TV News LIES

The UK’s largest public sector pension pool quietly sold its holdings of Israeli government bonds last year following months of activist pressure, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Border to Coast Pensions Partnership currently manages nearly £120bn ($160bn) in assets on behalf of around two million people working in local government.

In 2024 and early 2025, Border to Coast bought Israeli government bonds worth $29.2m in two purchases made on its behalf by a US-based asset management firm.

But it divested from the bonds within months of the second purchase, and has refused to publicly say why.

Now, an investigation by MEE can shed light on the human rights concerns, private admissions and the chain of delegation that drove the decision, as well as the murky legal-political landscape that leaves British institutions silent about Palestine but loud on Ukraine.

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A federal judge on Friday dismissed the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, siding with the mistakenly deported man in finding that he was the subject of a likely vindictive prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw’s ruling marks an enormous victory for Abrego Garcia, whose case became a flash point in the administration’s heightened efforts to expel noncitizens from the United States after he was sent to his native El Salvador in violation of a court order.

“The Court does not reach its conclusion lightly,” wrote Crenshaw, an appointee of former President Obama who sits on the federal bench in Nashville, Tenn. “The objective evidence here shows that, absent Abrego’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the Government would not have brought this prosecution.”

Abrego Garcia was hit with two human smuggling charges last year stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee, when he was pulled over for speeding and seen transporting men without luggage. He pleaded not guilty.

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A group of some of the world's leading aid organisations on Thursday said US President Donald Trump's "Board of Peace" for Gaza is "failing", precisely because Israel is still obstructing the vast majority of aid into the enclave.

At a briefing for reporters at the United Nations in New York, Janti Soeripto, the CEO of Save the Children US, said her organisation, among several others, has reached out to the Board of Peace and offered meetings, expertise, and direct reporting from local staff on the ground.

Little to nothing has come of it.

"Six months on, children in Gaza are still not in school, malnourished, and not being treated for their wounds. The electricity grid and water infrastructure is 90 percent still unusable," she said.

"The [UN] resolution and the peace plan called for immediate full aid, no interference of aid, and the immediate rehabilitation of infrastructure. By all metrics, this has not happened."

The text of Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza - upon which the October 2025 ceasefire was agreed, and which formed the basis for the Board of Peace - says that the "entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference" from Israel or Hamas, and that it will be facilitated by "the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party".

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Germany on Wednesday criticized Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over remarks that he would push for the eviction of the West Bank community of Khan al-Ahmar following reports of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant request.

“We have, of course, taken note of these statements with the utmost concern, and we firmly reject them. We have also spoken out on this issue on several occasions in the past. There must be no expulsions. We call on the Israeli government to abandon these plans,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Josef Hinterseher told journalists in Berlin.

He stressed that the German government’s position was “clear and unchanged,” adding: “Unilateral measures -- as part of a broader intensification of settlement policy, into which the entire situation in the West Bank is embedded -- violate international law, pose a risk of further instability in the region and in the West Bank itself, and significantly stand in the way of a two-state solution.”

British news outlet Middle East Eye reported Monday that a request had been submitted to the ICC seeking secret arrest warrants against Smotrich and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

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Two activists seized by Israeli forces in international waters while en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been threatened with death or lengthy imprisonment, their lawyers said on Monday.

The legal centre Adalah, which represents Thiago Avila and Saif Abu Keshek, said the pair have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement since their capture last week.

On Tuesday, a court in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon extended their detention until Sunday.

Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained late on Wednesday when Israeli naval forces raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece.

They were taken to Israel and accused of assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership of and providing services to a terrorist organisation, and transferring funds to such a group. Both deny the charges.

Since their detention, the men have been held in cells under constant bright light, a practice intended to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation, according to Adalah. They are also blindfolded whenever taken out of their cells, including during medical examinations, which it described as a serious breach of medical ethics.

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