PHILADELPHIA: President Joe Biden on Tuesday blamed Republicans and the Russian invasion of Ukraine for soaring US inflation, in a bid to deflect voter anger over his inability to keep prices down. Speaking to trade unions in Philadelphia on the eve of the Federal Reserve’s likely decision to raise interest rates again, Biden said inflation is “sapping the strength of a lot of families.” Biden said he feels Americans’ pain, having grown up in a family where news that the price of gasoline had gone up “was a conversation at the dinner table. It mattered.”—AFP