TV News LIES

Israel’s security cabinet has signed off on plans to formalise 19 illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, in a move Palestinian officials say deepens a decades-long project of land theft and demographic engineering.

Israeli media reported on Friday that the decision also revives two northern West Bank outposts dismantled during the 2005 “disengagement”.

The Israeli press outlet Ynet claimed the plan “was coordinated with the US in advance”, while Channel 14 said the push came from far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – a settler himself and one of the most hardline figures in Israel’s governing coalition.

Settlement expansion, though illegal under international law, is widely accepted across Israel’s political spectrum.

Palestinian officials condemned the decision, warning that it accelerates Israel’s annexation drive.

Mu’ayyad Sha’ban of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission described it as another step towards erasing Palestinian geography, saying it underscored growing fears about the future of the territory.

Hamas condemned the plan as a dramatic escalation. In a statement, the group said the move “constitutes a dangerous escalation in the annexation and Judaisation project” and reflects a government that “treats Palestinian land as colonial spoils and desperately seeks to entrench a settlement reality, ultimately aiming for complete control over the West Bank”.

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Germany summoned the Russian ambassador on Friday, accusing Moscow of orchestrating a cyberattack on the nation’s air traffic control systems and attempting to meddle in the country’s federal elections earlier this year.

A spokesperson for the German Federal Foreign Office asserted that Russian military intelligence was responsible for “a cyber-attack against German air traffic control in August 2024.” The official also alleged that Moscow had sought to interfere in the February federal elections, aiming to destabilize Germany’s political landscape.

In a statement to AFP, Russia’s embassy in Berlin dismissed the accusations, calling them “baseless, unfounded, and absurd” and denying any involvement of state structures or affiliated hacker groups.

“The objective of these Russian cyber and disinformation operations is unmistakable: to sow division, erode trust, provoke societal rejection, and undermine confidence in democratic institutions,” foreign ministry spokesperson Martin Giese said.

Giese indicated that the cyberattack bore the hallmarks of Fancy Bear, a hacking collective widely believed to operate on behalf of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, advancing Moscow’s political objectives.

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The Trump administration is proposing new rules that would further tighten its grip on who's allowed into the U.S., asking visitors from several dozen countries that benefit from visa-free travel to hand over their social media history and other personal information.

The new conditions were unveiled in a notice from the Department of Homeland Security earlier this week and are open for public comment and review for 60 days before going into effect.

The proposed measure applies to citizens from the 42 countries that belong to the visa waiver program and currently don't require visas for tourist or business visits to the U.S. Those foreign citizens would now have to submit five years' worth of their social media activity to be considered for entry.

They'd also have to provide emails they have used for the past 10 years, as well as phone numbers and home addresses of immediate family members. Officials would also be able to scrutinize IP addresses and metadata from electronically submitted photos.

TVNL Comment:  Tourists should stay away from the US.  This is as insulting as it is racist.  Check out the countries involved.

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U.S. service members — including staff officers and at least one drone pilot — are seeking advice from outside groups, fearing they could face legal consequences for any involvement in the Trump administration's lethal strikes on suspected drug boats.

Over the past three months, the U.S. has blown up more than 20 vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that the administration says were running illicit narcotics. More than 80 people have been killed in the strikes.

The administration says it is taking action to stop the flow of drugs into the U.S. It says the strikes are legal and are being conducted under the laws of war, and that President Trump ordered them under his Article II powers as commander-in-chief and in self-defense.

Many legal experts, however, including former military lawyers, contend the strikes against the alleged civilian narcotraffickers are unlawful and amount to murder.

The vast gulf between those two legal views has left some members of the U.S. military in the lurch, worried about potential legal blowback for themselves for taking part in the campaign.

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On a December day when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Street Vendor Project staff walked along a busy commercial street in the Bronx, handing out “know your rights” information to vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Several vendors mentioned they were scared after watching videos of immigration raids across the city.

“We used to go around helping vendors apply for permits so they wouldn’t get fined,” said Eric Nava-Pérez, Street Vendor Project’s Spanish-speaking member organizer. “But now, we’re out here distributing immigration rights information.”

As he checked in with various vendors, he asked them if they’d seen any recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity and instructed them on when to use the whistles he was distributing. “Blow the whistles as loud as you can if you see la migra,” he said. “Contact us or stop by our office if you have any questions.”

The membership-based organization for street vendors has been traversing immigrant neighborhoods across the five boroughs more than ever over the past few months. Under the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration this year, ICE has made 7,488 arrests in New York. Street vendors have been increasingly targeted.

In late October, 14 people, both immigrants and protesters, were detained by agents in Manhattan’s Chinatown after a conservative influencer posted about a “huge group of African illegal immigrants” selling counterfeit goods. A second large-scale operation in lower Manhattan was thwarted in late November after 200 protesters blocked law enforcement vehicles from leaving their garages.

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House Democrats have published a new tranche of what they called “disturbing” photographs from the estate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, featuring among others Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and the British former royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

The 19 photographs in the initial drop – some of which have been seen before – plus another 70 released later Friday afternoon represent a small number of the almost 100,000 images released to the House oversight committee, which is looking into the conduct and connections of Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by apparent suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 after he was charged with sex-trafficking offenses.

Among the notable figures shown in the first release are celebrities including the film director Woody Allen; the Microsoft founder Bill Gates; and Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin empire.

The White House responded to the release in a statement accusing Democrats of selectively “cherry-picking” the photographs for political purposes and “to try and create a false narrative”.

“The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, insisting that “the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents, and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends”.

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A California jury on Friday awarded $40m to two women who said Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder was to blame for their ovarian cancer.

The jury in Los Angeles superior court awarded $18m to Monica Kent and $22m to Deborah Schultz and her husband after finding that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers.

Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice-president of litigation, said in a statement the company plans to “immediately appeal this verdict and expect to prevail as we typically do with aberrant adverse verdicts”.

A spokesperson for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kent was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014, according to court records. Schultz was diagnosed in 2018. Both women are California residents who say they used J&J’s baby powder after bathing for 40 years. Their treatments for ovarian cancer have involved major surgeries and dozens of rounds of chemotherapy, they testified at the trial.

In closing arguments that Reuters viewed on Courtroom View Network, Andy Birchfield, an attorney for the women, told the jury that Johnson & Johnson knew as far back as the 1960s that its product could cause cancer.

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President Donald Trump was sued on Friday by preservationists seeking an architecture review and congressional approval over his White House ballroom project.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is asking a federal court to stop Trump’s White House ballroom project until it goes through comprehensive design reviews and public comments and wins approval from Congress.

The National Trust argues that Trump, by fast-tracking the project, has committed multiple violations of the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, while also exceeding his constitutional authority by not seeking congressional approval for a project of this scale.

Trump, a Republican, already has bypassed the federal government’s usual building practices and historical reviews when he razed the East Wing of the White House. He recently added another architectural firm for a ballroom that itself would be nearly twice the size of the White House before the East Wing’s demolition.

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