal.

He has since driven the sculpture through California, Arizona and Washington, before bringing it to Texas. People who drive by honk their horns or give a thumbs-up, Mr. Hill said. 

“If I pull up to the side of the road it’s like people crowding around,” he said. “It gets crazy.”

Mr. Sansalone said the sculpture has mostly gotten a positive response. He hasn’t heard anyone mistaken Mr. Musk’s face for someone else. “I would say he is probably the most relevant person on the planet right now,” Mr. Sansalone said about Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who recently bought Twitter Inc. for $44 billion.

In September, the sculpture sat in front of Tesla’s office in Palo Alto, Calif., during the company’s artificial-intelligence conference. Tesla employees crossed the street to take pictures with the sculpture, Mr. Sansalone said. Mr. Musk was at the conference, according to Twitter posts he made, and Mr. Sansalone assumes the billionaire saw the sculpture. 

“All there was to look at was a lit-up rocket erected in the middle of the street,” he said. 

On Saturday night, the group remained hopeful.

At one point in the evening, a group of about 20 people who were waiting outside started to chant “Elon claim your goat” in the hopes that the god of crypto, as one co-founder put it, would hear them.

“I’m a huge fan of Elon and I want to give this man his flowers while he’s alive,” said Aamir Manzoor, a 36-year-old from Toronto who is a holder of Elon GOAT. “He’s done a lot for the world.”

Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com, Alyssa Lukpat at alyssa.lukpat@wsj.com and Adolfo Flores at adolfo.flores@wsj.com

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Business

A New Survey Reveals Americans’ Magic Number for Retirement

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The magic number to retire just went even higher.

Americans now think their households will need at least $1.25 million to retire comfortably, a 20% jump from a year ago, according to a survey released Tuesday by financial services company Northwestern Mutual.

While Americans say they will need more money after they retire, the average amount in a retirement savings account has dropped this year to $86,869, an 11% decline from 2021, the survey said. 

The expected retirement age also ticked up to 64 years of age, compared with 62.6 last year.  

read more about retirement

Christian Mitchell,

chief customer officer at Northwestern Mutual, said rising inflation and volatility in financial markets are weighing on people’s mind-sets. That is changing people’s expectations around how much savings they will need for retirement, he said.

The survey, which polled 2,381 American adults in February, comes as consumers have been squeezed by rising inflation. That has put pressure on their spending power and their ability to save. 

Stock and bond markets have also fallen sharply this year. A typical 60/40 portfolio, where investors put 60% of their money into the stock market and 40% of their money into bonds, is on track to deliver its worst returns in 100 years as of mid-October, according to

Bank of America.

As inflation has surged, the federal government has taken steps to try to mitigate the pain for retirees and investors. 

The government increased Social Security checks by 8.7% for 2023, the largest cost-of-living adjustment to benefits in four decades. The Internal Revenue Service also made inflation adjustments for 401(k) savings accounts, increasing contribution limits by $2,000 to $22,500 for 2023. About 60 million American workers have 401(k) plans, according to the Investment Company Institute.

The Northwestern Mutual survey found that many Americans are worried about their prospects for retirement. About four in 10 people said they don’t think they will have enough money when they retire. Nearly half of the people surveyed also said they can envision scenarios where Social Security no longer exists. 

The amount of money a household will need to retire depends on many variables, including where people live and their standard of living, Mr. Mitchell said. Whether a person expects to care for parents or children in retirement are also factors to consider, he said. 

The government has increased Social Security checks by 8.7% for 2023.



Photo:

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

“The $1.25 million for some households, that may be right, it might be too high, it might be too low,” Mr. Mitchell said. 

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Are you financially prepared for retirement? Join the conversation below.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also shaken up retirement plans for Americans. About one in four people said they now plan to retire later because of the pandemic, the survey said. Of those who are putting off retirement, 59% said they wanted to work more to save money. And 45% said they were worried about rising healthcare costs or had unexpected medical costs. 

But about 15% of people said they planned to retire early because of the pandemic.

Write to Joseph De Avila at joseph.deavila@wsj.com

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Entertainment

BTS Members to Undertake Military Service in South Korea, With Jin Set to Be First

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SEOUL—The eldest member of the South Korean boy band BTS will be conscripted for the country’s mandatory military service later this year, ending a debate over whether the singers’ cultural achievements should merit an exemption.

The 29-year-old

Kim Seok-jin

—who goes by the stage name “Jin” to fans—had until his December birthday to begin his mandatory military service of 18 months. His start date had already been pushed back two years, following an amendment to South Korea’s conscription law in 2020 designed with the BTS group in mind.

That reprieve had allowed Mr. Kim to delay his military service until he turned 30. On Monday, Mr. Kim, through his management agency

HYBE,

said he would initiate steps to join the military as soon as his schedule for his solo release is concluded at the end of October. The other six members of the group plan to carry out their military service based on their own individual plans,

HYBE

said in a statement.

“Both the company and the members of BTS are looking forward to reconvening as a group again around 2025 following their service commitment,” HYBE said.

BTS—short for their Korean name

Bangtan Sonyeondan,

which they alter in English to “Beyond the Scene”—is one of the world’s most popular bands. Their devoted fans around the world officially go by the name ARMY.

Members of BTS arrived for the annual Grammy Awards in Las Vegas earlier this year.



Photo:

angela weiss/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Mr. Kim’s conscription announcement comes after the group held a free concert in South Korea’s southern port city of Busan on Saturday to help promote the country’s bid to host the World Expo in 2030.

In June, the group had also announced that they would be taking time to focus on releasing music as solo acts, citing struggles to create new music in order to live up to the expectations of their fans. The news sent HYBE shares tumbling by nearly 25% at the time—marking the company’s worst single-day decline since it went public in October 2020.

The weekend concert in Busan was widely expected to be the last involving all of the members of the K-pop boy band, as discussions around the South Korean government potentially exempting BTS from the mandatory military service had failed to reach a conclusion.

In social-media posts, fans of the K-pop band expressed a mix of sadness, resignation and acceptance over the news the group would begin military service. Many fans said BTS prepared them for a day like this when they announced they would be taking a break to focus on solo work. Other members of the ARMY said they were already looking forward to the new material the band would release when their time in the military ends.

South Korean legislators had been discussing the possibility of amending the local conscription law since last year without taking action.

In South Korea, all able-bodied men must serve in the military for at least 18 months, though the length of the service may vary by the type of post. The draft starts from the age of 18, though men can postpone until 28, with those in the entertainment profession permitted to postpone conscription until the age of 30.

BTS, which formed in 2013, was the first K-pop act to top the U.S. album chart and has produced a series of No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. They have sold out U.S. stadiums for their massive, global fan base and appeared on “Saturday Night Live.”

Earlier this year, BTS visited the White House where they discussed discrimination against the Asian community with President Biden. Fans lined up outside of the White House to try to get a glimpse of the band during the meeting.

BTS is the crown jewel of HYBE, which last year said it would acquire U.S.-based Ithaca Holdings to bring artists such as

Justin Bieber

and

Ariana Grande

under its roof.

—Joseph De Avila contributed to this article.

Write to Jiyoung Sohn at jiyoung.sohn@wsj.com

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Science

Neptune Looks Out of This World in Latest James Webb Telescope Image

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It’s Neptune like it hasn’t been seen before. 

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration released an image of the planet Tuesday that it said is the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in 30 years, and put the planet in a new light.  

Dr.

Heidi Hammel,

a scientist working for the James Webb Space Telescope, which captured the rings, said she cried when she saw the image. “I was yelling, making my kids, my mom, even my cats look,” she wrote on Twitter.

Neptune and its rings, including Triton, top left, captured by the Webb telescope.



Photo:

Space Telescope Science Institut/Zuma Press

The Webb telescope, launched late last year, is 100 times as powerful as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which has orbited Earth for more than 30 years. 

Webb’s new image shows a luminescent Neptune with bright, dusty rings around it. The deep-space telescope also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons, with the brightest-looking one being Triton. That moon is covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen reflecting much of the sunlight that hits it, NASA said. 

NASA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Neptune, first discovered in 1846, is nearly four times wider than Earth and 30 times farther from the sun than our planet. 

The Webb telescope, developed jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, orbits the sun about 1 million miles from Earth. 

Unlike Hubble, which detects mostly visible light, Webb detects mostly infrared light. That allows it to capture images of older and more distant galaxies, giving astronomers a peek into how the universe took shape just after the big bang almost 14 billion years ago. 

In July, NASA released Webb photos that it said were the deepest of the universe ever taken. President

Biden

unveiled the pictures at the White House at the time: “Today is a historic day,” Mr.

Biden

said, adding that the telescope’s first images “show what we can achieve, and what more we can discover.”

Webb’s infrared cameras didn’t show Neptune in its blue hue, like Hubble did. Instead, Webb’s images picked up bright spots on the planet that NASA said are methane-ice clouds. 

Related Video: NASA’s DART spacecraft will intentionally collide with an asteroid on Monday, in an attempt to alter the space rock’s trajectory. The mission aims to test technology that could defend Earth against potential asteroid threats. Photo illustration: NASA and Laura Kammermann

Write to Joseph Pisani at joseph.pisani@wsj.com

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Health

Most of U.S. Population Now in Areas With High Covid-19 Levels as BA.5 Subvariant Spreads

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More than half the U.S. population lives in counties where Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are high enough that people should wear masks in indoor public settings, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. 

The CDC’s latest assessment represents a significant jump from the week before, reflecting the added pressure that the easily spread Omicron BA.5 subvariant is putting on the U.S. since it became the dominant Covid-19 strain. Over a third of U.S. counties now fall into the CDC’s “high” category, up from one in five counties a week earlier. 

Los Angeles County—the largest in the country, with more than 10 million people—recently joined the list. And if it stays there for two weeks, officials say they will reinstate an indoor masking requirement on July 29.

More than two years into the pandemic, such mandates are rare, with health authorities largely leaving it to people to decide whether to mask. 

Roughly 35% of U.S. counties—accounting for 54% of the population—show a “high” level of Covid-19, as defined by the CDC’s three-tier criteria to monitor rates of infection and strain on communities’ healthcare systems. 

The CDC looks at weekly county numbers for new Covid-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 population, the percent of hospital beds used by Covid-19 patients and total new Covid cases per 100,000 residents to calculate community risk. 

The CDC recommends masks in indoor public settings when a county hits a high-level risk.



Photo:

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

When a county hits high-level risk, the CDC guidance is to mask in indoor public settings and on public transit as a way to try to limit the spread of infection. The CDC most recently counted 1,278 “medium” and 802 “low” counties. The agency advises people in medium counties to mask up if they have symptoms, a positive test or exposure to a person with Covid-19.

There are now 1,143 counties on the CDC’s high list, a 71% increase from a week ago, the agency’s data show. While the rate of transmission is high, signs of acute illness remain muted, as treatments plus immunity from vaccines and previous infections reduce risks for many people. Epidemiologists caution, however, that cases still carry the risk of triggering long-Covid symptoms, and that high levels of transmission also put the elderly and immunocompromised at risk.

Newly reported U.S. cases are averaging about 126,000 a day, CDC data show. The seven-day, moving average has increased in recent days after hovering closer to 100,000 for weeks, though cases still remain below the weekly average of 800,000 recorded during the height of the first Omicron wave in January. 

But those figures are deceptive, according to

Shira Shafir,

associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health, because fewer cases are being reported now as people take Covid tests at home. 

“The message has to be, number 1, we are clearly in a surge,” said Dr. Shafir. “Number 2, you can absolutely get reinfected even if you were infected within the last 90 days because of this transition we are seeing in the subvariants.” BA.5’s mutations are believed to make it particularly adept at causing repeat infections.

In Los Angeles, current case numbers are climbing fast, according to

Barbara Ferrer,

the director of public health for Los Angeles County. 

“It’s unlikely that we’re at the peak of this recent surge, given the increased circulation of new variants of concern. And we already have an average of over 6,400 cases being reported per day,” said Dr. Ferrer at a press conference Thursday.

If Los Angeles County does return to its indoor mask mandate on July 29, it will last until numbers fall back into the medium CDC category, Dr. Ferrer said. 

But even then, she said, the potential for new variants means people should stay on high alert, even with vaccinations and booster shots. 

“The number of deaths from Covid this year is still very high,” Dr. Ferrer said. At 4,400 fatalities to date, Los Angeles County has had more Covid-19 deaths in the first six months of 2022 than it has had annually from any other infectious disease, she said. 

Nationally, the U.S. has recently averaged about 350 deaths a day. That is closer to historic lows than highs. Hospitalizations are also far below peaks, but climbing, in part because of people who need care for other reasons but test positive for Covid-19. The seven-day average for confirmed Covid-19 patients in hospitals reached 35,570 on Friday, up 22% over the past two weeks. 

Some public-health officials from other counties on the CDC high list issued advisories Friday for people to wear masks indoors. 

In Milwaukee, Health Commissioner

Kirsten Johnson

gave a strongly worded directive to mask up in public settings indoors, but declined to impose a mandate. 

Illinois’ Cook County, which includes Chicago, issued a similar advisory, citing the CDC criteria and a rise in BA.4 and BA.5 infections. A spokesman said there were no plans for anything more at the moment. 

In New York—where 10 counties are on the high list, including all five in New York City—public-health officials continued to promote voluntary indoor masking through social media and outreach campaigns, but didn’t mandate it.

Write to Jon Kamp at Jon.Kamp@wsj.com and Ginger Adams Otis at Ginger.AdamsOtis@wsj.com

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Business

Gasoline Prices Reach $5 a Gallon Nationwide for the First Time

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The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas in the U.S. hit $5 Friday night, and the rise in fuel costs is expected to persist throughout the busy summer driving season. 

The record high, according to OPIS, an energy-data and analytics provider, comes as U.S. consumer inflation hit its highest level in 40 years and crude oil prices remain high.

Gas prices skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, with traders, shippers and financiers shunning Russian oil supplies. Oil inventories, which were already tight because of higher demand from economic reopening, have depleted even more, with no sign of relief ahead.

Rising oil costs have helped push the national average price for a gallon of gasoline to $5 for the first time, and that’s leading to increased inflation pressure across the U.S. economy. Photo illustration: Todd Johnson

That has translated to pain at the pump, further squeezing Americans’ household budgets already hit by higher prices on everything from items at the grocery store to restaurant meals and air travel. Prices for energy jumped 34.6% from a year earlier, while the cost of groceries rose 11.9% on the year, adding to consumers’ woes.

Shenetha James,

a mother of four kids in Jackson, Miss., hasn’t seen her eldest daughter, who lives about 700 miles away in North Carolina, since Christmas, because of high gas prices. 

The average cost of a gallon of unleaded gas in Mississippi was still below the national average Friday, at about $4.52, according to OPIS, which is part of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. 

“It’s been kind of hard,” Ms. James said, “not being able to really be there.” 

Shenetha James of Jackson, Miss., hasn’t seen her eldest daughter, who lives about 700 miles away, since Christmas, because of high gas prices.



Photo:

Shenetha James

Ms. James, who works for the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, drives one kid to basketball practice and another to work at Chick-fil-A a few times a week. After dropping them off, to save money on gas, Ms. James waits in a parking lot instead of driving back home.

“We’ve got to manage this gas to get from one pay period to another,” she said. 

Analysts say high gas prices could persist. A report from

JPMorgan

last month said retail gas prices could jump to $6.20 a gallon by August. The cost of gas on average has already exceeded that price in California, where gas was about $6.43 on average Friday, according to OPIS. 

“People are still fueling up, despite these high prices,” said

Andrew Gross,

a spokesman at AAA. “At some point, drivers may change their daily driving habits or lifestyle due to these high prices, but we are not there yet.”

AAA, an automobile organization, obtains data from OPIS. 

Some drivers are purchasing fewer gallons on each visit to gas stations but making more frequent trips to fuel up.

Patrick De Haan,

head of petroleum analysis at price tracker GasBuddy, said consumer resilience has remained relatively strong, even as demand has started to waver. He projects people will more significantly adjust their driving habits when gas hits between $5.40 and $5.50. 

That is around the price that, adjusted for inflation, would surpass the 2008 peak for gas prices, Mr. De Haan said.

Pandemic-related strains have added pressure on gas prices.



Photo:

JACQUELINE DORMER/Associated Press

“We’re getting to the point where there’s probably a lot more demand destruction ahead as consumers come to grips with the higher fuel prices—something we’ve never seen to this magnitude,” Mr. De Haan said. 

Chris Stevenson, a 24-year-old from New Jersey, said he’s just going to ignore the prices for as long as possible.  

“I don’t care about the gas. I’m doing a lot of trips,” he said while filling up at a Manhattan gas station Friday afternoon. The average price of gas in New York City was $5.18 a gallon according to OPIS. “It’s summertime, so you know, we have to be outside,” he added. 

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

How have surging gas prices affected your lifestyle? Join the conversation below.

Pandemic-related strains have added pressure on prices. Refineries around the world closed some plants after Covid-19-related lockdowns and travel restrictions dragged down fuel demand. Now, as demand hovers closer to prepandemic levels, the shortage of online refineries is exasperating the market and contributing to high gas prices.

President Biden has been under pressure to address rising gasoline prices. He might meet with leaders in the Middle East later this month. The potential trip comes as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and 10 non-OPEC producers agreed last week to a larger-than-expected oil-production increase. 

Under the agreement, the oil-producing nations will raise output by 648,000 barrels a day in July and in August. 

Where in Americans’ household budgets is inflation hitting the hardest? WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath traces the roots of the rising prices to learn why some sectors have risen so much more than others. Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann/WSJ

The Biden administration has also tapped oil supplies from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, releasing one million barrels of oil a day. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency waiver in April allowing gas stations to sell high-ethanol-content gasoline this summer, despite environmental concerns.

Scott Solis,

a 51-year-old resident of Goodyear, Ariz., who lives on a fixed income, said he has limited his trips to grocery and retail stores because of high gas prices. 

He added that he used to go on sightseeing driving trips to Sedona and Flagstaff with his wife and friends. The average cost of a gallon of gas in Arizona was $5.31 Friday. 

“There’s no way in heck we can do that now,” Mr. Solis said.

—Ginger Adams Otis contributed to this article.

Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com and Hardika Singh at hardika.singh@wsj.com

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Sports

Katie Meyer, Stanford Women’s Soccer Player, Found Dead in Campus Residence

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Stanford University soccer goalkeeper

Katie Meyer,

who helped lead the school to its third women’s soccer championship in 2019, was found dead in a campus residence, according to university officials. She was 22 years old. 

An investigation into the cause of death is pending, the Santa Clara County medical examiner’s office said Thursday morning. University officials said there is no ongoing safety threat on campus.

“Katie was extraordinarily committed to everything and everyone in her world,” Stanford said in a statement. “Her friends describe her as a larger-than-life team player in all her pursuits…Katie was a bright shining light for so many on the field and in our community.”

Ms. Meyer was a senior majoring in international relations and a team captain on Stanford’s soccer team. She gained national attention for making two critical saves in a penalty shootout during the 2019 women’s soccer championship game against the University of North Carolina.

“There are no words to express the emptiness that we feel at this moment,” Stanford said. “We will grieve this great loss together, and we will be here for each other.”

Stanford said it has made counseling staff available on campus and is offering support to grieving students. “We can all help by checking in on friends and loved ones. Be caring to yourselves and one another,” the university said.

An online fundraiser to provide financial support to the Meyer family generated more than $100,000 as of Thursday afternoon, according to the GoFundMe page. 

Ms. Meyer’s sister, Samantha, offered thanks to those who have offered support to her family, adding that funds raised on the GoFundMe page would go toward helping with memorial costs. 

“There are no words,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories. “Thank you for all the kindness extended to my family. I’m not ready to post anything big yet. We are broken-hearted and love Kat so much.”

Several sports organizations and athletes paid tribute to Ms. Meyer.

Star forward

Alex Morgan

said she is “incredibly saddened” over the loss of Ms. Meyer. “Thinking about all her family, friends, and teammates, right now and hoping they are getting all the love they need and deserve,” she wrote on Twitter.

The U.S. women’s national soccer team said on Twitter that the “thoughts and hearts of the entire U.S. Soccer Federation are with the family, friends, teammates and loved ones of Katie Meyer.”

“We join Stanford in mourning the loss of Katie Meyer,” the National Collegiate Athletic Association wrote on Twitter.

Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com

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