Month: August 2022

President Joe Biden continued his sharpened attacks on the Republican Party as he visited Pennsylvania on Tuesday, criticizing "MAGA Republicans" for their response to the Mar-a-Lago search and Jan. 6 as he highlighted his administration's policing and crime prevention efforts. "A safer America requires all of us to uphold the rule of law, not the rule of any one party or any one person," Biden said as he spoke at Wilkes University. "Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don't tell me you support law enforcement if you won't condemn what happened on Jan. 6," he continued. "For God's sake, whose side are you on?" Biden, once apprehensive about directly criticizing his Oval Office predecessor, has ramped up his rhetoric ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, recently ac...

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is facing backlash after claiming political violence will break out if former President Donald Trump is indicted for mishandling presidential records. President Joe Biden on Tuesday, while not mentioning Graham by name, appeared to call him out at a political rally in Pennsylvania, saying, "the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying if such and such happens, there'll be blood in the street. Where the hell are we?" Graham's comments came at a time when Trump supporters' threats against law enforcement have escalated following the Mar-a-Lago search and at least one man citing it attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was later killed by police. Law enforcement officials told ABC News they...

NASA kicked off Monday its plan to send an unmanned space capsule into the moon’s orbit, marking the initial launch in an ambitious plan to establish a long term presence on the moon for scientific discovery and economic development. The space capsule, called Artemis I, will travel for roughly 40 days -- reaching as close as 60 miles from the moon, and then 40,000 miles above the moon when orbiting over its dark side -- before landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego. After the launch was scrubbed, the next attempt will occur Sept. 3.

BERLIN -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted Tuesday that his country was well-prepared to tackle a possible energy shortage due to Russia's squeeze on European gas supplies, as fears grow about the rising prices that will hit consumers across the continent this winter. Speaking at the start of a two-day government retreat, Scholz cited Germany’s decision to reactivate oil and coal-fired power plants, mandate the filling of natural gas storage facilities and lease floating liquefied natural gas terminals following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A decision on extending the operating life of Germany’s three remaining nuclear power plants is also expected soon. “All of this and many further measures have contributed to us being in a much better situation as far as supply security is conc...

ISLAMABAD -- The United Nations and Pakistan issued an appeal Tuesday for $160 million in emergency funding to help millions affected by record-breaking floods that have killed more than 1,160 people since mid-June. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Pakistan’s flooding, caused by weeks of unprecedented monsoon rains, were a signal to the world to step up action against climate change. “Let’s stop sleepwalking toward the destruction of our planet by climate change,” he said in a video message to an Islamabad ceremony launching the funding appeal. “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.” Guterres will visit Pakistan on Sept. 9 to tour areas “most impacted by this unprecedented climate catastrophe,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced Tuesday. The U.N. ...

BAGHDAD -- Armed supporters of a powerful Iraqi cleric who clashed with security forces in the capital began to withdraw from the streets Tuesday, restoring a measure of calm after a serious escalation of the nation's political crisis. Following two days of deadly unrest that sparked fears instability might spread throughout the country and even the region, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 48, told his supporters to leave the government quarter where they had rallied. Within minutes, some could be seen heeding the call, dismantling their tents and walking out of the area known as the Green Zone. The cleric's supporters packed up their belongings and trucks ferried away bundled up mattresses. Mounds of trash littered thoroughfares and the steps Naot Sandals leading up to Iraq's parliament building...