Also on today’s menu:
China Releases Australian Journalist
Santos Faces Additional Fraud Charges
Rushdie Writes Book About Knife Attack
President Joe Biden Jr. has pledged a “swift, decisive, and overwhelming” response to Hamas militants’ killing of 14 Americans and their taking of American hostages during the October 7 attack on Israel, but what that response will be remains unknown. Lawmakers cannot introduce or pass legislation until the U.S. House elects a speaker, and representatives have no clear consensus on who that should be. House Republicans met behind closed doors to hear from the leading candidates, Ohio’s Jim Jordan and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, overnight.
Biden said after a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his administration is ready to assist in the Jewish state’s security, and “we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”
Israel's death toll has reached 1,200, with more than 2,700 wounded, while retaliatory strikes have killed 1,055 people and wounded 5,184. The Israeli military urged Palestinians to leave Gaza using a border crossing with Egypt, but Palestinians cannot cross the border without a special permit. Israeli forces have bombed the crossing three times in recent days, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In responding to the attack, Israel must weigh the survival of American hostages against neutralizing active threats from Hamas. A massive ground operation against Hamas would mean that most, if not all, of the hostages would likely be killed.
Biden emphasized the need to keep the conflict from spreading to other countries: “Let me say again, to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t. Our hearts may be broken, but our resolve is clear.”
China Releases Australian Journalist
Journalist Cheng Lei, 48, a business reporter for China’s state-run English-language television station CGTN, has returned home to Australia after spending more than three years in detention. Chinese authorities arrested her on August 13, 2020, later accusing her of “illegally supplying state secrets overseas”.
She was tried in secret last March. China’s Ministry of State Security said today that Cheng was deported after serving a sentence of two years and 11 months, and that she had pleaded guilty to the charges.
Cheng was born in China, but migrated with her family to Melbourne, Australia, when she was 10. She returned to China and joined CGTN in 2012.
Speaking publicly for the first time in an open letter to the people of Australia last August, Cheng said, “I miss the sun. In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window, but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year. I can’t believe I used to avoid the sun when I was living back in Australia…. It’ll probably rain the first two weeks I’m back in Melbourne. I haven’t seen a tree in three years.”
Santos Faces Additional Fraud Charges
The Justice Department has filed 23 additional charges against Representative George Santos, accusing him of running up multiple charges on the credit cards of campaign donors. The new charges include wire fraud and identity theft, as well as lying to the Federal Election Commission.
Santos already was facing 13 counts involving the laundering of campaign funds to pay for his personal expenses and illegally claiming unemployment benefits while he was employed.
The new indictments allege that Santos charged more than $44,000 to his campaign using credit cards belonging to contributors who were unaware they were being defrauded. On one occasion, he charged $12,000 to a contributor's credit card, transferring most of that money into his personal bank account. Prosecutors also said he reported a series of fictional loans to qualify for support from the Republican Party.
Rushdie Writes Book About Knife Attack
Salman Rushdie’s new book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, will be published on April 16, his response to the attack last year when he was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and abdomen. The attack left him blind in his right eye and with a damaged left hand. Hadi Matar had rushed to the stage as the author was about to give a lecture in western New York. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and attempted murder.
“This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art,” Rushdie said in a statement released by Penguin Random House.
Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a 1989 fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death following the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses, calling it blasphemous. The writer lived for years in isolation, with round-the-clock security, but relaxed the vigilance until the stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution.
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