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News from our WH team: President Joe Biden will speak shortly from the White House. Reporters have been asked to gather for his speech. The remarks are unscheduled

Pavlyuk, 53, was a surviving resident of besieged Ukrainian town where gruesome evidence of killings and torture has come to light following withdrawal of Russian forces. He told when Russian troops came they killed all the men who were younger than 50, including two of Pavlyuk's friends. Pavlyuk was given 20 minutes to bury them. He showed shallow graves he hastily dug, each marked with a plank of wood topped with a religious icon. He wanted to give whatever dignity he could. "But it's too shallow," Pavlyuk said. "I just wanted to protect them from the dogs." Pavlyuk and other...

Ukrainian President Zelenskiy said the situation in Borodianka was "significantly more dreadful" than nearby Bucha, where Russian forces' killing of civilians has been broadly condemned. In Borodianka, 60 km (37 miles) northwest of Kyiv, families looking for relatives watched diggers search through rubble of an apartment. The building was charred the middle section razed to the ground leaving a gaping hole. "My mother, my brother, brother’s wife, his mother and father-in-law, are still there, as well as other people who were in the basement," said resident Vadym Zagrebelnyi. "But there were other people on the upper floors with children. I...

President Biden said Friday that he wanted to cross the Polish border into Ukraine, but “they will not let me” — without clarifying who exactly told the leader of the free world he wasn’t allowed to thumb his nose at Russia’s invasion. “I’m here in Poland to see firsthand the humanitarian crisis and quite frankly, part of my disappointment is that I can’t see it firsthand like I have in other places,” Biden said at a briefing on humanitarian operations in Rzeszow, southeastern Poland.

President Joe Biden used an event marking the 10-year anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial to ridicule Republicans who polls show have concluded he is not their legitimate president. Biden bemoaned the 'something like 20 per cent of Republicans, half the Republicans' who think 'I am not your president. Donald Trump is still your president,' amid polling that shows large swaths of Republicans believe Trump's repeated claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. 'As the Catholics say, "oh my God!"' he said, earning laughs. But much of his speech was deadly serious. Biden spoke at the memorial's site...

By the middle of the week, as cities across Afghanistan were falling like dominoes to the Taliban and U.S. diplomats appeared increasingly at risk, President Biden’s plan for an orderly end to the United States’ longest war was quickly falling apart. On Wednesday evening, Biden convened his top advisers to assess the ominous turn of events. One by one, in the cramped Situation Room in the White House basement, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the administration’s options for ensuring the security of U.S. personnel. Biden asked them to return...

WASHINGTON—The Commerce Department said Monday it was rescinding a list of prohibited transactions with TikTok and WeChat that were issued in September as the Trump administration sought to block new U.S. downloads of both Chinese-owned apps.The withdrawals came after President Joe Biden earlier this month withdrew a series of Trump-era executive orders that sought to ban new downloads of Tencent-owned WeChat and TikTok, and ordered a Commerce Department review of security concerns posed by those apps and others.The Commerce Department under Trump also had sought to ban other transactions that would have effectively banned WeChat’s use in the United States...

The White House on Monday blocked President Joe Biden from speaking with reporters about a signature administration effort on entitlements. The Biden administration kicked off a messaging push to promote the child tax credit, but Biden was not scheduled to speak to reporters. Families will begin receiving monthly payments in their bank accounts of $250 or more per child beginning in July, a massive entitlement program that comes as part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue plan. Biden was not part of the White House’s number one messaging strategy of the day. His daily schedule for Monday only featured a...

President Biden on Thursday signed into law the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, turning the oldest celebration of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. into the country’s newest national holiday. “Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments … they embrace them. Great nations don’t walk away, they come to terms with the mistakes they’ve made. In remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger,” Biden said at a signing ceremony at the White House attended by Vice President Harris, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other lawmakers. “The truth is, it’s simply not enough to...

Joe Biden's White House tried to put out the flames of a major transatlantic bust-up with Britain today after the president was accused of rebuking Boris Johnson for 'inflaming tensions' in Northern Ireland. Brexiteer Tories branded the 78-year-old Democrat 'senile' after he failed to side with the UK in its 'sausage war' bust-up with the EU. The US President instead used his diplomats to express 'great concern' over the conflict centred on post-Brexit trade rules agreed last year by both sides, which the UK is now seeking to change, the Times reported today. The US is said to have issued...

President Barack Obama said in an interview published Tuesday his former Vice President Joe Biden was finishing the work he began to redistribute wealth through programs like Obamacare. “I think that what we’re seeing now, is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job,” he said in an interview with New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. “And I think it’ll be an interesting test. Ninety percent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about…”

“I know nothing” was the comic catchphrase of Sgt. Schultz on Hogan’s Heroes. He occasionally varied or elaborated on it, adding “I see nothing.” In the clip below, for example, he declares, “I see nothing. I was not here. I did not even get up this morning.” After its customary warning to protect civilian life, the IDF took out the 12-story Jala Tower housing Hamas military intelligence offices as well as offices for Al Jazeera and the Associated Press. As far as I can tell from reports such as this photo-filled story in the Daily Mail, no lives were lost...

Israel's air strikes on the militant Hamas movement in Gaza have forced the Middle East on to Joe Biden's agenda amid new questions about how his emphasis on human rights applies to Palestinians. It has also laid bare the extent to which the Israeli right has been empowered in occupied East Jerusalem during the presidency of Donald Trump. Unrest there sparked wider battles, and could draw the Biden administration more deeply into the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict even after this latest seismic eruption abates. That's a prospect President Biden and his senior advisers would like to avoid. They've made clear their...

Ric Grenell, who served as acting director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration, is blasting Susan Rice and says she is acting as a “shadow president.” His comments came during an interview on CPAC Now. An excerpt of the interview was posted on Twitter by the Conservative Political Action conference. “Susan Rice has been appointed as domestic policy adviser,” he said. “ That’s a joke. She doesn’t know anything about domestic policy. “So, she’s a foreign policy expert that’s been placed in the domestic policy role. And that is just a clear signal that all of our international issues,...

BIDEN: “There’s been a lot of discussion since Friday report that people are being paid to stay home rather than go to work. We don’t see much evidence of that."

resident Joe Biden has the firearms industry in his crosshairs. During his Rose Garden address last month, Biden reaffirmed his support for repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCCA) of 2005. “This is the only outfit that is exempt from being sued. If I get one thing on my list — (if) the Lord came down and said, 'Joe, you get one of these' — give me that one," Biden said. "Most people don’t realize, the only industry in America, billion-dollar industry, that can’t be sued, exempt from being sued, are gun manufacturers.” Biden’s hostility to this...

The two things I enjoy reading the most are report cards for either of my boys with straight-As, or a Democrat-friendly puff-piece in a major publication gone horribly wrong.Since report cards aren’t due for another three weeks, I guess we’ll just have to make do today with Sarah Baxter’s clueless revelation that Joe Biden isn’t up to the job of being president — and that he’s basically turned the job over to an appointee who didn’t even need Senate consent.Hell, Baxter’s Times (of London) article even puts “President Klain” right up top in the headline.“President… WHO?” I hear you ask.Before...

America's emerging limbo between a full-blown pandemic and a return to normal is throwing up new public health dilemmas that spark instant political fires -- like a fresh round of grandstanding over mask wearing. Top White House adviser Anita Dunn Sunday defended President Joe Biden over his continued use of a mask outdoors -- even though the practice appears to conflict with new and relaxed administration guidelines for fully vaccinated citizens. In comments that didn't necessarily clarify the situation, Dunn told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" that "extra precautions" were being taken for the President and that...

US President Joe Biden removed sanctions on Friday that former President Donald Trump placed on two top officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) reports France 24. The sanctions were among the previous administration’s more aggressive moves targeting international institutions and officials. Pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC blasted the move warning that it could have damaging affects on Israel who is the target of an investigation by the Hague for war crimes. In a tweet on Friday, AIPAC wrote: “We are disappointed the administration is revoking sanctions on the International Criminal Court officials who are pursuing a baseless and discriminatory attack...

BEIJING is using an "insidious" policy of coercion and pressure to assert its control over the South China Sea, a leading Asia analyst has said. China has long claimed sovereignty over the disputed waters, saying that the entire waterway up to the coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan belongs to it. Beijing's claim is based on the U-shaped nine-dash line etched onto a map in the 1940s by a Chinese geographer. In 2016, an international court of arbitration dismissed China's territorial claims. Despite the ruling, the People's Republic has in recent years built artificial islands in the waters claimed...