US Business

South Korean K-pop sensations BTS didn’t sing a word but in a White House visit Tuesday to meet President Joe Biden the supergroup’s message against anti-Asian racism came loud and clear.

The seven stars, dressed in matching dark suits and ties, with white shirts, joined White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the briefing room podium — a tiny, but powerful stage.

The singer Park Ji-min, better known as Jimin, said through a translator that the group is “devastated by the recent surge of hate crimes” in the United States.

Another member, Suga, appealed for tolerance, saying, “It’s not wrong to be different. I think equality begins when we open up and embrace all of our differences.”

Group members did not take questions from reporters before going into a meeting with Biden and, according to the White House, recording “digital content.”

Outside the mansion’s grounds on the other side of a tall black fence, fans who dub themselves the “Army” gathered in hopes of a glimpse.

The brief appearance before journalists itself reportedly garnered more than 300,000 viewers on the White House’s YouTube channel, more than 10 times the traffic on a day when the only people watching events in the briefing room are mostly media or political professionals.

It was certainly something new for economic policy advisor Brian Deese, who had been scheduled to brief reporters on Biden’s fight against US inflation right after the group left.

“I get to go home and tell my kids that BTS opened for me,” he said to laughter.

– ‘Youth ambassadors’ against hate –

Biden issued the invitation to “discuss the need to come together in solidarity, Asian inclusion and representation, and addressing anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination, which have become more prominent issues in recent years,” the White House said.

Anti-Asian sentiment and violence in America have grown during the coronavirus pandemic in a phenomenon many blame on fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald Trump often blamed the pandemic, which originated with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, as “the China virus” and also mocked the deadly virus as “kung flu.”

Just in 2021, hate crimes against Asians shot up 339 percent, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. 

The trend stands out within a general rise in violent crime, with the ugliest incident taking place in the Atlanta area, where a man shot dead eight people at massage spas, six of them Asian women.

The White House praised BTS’s floppy haired, stylish stars as “youth ambassadors who spread a message of hope and positivity across the world.”

Band members, all in their 20s and who frequently appear wearing earrings and lipstick, have given a voice worldwide to a generation comfortable with gender fluidity.

They are credited with generating billions for the South Korean economy, and their label enjoyed a surge in profits despite holding fewer concerts during the pandemic.

Biden, who at 79 is the oldest person to become president, has often reached out to young celebrities and social media influencers to try and inject some glamor into his team’s messaging on social and health issues.

These included pop singer Olivia Rodrigo and the Jonas Brothers in campaigns to persuade young Americans to get their Covid-19 vaccines.

South Korean K-pop supergroup BTS used a White House visit Tuesday to call out a growth in anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States.

The singer Park Ji-min, better known as Jimin, said through a translator ahead of a meeting with President Joe Biden that the group is “devastated by the recent surge of hate crimes.”

Another member, Suga, appealed for tolerance, saying, “It’s not wrong to be different. I think equality begins when we open up and embrace all of our differences.”

All seven members of the K-pop sensation took to the White House briefing room podium, briefly addressing reporters who were assembled for the daily back-and-forth with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Dressed in matching dark suits and ties, with white shirts, the boy band came to the White House with a serious message.

Biden issued the invitation to “discuss the need to come together in solidarity, Asian inclusion and representation, and addressing anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination, which have become more prominent issues in recent years,” the White House said.

Anti-Asian sentiment and violence in the US have grown during the coronavirus pandemic in a trend many blame on fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald Trump often blamed the pandemic, which originated with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, as “the China virus” and also mocked the deadly virus as “kung flu.”

The trend stands out within a general rise in violent crime, with the ugliest incident taking place in the Atlanta area, where a man shot dead eight people at massage spas, six of them Asian women.

The White House praised BTS’ floppy haired, stylish sensations as “youth ambassadors who spread a message of hope and positivity across the world.”

Band members, all in their 20s and who frequently appear wearing earrings and lipstick, have given a voice to a generation comfortable with gender fluidity.

They are credited with generating billions for the South Korean economy, and their label enjoyed a surge in profits despite holding fewer concerts during the pandemic.

Biden, who at 79 is the oldest person to become president, has often reached out to young celebrities and social media influencers to try and inject some glamor into his team’s messaging on social and health issues.

These included pop singer Olivia Rodrigo and the Jonas Brothers in campaigns to persuade young Americans to get their Covid-19 vaccines.

Russian forces now control “most” of eastern Ukraine’s key city of Severodonetsk, a regional governor said Tuesday, while EU leaders were split over banning gas from Moscow after agreeing to embargo most of its oil.

Ukraine meanwhile pushed on with an investigation into war crimes since the Russian invasion. Officials said thousands had been committed in the eastern Donbas region alone and that it had jailed two Russian soldiers elsewhere in the country. 

Severodonetsk is one of the industrial hubs that lie on Russia’s path to capturing the Donbas’s Lugansk region, where Moscow has shifted the bulk of its firepower since failing to capture Kyiv in the war’s early stages.

“Unfortunately, today, Russian troops control most of the city,” Lugansk governor Sergiy Gaiday said in a video, insisting Ukraine’s military was not in danger of being surrounded.

He added that “90 percent” of Severodonetsk had been destroyed.

Gaiday also warned that Russian forces had hit a tank containing nitric acid at a Severodonetsk chemical plant and called on people to stay in their shelters.

EU leaders meeting for a second day in Brussels were only partly successful in tightening the economic screws on Moscow.

A compromise oil embargo deal reached late Monday, meant to punish Russia for its invasion, cuts “a huge source of financing for its war machine”, European Council chief Charles Michel tweeted.

– Talks on gas embargo –

But the EU remained divided on the issue of gas supplies, and leaders played down the chances of a rapid ban to follow the embargo on two-thirds of oil imports from Russia.

Europe relies on Russian gas for some 40 percent of its supplies, and a ban would add to the existing pain from an energy and inflation crisis.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen suggested Brussels had gone far enough for now against Russian fossil fuels and that it was time to focus more on the “financial and the economic sector”.

The oil ban “will effectively cut around 90 percent of oil imports from Russia to the EU by the end of the year”, she said.

The compromise oil deal exempts deliveries by pipeline, after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned halting supplies of cheap Moscow crude would wreck his nation’s economy.

“Families can sleep peacefully tonight, we kept out the most hair-raising idea,” Orban, whose country borders war-torn Ukraine to the west, said in a video message.

Denmark became the latest European country to be targeted by Russia over gas exports in the meantime, following in the footsteps of the Netherlands, Finland, Poland and Bulgaria.

Danish energy firm Orsted said Tuesday that Russian energy monopoly Gazprom Export would cut gas supplies on Wednesday after the Danish company refused to pay in rubles as the Russian government demands.

– ‘Save your lives’ –

The situation on the eastern frontline in Donbas has become increasingly desperate, with Ukrainian towns facing near constant shelling from Russian forces.

“We see some cars driving around with Ukrainian flags, so we figure that means we are still part of Ukraine,” said Yevgen Onyshchenko, a 42-year-old plumber in a powerless apartment in Severodonetsk’s twin city Lysychansk.

“But otherwise, we are in the dark.”

French journalist Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff was killed while covering civilian evacuations in the area on Monday.

An overnight rocket attack killed at least three people and wounded six in the city of Sloviansk, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Tuesday on Telegram.

“There are no safe places in the Donetsk region, so I call again: evacuate — save your lives,” he said.

Four more civilians died and seven were injured in Donetsk on Tuesday, he added in a later Telegram post.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general said authorities had identified a “few thousand” cases of war crimes in the Donbas, including murder, torture and the forced displacement of children.

Prosecutor Iryna Venediktova, who met international counterparts in The Hague on Tuesday, said Kyiv was already going to prosecute 80 suspects for alleged war crimes on Ukrainian soil.

A Ukrainian court on Tuesday jailed two Russian soldiers for 11 and a half years for shelling civilian areas. Earlier this month, another was jailed for life for murdering a civilian.

Servicemen Alexander Bobykin and Alexander Ivanov were both convicted Tuesday of firing Grad missiles on two villages in the northeastern Kharkiv region in the early days of the war.

– Odessa blockade proposal –

Russia’s invasion of its pro-Western neighbour is also threatening a global food crisis, with Ukraine’s huge grain harvest effectively taken off the world market. 

French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that he and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had urged Vladimir Putin to end Russia’s blockade of the Ukrainian port of Odessa under the terms of a UN resolution.

Under the proposal, a UN resolution would set up a framework under which mines laid by the port’s Ukrainian defenders could be removed, and grain shipments resume.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was up to the West and Kyiv to resolve the crisis, starting with the lifting of sanctions.

burs-dk/imm/bp

The United States warned Tuesday that talks on Yemen’s two-month truce were in “trouble” as it pushed for an extension to help support millions at risk.

Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and Iran-aligned Huthi rebels on April 2 entered a UN-brokered truce, the first since the brutal war broke out in 2016, but it expires on Thursday.

Talks to extend the pause in fighting “haven’t ended yet but seem to be in a bit of trouble,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations.

The talks impasse “is troublesome to us,” she told reporters.

“We encourage the parties on both sides to continue those efforts and find a peaceful way to provide needed humanitarian assistance to the people of Yemen.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also raised “efforts to strengthen and extend the truce in Yemen” during talks Monday with his Saudi counterpart, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the State Department said.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions on the brink of famine.

Aid groups have appealed for an extension of the truce, saying it has brought long-needed humanitarian dividends.

Earlier this month, the Norwegian Refugee Council said the number of civilian casualties in Yemen had dropped by more than half since the truce took effect.

The UN special envoy on Yemen, Hans Grundberg, last week also publicly urged progress and said that the truce had produced “tangible benefits.”

President Joe Biden held a rare White House meeting with the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, on Tuesday to discuss soaring inflation and White House attempts to tame the politically damaging price surge ahead of midterm elections.

“I am meeting today to discuss my top priority: that is addressing inflation in order to transition from historic recovery to a steady growth,” Biden said.

Also joined in the Oval Office by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Biden stressed to reporters that while the Fed has a “laser focus” on inflation, he does not intend to infringe on the central bank’s traditional independence.

“It starts with a simple proposition: respect the Fed, respect the Fed’s independence,” he said.

The White House said that the first Biden-Powell meeting this year would focus on inflation but in general “discuss the state of the American and global economy.”

This is Biden’s “top economic priority,” the White House said, “as we transition… to stable, steady growth that works for working families.”

Inflation of more than eight percent is casting a heavy shadow on Biden’s claims to be steering the US economy to health after the Covid-19-induced crash.

Employment is back near pre-pandemic levels and growth is strong, but savage price increases for essentials including food and fuel are driving growing public dissatisfaction.

The Fed has raised rates three quarters of a percentage point, kicking off what central bank officials say could be a series of hikes aimed at calming down the economy, although there are fears that the unintended result may be recession.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Monday that he backs several more half-point rate hikes — “until I see inflation coming down closer to our two percent target.”

According to a poll in mid-May by Pew Research Center, inflation is easily the biggest topic of concern for Americans, with 70 percent making it number one, compared to 54 percent listing violent crime. 

– Midterm elections pressure –

Biden is scrambling to ease the pressure on American consumers ahead of November midterm elections in which his Democrats are forecast to lose control of Congress to the Republicans.

Biden’s own approval ratings are barely in the 40 percent range, reflecting his inability to sell voters on his upbeat message of US economic recovery.

As the election approaches, Biden has pivoted to more aggressively trying to explain the inflation phenomenon as a byproduct of forces beyond his control.

These include the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which triggered Western sanctions disrupting the huge Russian energy industry. President Vladimir Putin’s invading forces, meanwhile, have all but put a halt to Ukraine’s important wheat exports.

Biden calls the effect “Putin’s price hike.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Biden underlined the importance of not interfering in the Federal Reserve’s work.

Biden recalled that his predecessor Donald Trump frequently launched political attacks on the Fed and that other presidents had also “sought to influence its decisions inappropriately during periods of elevated inflation.”

“I won’t do this,” he pledged.

In the op-ed, Biden said his longterm plan for economic health includes easing the pace of post-Covid recovery to more sustainable levels, boosting economic productivity and reducing the federal budget deficit.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel issued a statement on Biden’s Oval Office meeting, saying the president is “lying to hardworking Americans about the economy.”

“Under Biden, inflation and gas prices have only gone up and families are struggling to afford basic needs as a result.”