TV News LIES

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic party upstart who just won a contentious primary in Michigan, says that if not for an "accident of history," he would have become a cab driver in Egypt like others in his family.

Instead, the 41-year-old Michigander is a Senate nominee after winning an Aug. 4 primary race against U.S. Rep Haley Stevens, an establishment Democrat pick who was backed by tens of millions of dollars from pro-Israel lobbyists. The race was closely watched around the nation as it is seen as a bellwether for where the Democratic Party is headed.

El-Sayed, a former public health official turned politician, offered up a vision of that direction in an Aug. 5 victory speech, where he reflected on the luck of his upbringing in suburban Detroit and what it means for his goals.

"But for an accident of history that allows my dad to immigrate to Detroit to go to Wayne State University, I would have been a cab driver in Egypt like my cousins," El-Sayed said in Detroit shortly after the primary race was called in his favor. "Except for I got to be born in America."

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Palestinians on Tuesday buried 112 members of a single clan killed in Israeli air strikes in November 2023, after their remains were recovered from beneath the rubble last month.

Relatives of the Abu Shari'a and al-Hasayna family gathered in Gaza City to bid a final farewell to their loved ones, whose bodies lay in rows draped in Palestinian flags.

For many, it was a moment of both relief and renewed grief after nearly 1,000 days of waiting to recover the bodies of their relatives.

"There is a feeling of both pain and joy," Amer Abu Shari'a, who lost relatives in the attack, told Middle East Eye.

"Joy because we will bury and honour these martyrs after three years. But the sorrow has returned, as if the massacre happened today."

The strike on the Sabra neighbourhood was one of the deadliest single-strike casualty events of the two-year genocide.

Israeli warplanes flattened an entire residential block where hundreds of members of the Abu Shari'a and al-Hasayna clan had been living and sheltering.

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An attorney for the former Olympic canoeist who was charged with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool has said that “all options are on table” for legal recourse after prosecutors recently abandoned the case abruptly.

David Hearn “has a number of potential remedies” after being prosecuted in connection with pool damage now attributed to faulty work by a contractor, attorney Steven Levin said in a statement. Levin added that those could include “civil suits, bar referrals for the prosecutors involved, request for sanctions, andAn attorney for the former Olympic canoeist who was charged with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool has said that “all options are on table” for legal recourse after prosecutors recently abandoned the case abruptly. reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and expenses”, and requests for investigations by various government entities, including Congress.

Hearn, 67, was arrested on 19 June and faced one felony count of property destruction – a charge that could have resulted in a 10-year prison sentence and a $1,000 fine – which he denied.

The charge came after the Trump administration spent $14m to change the reflecting pool’s color. A new pool liner almost immediately began to peel off, and the president blamed vandals. Four people were arrested, but only Hearn was charged with a felony.

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Construction crews building a border wall in New Mexico were ordered to stop drilling new wells after ranchers said that pumping groundwater to produce concrete could threaten their livestock amid a severe drought.

The order comes as crews across the southern border race to complete one of Donald Trump’s key domestic priorities – barriers that span four states and received over $46bn in federal funding. Controversies have sprouted up in Texas and California, and border-town residents and environmentalists have reported a wide variety of issues with construction.

At a public meeting in July, ranchers said they were noticing unmonitored tapping of border aquifers that threatened the water for those nearby.

“It would put us in an immediate catastrophe and having to do something with our livestock. I mean, it could potentially put some people out of business, us included,” said Russell Johnson, a cattle rancher whose property runs along the border.

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We are constitutional law, civil rights and human rights scholars and practitioners who have spent decades litigating government abuse cases in the United States. Despite the US legal system’s flaws, our work – from securing a record civil settlement for George Floyd’s family to holding Bolivia’s ex-president accountable in US federal court for the massacre of Indigenous protesters – has demonstrated that US courts can rein in state power and provide a path to accountability. But this pathway is narrowing.

As Donald Trump attacks the courts, weaponizes the Department of Justice, and targets attorneys who challenge his administration, we have been forced to seek justice beyond our borders.

Earlier this year, we requested a thematic hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the United States’s violent suppression of protests against federal immigration policies. Never before had the commission granted such a hearing, but the extraordinary nature of the Trump administration’s actions – including allegations of excessive and lethal force against peaceful protesters, attacks on journalists and legal observers, and racial profiling and surveillance – warrants international scrutiny. On 4 August, the commission will hold that hearing.

The IACHR is unfamiliar to most Americans. Together with the inter-American court of human rights, the commission is the bedrock of the hemisphere’s human rights system. For decades, it has served as a safeguard against authoritarianism and state repression in the region, providing an avenue for victims when domestic institutions have failed. While the United States claims it is not bound by the inter-American system’s norms, it remains subject to the commission’s oversight under the American declaration of the rights and duties of man. Condemnation by the commission has directly led to policy changes by countries, including the United States.

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U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s clash with President Trump over the handling of the Reflecting Pool case is raising questions about her standing with the president, with whom she has enjoyed a friendly relationship for decades.

Pirro visited the White House Monday evening after Trump lashed out at her on camera hours earlier in the Oval Office, telling reporters she “folded like an umbrella” in her move to drop charges.

“The judge was extremely unfriendly to Jeanine, and frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious,” Trump said. 

“Instead of going after the people that did it, the judge went after her and went after her department,” he continued. “And I guess she choked. I don’t know what the hell happened.”

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Stephanie Grisham, the White House communications director during President Trump’s first term, filed a restraining order against Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) on Monday, amid allegations that Miller abused his ex-wife.

Grisham’s counsel, Mark S. Zaid, announced on social platform X that they filed for a temporary restraining order against Miller as part of an ongoing lawsuit.

The case began with an op-ed Grisham wrote in 2021 in the Washington Post that described an abusive relationship with an unnamed man. Miller filed a defamation suit against her shortly after the article was published, but the case was eventually dropped as both parties signed a nondisclosure agreement to not publicly disparage one another.

Grisham filed her new lawsuit after Miller said in a June interview with Spectrum News that any allegations should be taken seriously and it “should be noted” that an allegation against him “came out on the same day as somebody’s book launch and the other part.”

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Cases of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic infection known for causing explosive diarrhea, have now reached 47 states as the illness reached unprecedented numbers.

There have been 10,468 laboratory-confirmed cases of cyclospora infections since May 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its weekly update Aug. 4. The new numbers represent an increase of more than 3,700 since the CDC's last report July 28.

Cases have also now been recorded in 47 states, up from 45 last week. At least 12,255 additional cases have not yet been confirmed by laboratories, the CDC said.

There have been 517 hospitalizations and two deaths, per the agency.

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