TV News LIES

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came dressed for diplomacy.

The last time Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in February - an acrimonious meeting that ended abruptly - he said he’d wear a suit after the Russian war on his country had ended.

The declaration came after a reporter asked Zelenskyy, who was wearing a black sweatshirt, black slacks and boots, why he was not wearing a suit while visiting the “highest level” office in the country.

I’ll “wear the costume after the war is finished," he replied. Kostium is the Ukrainian word for suit.

This time, his sartorial choice as well as his choice of words seemed carefully designed to insulate him from another unceremonious exit from the Oval Office. But perhaps his willingness to don a suit to the meeting, three days after Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, also revealed that peace could possibly be within reach.

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President Donald Trump said he would sign an executive order to abolish mail-in voting, a move he said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin supported.

Mailing ballots is a popular option for voters to avoid waiting in line at polling places on Election Day. Election-security officials say voting has never been more secure and that the president has no role overseeing elections. But Trump has long railed against mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud – despite election experts, including those in his first administration, who said mail-in voting is secure.

“We’re going to end mail-in voting," Trump told reporters Aug. 18 in the Oval Office. "It’s a fraud."

He reiterated arguments he made earlier in a social-media post. He argued elections would be more reliable if everyone voted in person with paper ballots rather than through machines.

“It’s very hard to cheat," Trump said of in-person voting.

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The world got a glimpse of one of the most famous Palestinian prisoners in Israel on Friday, Marwan Barghouti, for the first time in years.

A video posted by Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, shows him berating Barghouti in his prison cell.

"You will not win. He who messes with the people of Israel, he who will murder our children, he who will murder our women, we will wipe him out," Ben-Gvir is recorded as saying.

Now, he is serving five consecutive life sentences, after being convicted by an Israeli court in 2002 for helping plan attacks on civilians during a Palestinian uprising that came to be known as the Second Intifada.

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Director Spike Lee’s multi-part documentary series for ESPN Films about former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked a national debate when he protested racial injustice nearly a decade ago, will not be released, the filmmaker and ESPN said.

“ESPN, Colin Kaepernick and Spike Lee have collectively decided to no longer proceed with this project as a result of certain creative differences,” ESPN said in a statement to Reuters on Saturday. “Despite not reaching finality, we appreciate all the hard work and collaboration that went into this film.”https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/16/espn-spike-lee-colin-kaepernick-docuseries

Lee told Reuters on Friday that the series was not going to be released.

“It’s not coming out. That’s all I can say,” Lee said on the red carpet ahead of the Harold and Carole Pump Foundation dinner, a fundraiser for cancer research and treatment, in Beverly Hills, California.

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European leaders will join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a high-stakes meeting at the White House on Monday after President Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a post on the social platform X on Sunday that she will join the meeting “at the request of President Zelenskyy.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office also announced he will be traveling to Washington on Monday for “political talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European heads of state and government,” according to a translated statement from his office.

The statement said the purpose of the trip is the “exchange of information” with Trump after his meeting with Putin and that Merz plans to discuss peace efforts and “underscore Germany’s interest in a swift peace agreement in Ukraine.”

“The talks will address, among other things, security guarantees, territorial issues, and continued support for Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression. This includes maintaining the pressure of sanctions,” the translated statement said.

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Israeli protesters demanding a deal to free hostages in Gaza attempted to shut down the country Sunday in one of the largest and fiercest protests in 22 months of war. Organizers, representing the families of hostages, asserted that hundreds of thousands of people took part.

Frustration is growing in Israel over plans for a new military offensive in some of Gaza’s most populated areas. Many Israelis fear that could further endanger the remaining hostages. Twenty of the 50 who remain are believed to be alive.

“We live between a terrorist organization that holds our children and a government that refuses to release them for political reasons,” said Yehuda Cohen, whose son Nimrod is held in Gaza.

Even some former Israeli army and intelligence chiefs now call for a deal to end the fighting.

Protesters gathered at dozens of places including outside politicians’ homes, military headquarters and on major highways. They blocked lanes and lit bonfires. Some restaurants and theaters closed in solidarity. Police said they arrested 38 people.

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The US state department announced on Saturday that it would stop issuing visas to children from Gaza in desperate need of medical care after an online pressure campaign from Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump who has described herself as “a proud Isbadlylamophobe”.

“All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days,” the state department said in a message posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, from which Loomer was banned before it was purchased by Elon Musk.

In a pair of posts on the social network on Friday, Loomer had shared video of badly injured Palestinian children and their family members arriving in Houston and San Francisco this month, along with false claims that their shouts of joy were “jihadi chants” and that they were “doing the HAMAS terror whistle”.

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White House officials and attorneys for Washington DC have agreed to scale back the Trump administration’s takeover of the city’s police department.

Under an agreement announced early Friday evening, the US capital city’s Metropolitan police department will remain under the control of its chief, Pamela Smith, instead of Terry Cole, the top administrator for the Drug and Enforcement Administration (DEA), according to reports

A revised directive Bondi issued late on Friday referred to Cole instead as her “designee” for purposes of directing the DC mayor “to provide such services of the Metropolitan Police Department as the attorney general deems necessary and appropriate”.

Those services, according to Bondi’s two-page order, would include assisting federal immigration enforcement, contrary to DC “sanctuary city” policies constraining metropolitan police department action on immigration.