International Energy Agency announces largest ever release of reserve oil amid Iran war
A general view of an oil storage depot March 10, 2026. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The International Energy Agency on Wednesday said it would release 400 million barrels of oil from its strategic reserve, marking the largest oil release in the group’s history as the global economy grapples with fallout from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
Oil prices soared after the outbreak of war as traders feared a prolonged blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a trading route that facilitates the transport of about one-fifth of the global oil supply.
Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels of oil passed through the strait each day, but tanker traffic has now “all but stopped,” Faithe Birol, executive director of the IEA, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
“The conflict in the Middle East is having significant impacts on global oil and gas markets with major implications for energy security, energy affordability and the global economy,” added Birol, whose organization counts 32 member nations, including the U.S. The release from the IEA’s oil reserve on Wednesday would make up for the lost oil flow for roughly 20 days. Taken together, IEA member countries retained about 1.2 billion barrels of reserve oil prior to the latest release, the group previously said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia attends a rally for him as he arrives for his first check-in at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Baltimore Field Office the day after a federal judge ordered his release from a detention in Pennsylvania, on December 12, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The federal judge overseeing Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s immigration case is scheduled to hear arguments Monday over whether ICE should be allowed to re-detain Abrego Garcia while the government attempts to deport him to Liberia or another country.
Abrego Garcia was released on Dec. 11 after the judge, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, found the government had detained him “without lawful authority.”
In part, Judge Xinis said he had not been issued a formal order of removal during his immigration proceedings in 2019, when a judge also barred the government from deporting him to his native El Salvador due to his fear of persecution.
Following Abrego Garcia’s release, an immigration judge “corrected” the error and added a removal order to his record, finding that it “was erroneously omitted.”
Abrego Garcia, who had been living in Maryland with his wife and children, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, despite the 2019 court order barring his removal to that country, after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13, which he denies.
He was brought back to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee, after which Judge Xinis released him from ICE detention while he awaits trial. He is scheduled to go to trial on the Tennessee charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty, in January.
On Friday, his attorneys filed a motion seeking sanctions against the Trump administration for allegedly violating a court order that barred officials from making extrajudicial statements that could impact the case. After Abrego Garcia’s release from ICE detention, Chief Border Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino called him an “alien smuggler” and “wife beater” on national TV, his attorneys said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is seen during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for judicial nominees in Dirksen building, November 19, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — For several years, as U.S. authorities have struggled to stop online extremist networks like “764” from pushing teens to livestream acts of violence or self-harm, including their own suicide, the Justice Department has faced what authorities and victims both say is a vexing challenge: Such coercion is not a federal crime.
That could change if the Republican chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department, have their way.
Ahead of a committee hearing Tuesday on the evolving threat of online predators, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, introduced a first-of-its-kind piece of legislation that would explicitly criminalize the intentional coercing of minors to physically harm themselves or others, including animals.
Under their proposal, called the Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act, some perpetrators could face life in prison.
“When offenders are eventually caught by law enforcement, prosecutors charge them with the most appropriate charges,” Grassley said in the hearing. “However, there are no specific laws to address the terrible and shocking acts conducted by gore groups such as 764 and those engaged in sextortion.”
Grassley and Durbin’s proposed legislation comes in the wake of several recent reports from ABC News about the growing threat of 764, including an extended interview with the parents of Jay Taylor, a 13-year-old from outside Seattle who in 2022 took his own life — and aired it live on social media — after allegedly being manipulated by a member of 764 in Germany.
“It’s almost biblical in its definition of evil, what happened,” Jay’s father, Colby Taylor, said in the ABC News interview. “Ten minutes of murder.”
That’s why the U.S. needs “to have something in our actual laws that allows us to prosecute” cases as “digital homicides,” he said.
The FBI has described 764 as one of the greatest current threats to teens online, with members finding vulnerable victims on popular platforms, eliciting private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then using that sensitive material to blackmail victims into mutilating themselves or taking other violent action — all while streaming it on social media so others can watch and then disseminate recordings of it.
According to authorities, Jay Taylor is just one of many victims pushed to suicide.
German law explicitly criminalizes such coercion, so the young man allegedly behind Jay Taylor’s death — calling himself “White Tiger” online — has been charged in Germany with murder, along with 203 other offenses involving more than 30 other victims.
According to former FBI agent Pat McMonigle, who helped uncover “White Tiger” and what he allegedly did, making online coercion a federal crime in the United States “would be very helpful.”
“This is truly a bipartisan thing that … could effect some change,” he recently told ABC News.
According to Grassley’s office, the Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act — or “ECCHO Act” — would “specifically go after” networks like 764, creating a penalty of up to life in prison for those who intentionally coerce someone into even just attempting to die by suicide or who coerce someone into taking action that results in the death or killing of another person.
The bill would also create a 30-year maximum penalty for other harmful conduct that does not involve a death, Grassley’s office said.
“Because of modern technology, child predators from anywhere in the world can target American kids online,” Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate as the Democratic whip, said in a statement. “As technology has evolved, so have online child predators.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says it received more than 2,000 reports of abuse tied to 764 or similar networks in the first nine months of this year.
As ABC News has previously reported, the FBI is investigating more than 350 people across the United States with suspected ties to 764 or similar networks. And the Justice Department has already publicly charged at least 35 such people in recent years.
Their victims have been as young as nine years old, according to authorities.
FBI Director Kash Patel recently called 764 “modern-day terrorism in America.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Tuesday will include testimony from an executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a former federal prosecutor who retired from the Justice Department earlier this year, and the mother of a teenage son who was victimized by sextortion and then took his own life, unrelated to 764.
Some states have enacted laws aimed at helping to protect children online. And in May, President Donald Trump signed into law the TAKE IT DOWN Act, which prohibits the nonconsensual publication of sexually-explicit images and pushes online platforms to remove violative material.
Several lawmakers — from both sides of the aisle — have introduced additional pieces of legislation in both the House and Senate that could help fight online predators.
But those laws and proposals don’t specifically address the coerced self-harm that is emblematic of 764 and similar online networks.
On Tuesday, Grassley and Durbin are expected to introduce two other pieces of legislation to help protect children online, including the Stop Sextortion Act, which would amend existing laws to address offenders who use threats to distribute sexually-explicit material to extort and coerce minors, according to Grassley’s office.
“I’m proud to introduce these bills to protect children from online abuse, hold dangerous criminals accountable and secure much needed justice for victims and their families,” Grassley said in his statement.
Durbin similarly said he was “proud to join” Grassley’s effort.
At least one other top Democrat in the Senate, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Virginia, has previously expressed support for such legislation, recently telling ABC News that online coercion is “a total crime,” even if “it’s through a digital connection.”
Still, it’s unclear how successful Grassley and Durbin’s effort will be.
One high-profile piece of legislation aimed at protecting children online, the Kids Online Safety Act, passed overwhelmingly in the Senate last year — by a vote of 93 to 1 — only to languish in the House, largely due to First Amendment concerns.
“This is a problem that is going to continue to morph, and if we don’t do something, potentially could get worse,” Sen. Warner told ABC News.
Ellen Greenberg,(L) in a photo provided by family. Lamb McErlane PC
(PHILADELPHIA) — The family of Ellen Greenberg is celebrating the prospect of a federal investigation into the way various agencies in Philadelphia handled her death.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday that the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued subpoenas as part of an inquiry into whether Greenberg’s death was properly investigated.
The family of the 27-year-old teacher has long claimed the case was “embarrassingly botched” and warranted additional investigation.
“The prospects of the federal United States attorneys investigating any aspect of Ellen’s murder is a dream come true for [her parents] Sandee and Josh,” family attorney Joseph Podraza said in a statement to ABC News. “We have only wanted justice for Ellen and now have renewed hope this will occur. Sandee and Josh and their lawyers will continue to pursue and support all avenues to secure justice in this matter.”
The US Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania declined to comment. ABC News has reached out to various offices involved in Greenberg’s case, including the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office and the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, which have not immediately returned request for comment.
Greenberg was found by her fiancé in January 2011 in the kitchen of their home with a 10-inch knife in her chest and over a dozen stab wounds. The fiancé told police at the time the door was locked from the inside and investigators said there were no signs of forced entry or defensive wounds.
The Philadelphia medical examiner’s office initially ruled Greenberg’s death a homicide, then switched to suicide.
In October, the medical examiner affirmed she died by suicide after the medical examiner’s office agreed to reassess the case following lawsuits from her family that contested the initial finding. Dr. Marlon Osbourne, the pathologist who performed the original autopsy, stated in a sworn statement in 2024 that “Ellen’s manner of death should be designated as something other than suicide.”
The Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office agreed to review the case again as part of a settlement with her family to determine whether her manner of death should be changed to “could not be determined” or “homicide.”
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lindsay Simon stated in the 32-page review that it was her opinion that Greenberg’s death is “best classified as ‘Suicide.'”
Simon determined Greenberg had 23 stab and incised wounds in her neck, head and front torso — up from the initial autopsy report’s finding of 20 wounds — many of which “would best be categorized as hesitation wounds.” Additionally, she determined there were another 20 bruises from the initial report, raising the number to 31. No defensive wounds were found on her body, and “the fact remains that Ellen would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself,” Simon stated.
The evidence did not indicate any foul play or that there was anyone else in the apartment at the time of her death, but that Greenberg was “suffering from anxiety at the time of her death” and that the “anxiety appeared mostly to be due to her work as a teacher,” according to the review.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide — free, confidential help is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call or text the national lifeline at 988.
