WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Joe Biden’s net approval rating is now underwater in all but six states, according to new polling from Morning Consult – spelling trouble for Democrats with mere months left until the midterm elections. The 44 states with voters more likely to disapprove than approve of the president’s job performance is up from 40 states in the first quarter of 2022.  Biden’s numbers are particularly troubling in some key midterm battleground states, including Arizona (-20 net approval rating), Georgia (-13), Pennsylvania (-19), Ohio (-23) and Wisconsin (-18). Excluding Ohio, the president won all of those states in the 2020 election, charting his path to the White House. The grim numbers don’t end there. Biden has generally weaker ratings than former President Donald Trump did around this time in 2018, with 43% of voters strongly disapproving of the president now compared to only 41% for Trump back then. The president’s approval rating from independents (44% strongly disapprove) is also worse than it was for Trump (38% strongly disapproved) four years ago.

 

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KYIV (Reuters) -- Ukraine’s parliament dismissed the domestic security chief and prosecutor general on Tuesday, two days after President Volodymyr Zelensky suspended them for failing to root out Russian spies. Ivan Bakanov was fired from his position at the helm of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) by a comfortable majority, several lawmakers said on the Telegram messaging app. The head of Zelensky’s political faction said Iryna Venediktova had also been voted out as prosecutor general. In a statement published on Telegram minutes before his dismissal was confirmed, Bakanov said “miscalculations” had been made during his tenure, but that he was proud of his record.

 

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order Tuesday aimed at increasing the flow of information to families of Americans detained abroad and at imposing sanctions on the criminals, terrorists or government officials who hold them captive. The executive order comes as the ongoing detention in Russia of WNBA star Brittney Griner has brought increased attention to the population of Americans who are jailed abroad and designated by the U.S. as wrongfully detained. The action relies on a section of the Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act — named after a retired FBI agent who vanished in Iran 15 years ago and is now presumed dead — that authorizes the president to impose sanctions, including visa revocations, on people believed to be involved in the wrongful detention of Americans.

 

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TOKYO (Guardian) -- North Korea could send workers to two Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s ambassador in Pyongyang. According to NK News, a Seoul-based website, ambassador Alexander Matsegora said North Korean workers could help rebuild the war-shattered infrastructure in the self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Matsegora said there were potentially “a lot of opportunities” for economic cooperation between the North and the self-proclaimed republics in Ukraine’s Donbas region, despite UN sanctions. His comments come days after North Korea became one of only a few countries to recognize the two territories, accusing the Ukrainian government of being part of Washington’s “hostile” stance towards Pyongyang. The North’s foreign ministry said: “Ukraine has no the right to raise issue or dispute our legitimate exercise of sovereignty after committing an act that severely lacks fairness and justice between nations by actively joining the U.S. unjust and illegal hostile policy in the past.” In response, a furious Ukraine cut off diplomatic ties with North Korea and accused it of undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

 

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LONDON (AP) — Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday amid a heat wave that has seized swaths of Europe — and the national weather forecaster predicted it would get hotter still in a country ill prepared for such extremes. The typically temperate nation was just the latest to be walloped by unusually hot, dry weather that has gripped the continent since last week, triggering wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans and leading to hundreds of heat-related deaths. Images of flames racing toward a French beach and Britons sweltering — even at the seaside — have driven home concerns about climate change. The UK Met Office registered a provisional reading of 40.2 degrees Celsius (104.4 degrees Fahrenheit) at Heathrow Airport — breaking the record set just an hour earlier. Before Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F), a record set in 2019.

 

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MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani rescuers Tuesday resumed a search for 29 people who went missing after a passenger boat carrying nearly 100 members of a wedding party capsized in the fast-flowing Indus river. Twenty-one women and children were killed in the disaster a day earlier, a senior government official said. Divers from Pakistan’s army were expected to join the rescue operation in Sadiqabad, a district in the eastern Punjab province, government official Saleem Assi said. He said the bodies of 21 people had so far been recovered and handed over to their relatives. Assi said at least 65 people, including the bridegroom, were rescued on Monday, but 29 people, including children, were still missing. The missing passengers are feared dead. Their relatives are still waiting hopefully along the riverbank to witness the rescue operation. Assi said at least 90 people were on board the boat when the boat capsized.