World
Biden will give election-year roast at annual correspondents' dinner as protests await over Gaza war
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is set to deliver an election-year roast Saturday night before a large crowd of journalists, celebrities and politicians against the backdrop of growing protests over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
In previous years, Biden, like most of his predecessors, has used the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner to needle media coverage of his administration and jab at political rivals, notably Republican rival Donald Trump.
But with protesters pledging to gather outside the dinner site, any effort by Biden to make light of Washington’s foibles and the pitfalls of the presidential campaign will have to be balanced against concerns over the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict. Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s 6-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.
Biden’s speech before an expected crowd of nearly 3,000 people at a Washington hotel will be followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live,” who is sure to take some pokes at the president as well as his opponents.
There will also likely be a spotlight on the many journalists detained and otherwise persecuted around the globe for doing their jobs, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since March 2023.
But before the president gets to the Washington Hilton — where the event has been held for decades — he was expected to pass hundreds of people rallying along the path of Biden’s motorcade and nearby to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.
Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”
The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.”
More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.
“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”
One organizer complained that the White House correspondents’ association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to request for comment.
According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.
“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.
Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”
In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.
___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
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Israel’s military has recovered the body of a Thai man who was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz and killed in captivity by terror group Kataeb al-Mujahideen shortly after the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023.
Natthapong Pinta’s body was brought back to Israel after an operation by the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli Security Agency, the military said on Saturday.
“Yesterday (Friday), in a joint IDF and ISA operation, the body of Nattapong Pinta, a Thai national, was recovered from the Rafah area in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF and ISA said in a joint statement.
His family in Thailand was notified by the Thai Embassy and by Brig. Gen. (Res.) Gal Hirsch, who serves as the coordinator for Captives and Missing Persons in the Israeli prime minister’s office.
ISRAEL RECOVERS BODIES OF 2 HOSTAGES FROM GAZA STRIP: ‘MAY THEIR MEMORY BE BLESSED’
The body of Natthapong Pinta, a Thai national who was killed in captivity in Gaza, has been recovered by Israeli forces. (IDF)
Natthapong had come to Israel to work in agriculture, according to Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz.
“I send my deepest condolences to his wife, young son, and family, and I thank our heroic soldiers who, time and again, operate under fire to bring back all the hostages, out of a profound moral commitment,” Katz said in a statement.
“We will not rest until all the hostages — both the living and the fallen — are returned to Israel,” he continued.
7 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE ISRAELI MILITARY’S REPORT ON WHAT HAPPENED ON OCT. 7
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz offered his condolences to the family of Natthapong Pinta. (REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a news release that “the recovery of Nattapong Pinta represents the fulfillment of a basic moral and human obligation, allowing his family the closure they desperately need.”
In a statement, the Hostage Families Forum said: “We stand with Nattapong’s family today and share in their grief.”
“While the pain is immense, his family will finally have certainty after 20 terrible and agonizing months of devastating uncertainty,” the statement continued. “Every family deserves such certainty to begin their personal healing journey.”
Natthapong Pinta’s body was returned to Israel after an operation by the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli Security Agency. (FNC IDF)
Fifty-five hostages remain in Gaza – 33 of whom are confirmed dead, but at least 20 are alive. There is grave concern for the lives of two hostages.
Fox News’ Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
Published on •Updated
A large Russian attack with drones and missiles has hit Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring 21, local officials said. The barrage — the latest in near daily widescale attacks — included aerial glide bombs that have become part of a fierce Russian onslaught in the three-year-war .
The intensity of the Russian attacks on Ukraine over the past weeks has further dampened hopes that the warring sides could reach a peace deal anytime soon — especially after Kyiv recently embarrassed the Kremlin with a surprise drone attack on military air bases deep inside Russia.
According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russia struck with 215 missiles and drones overnight, and Ukrainian air defenses shot down and neutralised 87 drones and seven missiles.
Several other areas in Ukraine were also hit, including the regions of Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, and the city of Ternopil, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X.
“To put an end to Russia’s killing and destruction, more pressure on Moscow is required, as are more steps to strengthen Ukraine,” he said.
Kharkiv’s mayor Ihor Terekhov said the attack also damaged 18 apartment buildings and 13 private homes. Terekhov said it was “the most powerful attack” on the city since the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Kharkiv’s regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said two districts in the city were struck with three missiles, five aerial glide bombs and 48 drones. Among the injured were two children, a month and a half year old baby boy and a 14-year old girl, he added.
The attack on Kharkiv comes one day after Russia launched one of the fiercest missile and drone barrages on Ukraine, striking six Ukrainian territories and killing at least killing at least six people and injuring about 80. Among the dead were three emergency responders in Kyiv, one person in Lutsk and two people in Chernihiv.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down a Russian Su-35 fighter jet on the Kursk front inside Russia, the Ukrainian daily Ukrainskaia Pravda reported. No more details were given immediately.
U.S. President Donald Trump said this week that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, told him Moscow would respond to Ukraine’s attack on Russian military airfields last Sunday with “Operation Spiderweb”
In a new statement bound to cause offense in Kyiv and amongst its allies, Trump told journalists on board Air Force One on Friday evening local time when asked about “Operation Spiderweb”:
“They gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night. That’s the thing I didn’t like about it. When I saw it I said ‘Here we go, now it’s going to be a strike’.”
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