TV News LIES

The Israeli military carried out further strikes in areas of Gaza beyond its immediate control, in the latest violation of a ceasefire deal brokered by the US in October.

The attacks killed at least three Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, in and around Khan Younis and injured many more near the Bureij refugee camp, Al Jazeera reported.

Israeli forces also continued to demolish homes and infrastructure across northern and eastern Gaza, including Gaza City neighbourhoods, saying they were targeting militant facilities.

In southern Lebanon, meanwhile, an Israeli drone strike on Sunday killed two people after targeting a car near the town of Bint Jbeil, the Lebanese ministry of health said.

The attack reportedly occurred in the Ayn al-Mizrab area, destroying the vehicle and damaging nearby buildings.

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The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to drugs, weapons and narco-terrorism charges on Monday, two days after his capture by US special forces in an operation ordered by Donald Trump that sent shockwaves around the world.

The brevity and formality of the arraignment hearing in federal court in Manhattan – barely 30 minutes during which Maduro was asked to confirm his name and that he understood the four charges against him – belied the far-reaching consequences of the US action.

As Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores addressed the court in lower Manhattan, the UN security council held an emergency meeting just a few miles to the north, where a dozen countries condemned the US “crime of aggression” and secretary general António Guterres suggested the operation constituted a breach of international law.

Maduro, 63, insisted to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein that he was “still president of my country”, had been illegally “captured” at his Caracas home, and was “a prisoner of war”.

“I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man,” Maduro said in Spanish during repeated attempts to speak over the judge.

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Amid the immense confusion surrounding the US strikes on Venezuela, the seizure of the president, Nicolás Maduro, and Donald Trump’s announcement that the US will “run” the country and “take back the oil”, one thing is clear – they set a truly chilling precedent.

The US has a grim history of interference, invasion and occupation in the region, but the early hours of Saturday saw its first major military attack on South American land. “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again,” Mr Trump declared. The decision to unilaterally attack another country and abduct its leader – days after he publicly sought an off-ramp – has still wider repercussions. It should alarm us all.

Venezuelans have endured a repressive, kleptocratic and incompetent regime under Mr Maduro, widely believed to have stolen the last election. They now face profound uncertainty at best. Mr Trump has suggested that Mr Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, would follow US instructions, and dismissed the rightwing opposition leader and Nobel prize-winner María Corina Machado as a plausible replacement. But Ms Rodríguez, now interim president, has so far struck a defiant tone – and other parts of the decapitated regime are more hardline.

A man who won power promising to abandon foreign wars now says he is “not afraid of boots on the ground”. Rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War was more than posturing. He does not see the world’s superpower as policeman; he is turning it into a rogue state. He believes the US’s might allows it to do as it wishes with minimal cost: witness the strikes on Nigeria, on Iran’s nuclear facilities and elsewhere. He promises that Venezuelan oil means this latest episode “won’t cost us a penny”.

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Assata Shakur, a Black liberation activist who was given political asylum in Cuba after her 1979 escape from a U.S. prison where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a police officer, has died, her daughter and the Cuban government said.

Shakur, who went by Joanne Deborah Chesimard before changing her name, died Thursday in the capital city of Havana due to “health conditions and advanced age,” Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Shakur’s daughter, Kakuya Shakur, confirmed her mother’s death in a Facebook post.

Officials in New Jersey, where Shakur had been arrested, convicted and imprisoned, said she was 78.

A member of Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Shakur’s case had long been emblematic of the fraught relations between the U.S. and Cuba. American authorities, including President Donald Trump during his first term, demanded her return from the communist nation for decades.

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The Kremlin is preparing to massacre civilians then use fake news messaging in state-run and co-opted international media to pin blame for the mass casualty event on Ukraine, Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (SZRU) said on Friday in a rare public statement.

The Russian operation is likely to take the form of an “armed provocation” against an Orthodox Christian church (or another location where civilians gather peacefully) and may take place overnight on Jan. 6-7, according to the statement – the date of Christmas in the Julian calendar and a major religious holiday for the Christian faithful in Russia.

The strike would most likely take place within the Russian Federation or in a Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia with a Christian Orthodox community. A “site of high symbolic significance” might be targeted instead of a church, the statement said.

The Kremlin’s objective in perpetrating such an attack would be to undermine White House support for Ukraine in ongoing US-led peace talks – and, with luck, torpedo them.

Aside from citing “credible sources,” the SZRU statement offered no proof to confirm  these allegations – noting, however, that terrorism and false flag operations are common practice for Russian intelligence agencies, and calling on independent media to be critical of Kremlin-produced content.

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It’s not quite a new year resolution, and it’s certainly not a prediction. Think of it instead as a hope or even a plea for the next 12 months. May the coming year see those leaders who have done so much damage to their own countries, and far beyond, at last be called to account. Let 2026 be a year of reckoning.

Start with the man whose reach is longest, by dint of the mighty power he wields. Such is the nature of the US electoral system that Donald Trump, who returned to power less than a year ago, will face the judgment of voters in 10 months’ time. His name will not be on the ballot but, make no mistake, the midterm elections of 3 November will deliver a verdict on the second Trump presidency.

A slew of congressional defeats for his party would be satisfying in itself, wounding that gargantuan ego of his, but it would also have practical significance. Few predict the Republicans losing control of the Senate, where Democrats would have to flip at least four seats to take charge – near-impossible given the geography of the 35 seats up for grabs in November. But, in normal circumstances, it should be the safest of political bets that the House of Representatives will no longer be in Republican hands a year from now.

Such a reverse would dispel the aura of indomitability that has enveloped Trump since he beat Kamala Harris, allowing him to bully and intimidate multiple US institutions, including much of its media, into ceding to him far more power than is rightfully his. It would render him a lame duck, incapable of passing new laws through a hostile chamber.

Above all, it would see Trump confronted at last with a body both eager and able to hold him to account: a Democratic House would have the appetite and the muscle for serious scrutiny. Armed with subpoena power, it could investigate everything from the cost of Trump’s tariffs for US taxpayers to the astonishingly brazen pattern of corruption and pocket-lining that has characterised this administration. And up its sleeve would be the constant threat of a third impeachment trial.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Saturday condemned the Trump administration over the U.S. military operation in Venezuela that led to the capture of its president, calling it an “act of war.”

“I was briefed this morning on the U.S. military capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, as well as their planned imprisonment in federal custody here in New York City,” Mamdani wrote Saturday afternoon on X.

“Unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war and a violation of federal and international law. This blatant pursuit of regime change doesn’t just affect those abroad, it directly impacts New Yorkers,” he continued.

The newly inaugurated mayor noted during a Saturday press conference in Brooklyn that “tens of thousands” of Venezuelans call New York City their home, promising that his administration will “issue relevant guidance” as it continues to monitor growing tensions between Venezuela and the U.S.

The Trump administration has accused Maduro of facilitating the flow of narcotics into the U.S. He’s denied any links to the drug trade, but now stands indicted by Trump’s Department of Justice on narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges.

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The United States will “run” Venezuela following an overnight military operation where Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured and explosions rocked the country’s capital of Caracas, President Donald Trump said Saturday.

"We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition," Trump said at a press conference from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. “It has to be judicious, because that's what we are all about.”

The president did not provide details of how the United States will run Venezuela, but said that his administration is determining who will be in charge of the country. He declined to endorse Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, to lead the country. He also did not provide a timeline for how long the U.S. will run the country, saying that it will be “a period of time” as they rebuild Venezuela’s infrastructure.

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