TV News LIES

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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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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Russian forces on Jan. 2 launched a missile attack on a residential neighborhood in the city of Kharkiv, killing a child and injuring at least 19 people, including a six-month-old baby, regional authorities said.

The body of a three-year-old boy was recovered from the rubble of a destroyed apartment building after the attack, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported. The boy's mother is considered missing. Search and rescue operations are ongoing at the site.

Sixteen of the wounded were hospitalized, including a woman in serious condition, Syniehubov said. He added that the baby did not require hospitalization.

In total, 28 people sought medical assistance following the attack, which included at least six people who suffered from severe stress due to the attack, according to Syniehubov.

The attack destroyed a five-story apartment and damaged other civilian infrastructure, a shopping center, and cars, according to the local authorities. The entrance to another four-story apartment building was damaged, as were contact networks, traffic signals, and power lines.

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Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) helped Denis Kapustin, the founder of the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) who was announced dead last week, to fake his death before claiming the bounty placed on his head by Russian security services, it said on Thursday.

Kapustin, 41, was previously reported killed by a Russian drone whilst carrying out a combat mission in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region overnight on Saturday, Dec. 27.

On Jan. 1, HUR said in a post on Telegram that a Russian special service operation ordering his murder, which had allocated a $500,000 bounty to carry out the crime, had successfully been foiled.

It added that it had procured the sum offered to “liquidate” Kapustin by Russia and this money would be used to strengthen Ukrainian drone capabilities against Russian forces.

HUR said that the murder of Kapustin – considered a “personal enemy” by Russian President Vladimir Putin – had been “commissioned by the special services of the aggressor state Russia, which allocated half a million dollars to carry out the crime.”

It added that a special operation lasting more than a month had successfully duped Russian intelligence services into believing that Kapustin was dead.

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A third of Kyiv is without heating after a Russian drone and missile barrage on the Ukrainian capital cut off power supplies, leaving hundreds of thousands of people facing freezing temperatures.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Moscow had used nearly 500 drones and 40 missiles, including ballistic missiles, in the overnight attack. “The primary target is Kyiv – energy facilities and civilian infrastructure,” he said in a post on X.

The intense overnight strikes lasted 10 hours and killed one person and wounded two dozen others. They came as the Ukrainian leader headed to Florida for a face-to-face meeting on Sunday with Donald Trump, who has proposed a plan to end nearly four years of fighting that has killed tens of thousands.

Zelenskyy stopped in Canada, where he met the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, who announced an additional $2.5bn (£1.85bn) of economic aid for Ukraine.

Carney condemned the “barbaric” overnight attack on Kyiv. He said: “We have the conditions, the possibility, for the just and lasting peace,” adding this requires a “willing Russia”.

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