Biden Honors Kenya as the East African Nation Prepares to Send Forces to Haiti
The New York Times
President Biden welcomed President William Ruto of Kenya and said he intended to designate his country as a “major non-NATO ally.”
President Biden suggested on Thursday that the decision to have Kenya lead a security mission in Haiti, without troops from the United States on the ground, was meant to avoid the fraught history of American intervention in the deeply troubled country.
Mr. Biden said the United States would contribute money, logistical support and equipment as Kenya and other nations try to quell the gang violence that erupted there after the assassination of the country’s president in 2021. But in response to a question about why American troops will not participate, Mr. Biden alluded to previous U.S. interventions there.
“We concluded that for the United States to deploy forces in the hemisphere just raises all kinds of questions that can be easily misrepresented by what we’re trying to do,” he said during a news conference at the White House with President William Ruto of Kenya.
“We’re in a situation where we want to do all we can without looking like America, once again, is stepping over and deciding this is what must be done,” he added.
The history of American involvement in Haiti is a difficult one that includes a decades-long occupation, from 1915 to 1934, that left deep resentments among people on the island. American troops again landed on Haiti in 1994, following a military coup, a mission that left more Haitians embittered.
The issue is also sensitive in Kenya, where some have criticized Mr. Ruto for paying too much attention to a crisis overseas while problems persist at home. Mr. Ruto dismissed a question about that issue from a Kenyan reporter during the news conference.
A businessman in the Bronx falsified information on thousands of returns, committing one of the largest tax frauds in Department of Justice history, prosecutors said.
Officials in Wisconsin gave little new information on Tuesday about a shooting that left a student and a teacher dead and six others injured.
The president-elect’s latest attempt to overturn his Manhattan conviction was rebuffed by the judge overseeing the case, who called it “mere hearsay and conjecture.”
Undocumented immigrants whose children or spouses are U.S. citizens are feeling particularly vulnerable to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threats to push them out.
The man whom authorities call a serial killer was charged with second-degree murder in the case of Valerie Mack, who disappeared in 2000.
The Commerce Department is banning the few remaining operations of China Telecom in the United States, a move that appears unlikely to deter Beijing from conducting sophisticated cyberoperations.
The police in Wisconsin are working to establish a motive for the attack, which left a student and teacher dead and six others injured.
The defendant, Rex Heuermann, is due in court Tuesday. Investigators have been trying to tie him to other unsolved killings on Long Island.
Some Republicans have said that a constitutional convention is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their long-ago calls for one, and California will soon consider whether to do the same.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board voted to withhold as much as $4.3 million in matching funds from Mayor Eric Adams, hampering his re-election bid.
He built Mississippi’s Republican Party into a conservative powerhouse, making himself a regional power broker in the process.