US Vice President Kamala Harris listed reducing the population as one of the Biden administration's areas of green investment during a speech in Maryland on Friday. The White House has since claimed she misspoke.

"When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water," Harris told the audience at Baltimore's Coppin State University, to rapturous applause.

While Harris did not correct herself on stage, a White House transcript of the speech struck the word "population" and replaced it with "pollution."

The VP made the odd remark as she revealed the Biden administration had made $20 billion available for "community-based climate projects," with $12 billion of that earmarked for historically-disadvantaged areas - part of Washington's efforts to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050.

The funding will go to "a national network of nonprofits, community lenders, and other financial institutions to fund tens of thousands of climate and clean energy projects across America," Harris said. It was set aside for green energy initiatives under the Inflation Reduction Act as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

Harris' critics took aim at the alleged gaffe on social media, suggesting she was "saying the quiet part out loud," while critics of the man-made climate change hypothesis argued cutting population was its true aim.

"Are you the population she wants to reduce?" Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) asked his followers.

Commentators including Megyn Kelly and Fox's Harris Faulkner questioned Harris' fitness to succeed President Joe Biden after the VP stumbled through multiple public appearances earlier this week.

During a Wednesday panel discussion on AI at the White House, she informed the panelists that the technology was "kind of a fancy thing," telling the assembled experts, "First of all, it's two letters. It means artificial intelligence," before embarking on a rambling attempt to explain machine learning. During a roundtable on transportation for people with disabilities the same day, she observed, "the issue of transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go." Both comments were widely mocked on social media.

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New details from a previously redacted FBI document claim that the owner of Ukrainian gas company Burisma thought Hunter Biden was dumber than his dog.
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Meetings with the FBI informant

In 2016, Zlochevsky met with an FBI informant at an outdoor coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, discussing the feasibility of Burisma acquiring a U.S.-based entity.

An unidentified individual also at the meeting said the conversation occurred around the same time that Joe Biden made public statements about now-former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin being corrupt, saying that he should be fired or removed from office.

Zlochevsky was told, according to the document, that Shokin's public investigation into Burisma would have negative effects on Burisma's IPO. The Burisma owner replied: "Don't worry, Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad."

Numerous media outlets reported that Shokin investigated but never sought to prosecute Burisma. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent testified in Trump's first impeachment inquiry that Shokin was corrupt and that the U.S. and its allies made a coordinated effort to remove him from his position.

When it was suggested that Zlochevsky/Burisma pay an attorney $50,000 to litigate the matter, Zlochevsky laughed at the thought, saying: "It costs $5 [million] to pay one Biden, and $5 [million] to another Biden," the document says. The informant said at the time that it was unverified whether such alleged payments were already made.

Then, when told that "some normal U.S. oil and gas advisors" should be hired due to the Bidens' lack of experience, Zlochevsky reportedly said that Hunter Biden "was stupid, and his [Zlochevsky's] dog was smarter."

Other conversations between the informant and Zlochevsky took place in 2016 and 2017, continuing until a final call in 2019.

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Much has been done to create sustainable foundations for national economies. By the mid-1980s, with the participation of our specialists, over 330 large infrastructure and industrial facilities have been built in Africa, such as power plants, irrigation systems, industrial and agricultural enterprises, which are successfully operating to this day, and continue to make a significant contribution to the continent's economic development. Tens of thousands of African doctors, technical specialists, engineers, officers and teachers have received education in Russia.

I would like to specifically mention the traditionally close cooperation on the world stage, the firm and consistent advocacy rendered by the USSR and then Russia to African countries at international fora. We have always strictly adhered to the "African solutions to African problems" principle, standing in solidarity with Africans in their struggle for self-determination, justice and their legitimate rights. We have never tried to impose on partners our own ideas about the internal structure, forms and methods of management, development goals and ways to achieve them. Unchanged remains our respect for the sovereignty of African states, their traditions and values, their desire to independently determine their own destiny and freely build relationships with partners.

[...]

Russia welcomes the rising international authority of individual states as well as Africa as a whole, their desire to make their voices strongly heard and to take the continent's problems into their own hands. We have always supported the constructive initiatives of our partners. We stand for granting African countries their rightful place in the structures that determine the world's fate, including the UN Security Council and the G20, as well as for reforming the global financial and trade institutions in a way that meets their interests.

[..]

I would like to note with satisfaction that Russia's trade turnover with the African countries increased in 2022 and reached almost 18 billion US dollars. However, we are all well aware that the potential of our trade and economic partnership is much higher. Russian companies are interested in working more actively on the continent in the sphere of high technologies and geological exploration, in the fuel and energy complex, including nuclear power, in the chemical industry, mining and transport engineering, agriculture and fishery. The changes taking place in the world require the search for solutions related to the establishment of new transport and logistical chains, the formation of a monetary and financial system, and mechanisms of mutual settlements that are safe and free from unfavourable external impacts.