Month: July 2022

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Sri Lanka's interim president Friday until Parliament elects a successor to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who resigned after mass protests over the country's economic collapse forced him from office. The speaker of Sri Lanka's Parliament said Rajapaksa resigned as president effective Thursday and lawmakers will convene Saturday to choose a new leader. Their choice would serve out the remainder of Rajapaksa's term ending in 2024, said Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana. He expects the process to be done in seven days. That person could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament. With Rajapaksa done, pressure on Wickremesinghe was rising. Opponents had viewed his appointment ...

President Biden's love for the personal touch, dispensing hugs and handshakes, is under close scrutiny on his trip to the Middle East. Two encounters have become the focus of the interest in his handshakes: Biden's offer (declined) to shake an Israeli woman's hand, and how he handles his interaction with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Biden met the Saudi crown prince Friday Biden's commitment to human rights is being scrutinized during his trip to Saudi Arabia, particularly his encounter with bin Salman, who the U.S. says approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, that ended with the gruesome killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in 2018. In doing so, Biden completed a departure from a position he campaigned on: that he would treat Saudi...

PARIS — Challenged by high temperatures and strong winds, 1,000 firefighters and 10 water-dumping planes struggled Friday to contain two wildfires in the Bordeaux region of southwestern France that have forced the evacuation of 11,300 people and ravaged pine forests near the Atlantic coast. The French wildfires were among several scorching different areas of Europe this week. One of the French fires is in woodlands just south of the Atlantic resort town of Arcachon, a major attraction for visitors during the summer season. Oboz Shoes The other is in parkland not far from valleys dotted with vineyards that have struggled with hotter, drier weather than usual this year that authorities have linked to climate change. More than 7,000 hectares of land have been consumed by the fires, a...

In the end, President Biden went with a fist bump. Biden greeted Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman with an outstretched closed fist when he arrived on Friday at Al-Salam Royal Palace for meetings with bin Salman and his father, Saudi Arabia's King Salman. The greeting had been a question of intense speculation leading up to the controversial meeting in Saudi Arabia. When running for president, Biden had vowed to treat the country as a "pariah," due to a long string of human rights abuses, including the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi – a killing in a Saudi operation that U.S. intelligence assessed had been approved by the crown prince. At a press conference after the 2 1/2-hour meeting with bin Salman and other Saudi officials, Biden said he ...

JERUSALEM -- President Biden on Thursday dodged questions about whether he would set a deadline for stalled negotiations over Iran's nuclear program following a meeting with Israel's prime minister, who urged the United States to put a "credible military threat" on the table against Iran. Biden, who said in a recent interview that the U.S. would consider using military force ‘as a last resort,' declined to elaborate on any timeline for diplomatic efforts in public after his session with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid. "We've laid out for the people, for the leadership of Iran, what we're willing to accept now to get back in the JCPOA," he said about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Obama-era nuclear agreement abandoned by the Trump administration to an Israeli journalist. ...

The Secret Service deleted text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after an internal watchdog requested them as part of a review of the department’s handling of last year’s Capitol riot, the watchdog said this week. A letter sent Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to the heads of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees, which was obtained by ABC News, said the messages were deleted “as part of a device-replacement program” despite the inspector general requesting such communications. "First, the Department notified us that many US Secret Service text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device-replacement program.Kizik Sneakers  The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic commun...