Start of Biden’s Visit to Angola Overshadowed by Son’s Pardon

US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One as he departs for Luanda, Angola, from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, December 1, 2024. (Reuters)
US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One as he departs for Luanda, Angola, from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, December 1, 2024. (Reuters)
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Start of Biden’s Visit to Angola Overshadowed by Son’s Pardon

US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One as he departs for Luanda, Angola, from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, December 1, 2024. (Reuters)
US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One as he departs for Luanda, Angola, from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, US, December 1, 2024. (Reuters)

US President Joe Biden landed in Angola on Monday for a visit focused on a US-backed railway project and on the legacy of slavery, but his decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden threatened to overshadow the official agenda.

The visit fulfills a promise to visit Sub-Saharan Africa during his presidency and aims to bolster the Lobito Corridor project, which links resource-rich Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean.

At stake are vast supplies of minerals like copper and cobalt, which are found in Congo and are a key component of batteries and other electronics. China is the top player in Congo, which has become an increasing concern to Washington.

China signed an agreement with Tanzania and Zambia in September to revive a rival railway line to Africa's eastern coast.

"It's going to create incredible economic opportunities here on the continent," Biden's national security spokesperson John Kirby said, speaking about the Lobito Corridor during a briefing to reporters on Air Force One during the flight to Luanda.

He said Biden would unveil additional commitments to the project during his visit, as well as to health, climate and clean energy programs.

However, reporters on the flight had more questions about the Hunter Biden pardon than they did about investment in Africa. The president's spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre responded to them mostly by repeating Joe Biden's own statement on the issue.

The president, whose term in office finishes in January, flew out of Washington shortly after pardoning his son, who had pleaded guilty to tax violations and been convicted on firearms-related charges.

Biden himself did not answer reporters' questions on the pardon during a brief refueling stop in the small island nation of Cape Verde, off the coast of West Africa, earlier on Monday.

During his two-day visit to Angola, Biden is scheduled to meet with President Joao Lourenco and the Zambian leader President Hakainde Hichilema, and to tour the national slavery museum and various facilities in Lobito.

Partly funded by a US loan, the Lobito Corridor would make it faster and easier to export critical minerals towards the United States, which has been widely seen as a way to divert some of those resources from China.

"There is no Cold War on the continent. We're not asking countries to choose between us and Russia and China," Kirby said.

"We're simply looking for reliable, sustainable, verifiable investment opportunities that the people of Angola and the people of the continent can rely on, because too many countries have relied on spotty investment opportunities and are now racked by debt," he said.

The Lobito project is backed by global commodities trader Trafigura, Portuguese construction group Mota-Engil and railway operator Vecturis. The US Development Finance Corporation has provided a $550 million loan to refurbish the 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) rail network from Lobito to Congo.



North Korea Condemns Trump’s Gaza Takeover Proposal as ‘Bluster’ 

Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)
Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)
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North Korea Condemns Trump’s Gaza Takeover Proposal as ‘Bluster’ 

Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)
Palestinian youth watch the sunset from their destroyed house in the Jabalia camp, north of Gaza City, 11 February 2025. (EPA)

North Korean state media on Wednesday denounced US President Donald Trump's proposal to take over Gaza and relocate Palestinians as bluster and accused Washington of robbery.

The slim hopes of Palestinians for safety and peace are being crushed by the proposal, a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, without directly naming Trump.

"The world is now boiling like a porridge pot over the US' bombshell declaration," KCNA said.

The commentary is aimed at Trump's shock announcement that the US intends to remove Gaza residents and transform the war-ravaged territory into what the president billed as a "Riviera of the Middle East".

The KCNA commentary also criticized the Trump administration over its calls to take over the Panama Canal and Greenland, and its decision to change the name of the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America".

"The US should awaken from its anachronistic daydream and stop at once the act of encroaching upon the dignity and sovereignty of other countries and nations," the KCNA report said, while calling the US a "ferocious robber."

Trump held unprecedented summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his first term and has touted their personal rapport.

The US president recently said he would reach out to Kim again, though so far Pyongyang's state media has barely commented on Trump's second term while continuing to lash out at what it views as the grave security threat posed by Washington and its allies.

North Korea, which often argues against Western views on international issues, has been outspoken about the situation in Gaza, blaming Israel for the bloodshed and calling the United States an "accomplice."