Biden gets praise, criticism for calling Russia's actions in Ukraine 'genocide' – Newstrends
Connect with us

International

Biden gets praise, criticism for calling Russia’s actions in Ukraine ‘genocide’

Published

on

U.S. President Joe Biden

President Joe Biden is getting both praise and criticism after doubling down on describing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine as “genocide” — the first time he’s used the term since the invasion began nearly 50 days ago — even as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for weeks has claimed that is what’s happening on the ground.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended his use of the term, as she did when Biden called Putin a “war criminal” and when he said “cannot remain in power,” saying Wednesday the president was simply expressing “what he feels.”

“The president was speaking to what we all see, and what he feels as clear as day in terms of the atrocities happening on the ground, as he also noted yesterday,” Psaki said, before tempering his use of the term. “Of course, there will be a legal process that plays out in the courtroom but he was speaking to what he has seen on the ground, what we have all seen in terms of the atrocities on the ground.”

Pressed directly on whether Biden’s comments might conflict with the U.S. policy, Psaki dismissed concerns and repeated the requirement of a “legal process” which can sometimes take years.

“He was not getting ahead of that. He was speaking on what he feels he sees on the ground,” she said.

“I do not think anybody is confused about the atrocities we are seeing on the ground — and different leaders around the world describe it in different ways,” Psaki added later on. “It is unquestionable that what we are seeing is horrific, the targeting of civilians, hospitals, children. The president was calling it like he sees it, and that is what he does.”

READ ALSO:

State Department spokesperson Ned Price gave a similar line at his briefing Wednesday, saying Biden used the term based on “impressions that he has seen and that we all have seen,” but noted the U.S. is working with international lawyers to determine if Russia’s crimes meet the legal threshold.

During prepared remarks in Iowa Tuesday blaming inflation and gas prices on “Putin’s price hike,” Biden said, for the first time, “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should on hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide half a world away.”

His use of the word raised questions among Washington reporters about whether it was an ad-libbed moment or a policy shift from the White House — until Biden later insisted he meant exactly what said.

“Yes, I called it genocide,” Biden told reporters after his remarks. “Because it has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian. And the evidence is mounting. It’s different than it was last week, the more evidence is coming out of the — literally, the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine and we’re going to only learn more and more about the devastation.”

Genocide is defined as an act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” according to the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Biden went on to acknowledge the U.S. government has an internal, legal process for designating whether genocide has occurred but still stood by what he indicated was his opinion.

“We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me,” Biden added.

Zelenskyy has argued — and pleaded — for weeks that Russia has met this definition and called on Western leaders to use the same term, so was quick to applaud Biden’s comments as “true words of a true leader.”

The Kremlin, meanwhile, blasted the comment as Putin indicated this week indicated his invasion won’t stop until his goals are met and said peace talks with Kyiv had reached a “dead end.”

“We consider this kind of effort to distort the situation unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday. “This is hardly acceptable from a president of the United States, a country that has committed well-known crimes in recent times.”

It’s not clear how many Western leaders will go as far as Biden and Zelenskyy — or what will take for them to reach the same conclusion.

READ ALSO:

No other Western nations have made the determination, aside from Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas tying Russia’s crimes to the term in a tweet. French President Emmanuel Macron suggested Wednesday he’s more “careful” with his words than the American president, saying only that “war crimes” have been confirmed.

“So far, it has been established that war crimes were committed by the Russian army and that it is now necessary to find those responsible and bring them to justice,” Macron told France 2 in an interview.

“I am very careful with some terms [genocide] these days,” he added. “I’m not sure the escalation of words is helping the cause right now.”

Asked directly by ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce about Macron’s criticism Wednesday, Psaki declined to comment.

Macron also rebuked Biden’s language last month, when asked about Biden calling Putin a “butcher” and saying he “cannot remain in power” during remarks in Warsaw.

“I wouldn’t use those terms, because I continue to speak to President Putin,” Macron said in another interview with France 3. “Because what do we want to do collectively? We want to stop the war that Russia launched in Ukraine, without waging war and without escalation.”

Biden stood by his words then, saying he was “expressing moral outrage” but also clarified that he wasn’t “articulating a policy change” amid some fallout.

It’s unclear now what pushed Biden to change his stance on using the term “genocide” — because asked directly last week if he thought the atrocities documented in Bucha were genocide, he said no.

“I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter, you saw what happened in Bucha,” Biden said on April 4. “He is a war criminal — but we have to gather the information, we have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue to fight, and we have to gather all the detail so this could be an actual — have a war crime trial. This guy is brutal. What’s happening in Bucha is outrageous, and everyone sees it.”

Asked directly, “You agree this is genocide?”

“No, it is a war crime,” Biden replied.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan followed Biden’s comment the same day by saying the administration had not yet seen the “systematic deprivation of life” necessary to meet the definition of genocide.

“This is something we, of course, continue to monitor every day. Based on what we have seen so far, we have seen atrocities, we have seen war crimes. We have not yet seen a level of systematic deprivation of life of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide,” Sullivan said.

ABC

International

Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

Published

on

Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

Google says it has blocked over 5.5 billion adverts and suspended 12.7 million others for violating its policies.

The search engine giant also said in a statement on Wednesday that it had removed adverts from over 2.1 billion pages.

“Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem.

“Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet,” it said.

READ ALSO:

In 2023, it said scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise.

It added, “Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.”

Google blocks 5.5 billion adverts, suspends 12.7 million accounts

Continue Reading

International

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Published

on

Sangita Yadav

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Two minor girls lost their lives after their mother killed them and hanged herself to death on Tuesday, as her her in-laws tortured her mentally due to her inability to bear a son in Bhopal. Tragically, the woman and two of her daughters have succumbed to the ordeal, while her three-year-old daughter fights for her life in the hospital.

The woman, identified as Sangita Yadav, was 28 years old, her daughters Aradhya was 5 years old, and Shristi was 2. The incident occurred in Roadiya village, located 35 kilometers from Bhopal in the Gunaga police station area. The matter came to light on Tuesday afternoon. The bodies of the victims were taken to Hamidia Hospital. According to Gunaga police station in-charge Arun Sharma, initial investigations suggest that the woman committed suicide and murdered her three daughters. However, further investigation is underway to confirm the circumstances.

According to Dainik Bhaskar, the deceased woman’s brother, Neeraj Yadav, has accused the in-laws of harassing his sister. Neeraj revealed that Sangita had sent distressing messages to him at night. In one of the messages, she stated that she was feeling unwell. She mentioned that she was taking poison as nobody would survive, and everyone would die.

READ ALSO:

“Neeraj said, “After that, I tried calling her on her mobile phone, but I didn’t get any response. I also called Sangita’s brother-in-law, but he didn’t pick up the phone twice. When he finally answered the third time, I asked him if everything was fine at home. He said yes, everything was fine. I didn’t trust him.” Then, he asked his relatives, who stayed nearby, to go and check once. Thet reached and confirmed, that the bodies of all three kept inside.

Neeraj revealed that his sister was troubled by her in-laws. Whenever she visited her maternal home, Sangita’s husband, Rajat Yadav, would threaten her, saying, ‘If you don’t come back, I will die in an accident. I will electrocute myself.’ On March 4th, there was a wedding in the family, where they drank alcohol and created a ruckus. They took his sister back with them that night. After the wedding, everyone collectively harassed her, which left her distraught, leading her to hang herself along with her daughters.

The authenticity of the suicide note is questionable. Relatives alleged that when Sangita was found hanging, there was a letter stuck to her back, presumed to be a suicide note. In it, she purportedly wrote about a lump in her stomach preventing her from bearing more children and not being able to give birth to a son for her family. However, some family members directly denied the existence of any such letter. Nevertheless, according to the present police officers, a letter has been recovered from the scene.”

Mother kills daughters, commits suicide amid in-laws’ torture for not bearing son

Continue Reading

International

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

Published

on

Orlando Coleman

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

A fake pastor who had at least 10 wives has been thrown in jail after marrying two women.

Orlando Coleman trawled black churches across the US under the guise of a travelling bishop, collecting spouses as he went. The 51-year-old would introduce himself to new congregations as a member of the clergy, and was able to dupe at least 10 different women into exchanging vows with him.

Coleman from Houston had presented himself as the founder of several churches as well as a Pentecostal preacher on social media. Despite pleading guilty to bigamy in July 2023 and being placed on probation for marrying two women simultaneously, he wedded another woman two months later.

Now, he has been put behind bars for three years for marrying multiple women since 2019.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said: “At the heart of this repeat offender’s schemes was a plan to defraud women and take advantage of them for financial gain.

“This man used the church to camouflage his scams and hide from any accountability or responsibility.”

Coleman’s web of deceit started to unravel in 2021 when he married a woman in Houston, but his new wife saw he was receiving money from another woman in Virginia.

When his then current wife contacted the woman from Virginia it was revealed that she too was married to Coleman.

Coleman’s Houston wife then contacted the Harris County Sheriff’s Office with the revelation, who in turn launched an investigation and filed bigamy charges.

In July 2023, Coleman pleaded guilty to bigamy in exchange for three years of deferred adjudication probation.

However, just two months later, while still married to the woman in Virginia, Coleman tied the knot again with another woman in Kentucky, committing another offense of bigamy.

Upon learning about Coleman’s new marriage, prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office moved to revoke his probation. In a hearing on March 11, a judge sentenced Coleman to three years in prison.

Prosecutors say Coleman married the women for housing and financial security.

After introducing himself as a Protestant pastor or bishop, Coleman would propose marriage.

If a woman accepted, he would move in with her and allow her to foot the cost of his housing and food.

“That’s the only thing he had to offer and to validate his word – the proposal to marry – that was something big,” Assistant District Attorney Vanessa Goussen told The New York Times.

“Getting proposed to was a big gesture for these women, and that corroborated his guise that he’s a godly person.”

Some of the women filed for divorce after Coleman fled to another state.

Coleman is currently being held at the Harris County Jail.

‘Fake pastor’ with at least 10 wives jailed for marrying two at same time

Continue Reading

Trending

Skip to content