Kamala Harris news - VP meets Trudeau, refugees in Poland as White House says Russian economy ‘crushed’

White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back against reporters in the briefing room on Thursday who suggested that elements of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have gone “unanswered” by the US and pointed to the serious cost sanctions were having on Russia’s economy.

John Bowden has the latest.

While Vice President Kamala Harris touched on many topics during her remarks in Poland, Andrew Feinberg notes there are some things that were left unsaid.

Bloomberg reports that JP Morgan is the second Wall Street bank to announce it is winding down its business in Russia.

“Current activities are limited, including helping global clients address and close out pre-existing obligations; managing their Russian-related risk; acting as a custodian to our clients; and taking care of our employees,” JPMorgan said in the statement.

JPMorgan’s direct exposure to Russia is small. The nation wasn’t included among the firm’s top 20 country exposures outside the US, according to a regulatory filing last month. The bank’s headcount in the country is in the low 100s, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Here is a look at some of the biggest price increases underlying Thursday’s inflation data, courtesy of the Associated Press.

The US Census continued a trend of undercounting Black, Latino and Native American populations in its 2020 survey, which overcounted white Americans and Asian Americans in the once-a-decade count of the nation’s population.

Latinos were undercounted in the 2020 survey at a rate of roughly three times the missed count in 2010, while people who identified as white and not Latino were overcounted at a rate of nearly double that of 2010, according to findings released on 10 March.

Alex Woodward has details of the missing millions.

Two medium-range ballistic missile tests conducted by North Korea over the last two weeks were likely test runs for a new missile system and were made in preparation for a full-scale Intercontinental Ballistic Missile test that could be disguised as a space launch, US officials have said.

A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the government’s findings called the latest tests “a serious escalation” by North Korea, and a “brazen violation” of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding the rogue state abandon its nuclear weapons programme, suspend ballistic missile development and testing, and re-join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

“These launches … needlessly raise tensions and risk destabilizing the security situation in the region. We urge all countries to condemn these violations,” the official said.

Reporting for The Independent in Washington, DC, Andrew Feinberg has the details.

Responding to the description of Volodymyr Zelensky as a “thug” by a member of their own party, Senator Lindsey Graham says Madison Cawthorn is an outlier “in the largest sense possible on our side”, adding that “there are some on the left that are outliers”.

Senator Joni Ernst responded by calling Putin “an actual murderous thug” and says she would tell her colleague in the House that Ukraine didn’t invade Russia, Russia invaded Ukraine.

A highly decorated former Russian test pilot has delivered a dramatic criticism of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his war on “brotherly Slavic people”.

Over the course of three decades, Alexander Garnaev flew for the airforce of the Soviet Union and then as a test pilot for experimental prototypes of the MiG-29M fighter jet.

In 1998, he was made a Hero of the Russian Federation, one of the country’s highest honours.

Andrew Buncombe and Katya Bandouil report.