TV News LIES

With the cost of fertilizer and energy inputs surging due to the war on Iran, Nebraska’s farming industry, always squeaking by on the thinnest of margins, is being thoroughly brutalized. The town of Lexington is in free fall amid the closure of a beef processing facility that served as the town’s foundation. And in Omaha, a city where AI severely threatens employees in the primary industry of insurance, anxiety is at an all time high.

It’s not a great time to be a politician who’s the son of a billionaire celebrating the virtues of the free market, but such is the fate of Nebraska’s Republican senator, Pete Ricketts, who faces a surprisingly robust challenge from independent Dan Osborn, a mechanic who rose to prominence in the state leading a strike at a major Kellogg facility.

Ricketts, for his part, also claimed to have drawn a short straw when it came to one of the reporters assigned to this article, Drop Site’s new congressional reporter Julian Andreone. As a college student, Julian excitedly celebrated the launch of Osborn’s campaign, forecasting his victory. If I was Ricketts, I’d complain about Julian covering me too, but now that he’s out of school and working as a reporter, let’s judge him by his work rather than a past tweet.

They’re probably not super excited about my own involvement either, but Ricketts himself may find something valuable in what Julian found during his recent trip to Nebraska, and we present it below with neither fear nor favor, as they say. And we encourage Ricketts himself, of course, to take the same opportunity Osborn availed himself of to answer questions and make his case to voters. As you’ll see from his campaign spokesperson’s comments to us, that’s unlikely to come about, but the door remains open.

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Despite official Israeli denials and the refusal of some Lebanese to acknowledge the reality, the colonisation of south Lebanon is neither a myth nor a fantasy. It is a concrete and structured project.

On 14 May, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir revealed that Israel had a "settlement plan for Lebanon". The far-right minister made the statement on the very day Lebanon and Israel were due to resume direct negotiations in Washington under US auspices aimed at normalising relations and reaching a comprehensive agreement.

Several weeks earlier, on 26 March, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that "the Litani must be our new border with the state of Lebanon, just like the 'Yellow Line' in Gaza and like the buffer zone and peak of the Hermon in Syria".

These statements are not merely rhetorical provocations. They accompany and support actions already taking place on the ground by Israeli civilians inside Lebanese territory.

On 12 February, weeks before the latest war broke out, dozens of settlers, including women and children, attempted to plant trees inside Lebanese territory in what appeared to be a staged demonstration promoting Israeli settlement expansion. Participants called for the alleged "resumption" of settlement activity in Lebanon, presenting it as a "historical correction".

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The US Treasury Department confirmed the removal of Albanese's name from its sanctions list in an update on its website on Wednesday, under the heading “International Criminal Court-related Designation Removal”.

The move came a week after US district judge Richard Leon issued a temporary injunction against the sanctions, finding that the Trump administration had sought to regulate Albanese's speech because of the "idea or message expressed".

In an opinion granting the preliminary injunction, Leon said "protecting the freedom of speech is 'always' in the public interest".

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in February by Albanese's husband, Massimiliano Cali, a senior economist for the World Bank in Tunisia, which argued that the measures were intended as a punishment for her public criticism of Israel's genocide in Gaza.

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Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza has raised no money into its official World Bank fund four months after launch and multibillion-dollar pledges, the Financial Times reported. Instead, donors have sent limited contributions to a private JPMorgan account that is not subject to the same independent oversight, with none of the promised US support being deployed for rebuilding on the ground yet.

US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, the flagship body created to oversee Gaza’s postwar reconstruction, has raised no money for the World Bank fundTrump himself promised an additional $10 billion in US backing, but the money pledged has yet to reach the World Bank account, which was designed to provide a transparent channel for reconstruction funds. set to hold donor contributions, four months after the board was originally launched.

Several countries, including Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, have signed up to Trump’s Board of Peace and have since contributed more than $7 billion toward a Gaza “relief package,” the US president said, as per a BBC report.

Trump himself promised an additional $10 billion in US backing, but the money pledged has yet to reach the World Bank account, which was designed to provide a transparent channel for reconstruction funds.

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U.S. military contractors need at least three years to replenish stockpiles of three key weapons systems used heavily in the Iran war, according to an analysis released Wednesday, adding to concerns that American forces would have limited firepower in any future conflict with China.

The weapons systems are Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are used to strike targets deep inside enemy territory, and Patriot and THAAD interceptors that defend against incoming missiles and drones.

“The United States has enough munitions for any plausible scenario in the Iran war, but the depleted inventories have created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in its new report, provided to The Associated Press. “The time needed to rebuild those inventories has thus become a major concern.”

China has a stated goal of ensuring its military is capable of taking Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, which experts see as more aspirational than a hard deadline. But Chinese President Xi Jinping warned this month that if Washington mishandles its relations with the self-governing island, the U.S. and China could end up clashing or even in open conflict.

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The U.S. military intercepted and shot down four Iranian one-way attack drones and struck an Iranian ground control station in Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Hill on Wednesday. 

Bandar Abbas is a port city on the southern coast of the nation, located on the Persian Gulf.

The Iranian drones posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz, the key waterway that the Iranian regime has effectively choked off.

“These actions were measured, purely defensive, and intended to maintain the ceasefire,” the U.S. official said. 

The strikes come as President Trump maintained on Wednesday that Iran wants to strike a deal but offered a few details of what’s in the potential deal to end the war in the Middle East.

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The Trump administration has quietly instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid pursuing criminal investigations into Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez, a longtime target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials, in the latest sign of warming relations between the White House and the oil-rich nation.

It’s unclear whether prosecutors had implicated Rodríguez in any crimes or whether investigators were moving toward an indictment. A Justice Department spokesperson said in an email “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.”

But DEA records obtained by The Associated Press earlier this year show she consistently surfaced on the radar of federal law enforcement dating to at least 2018, though she has never been criminally charged in the U.S. like several other senior Venezuelan officials.

The directive to pause scrutiny into Rodríguez was meant to avoid upsetting the administration’s efforts to stabilize Venezuela after the capture of her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, among other reasons, the official said. It was not clear whether the White House, which deferred comment to the Justice Department, was involved in the decision.

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Canada has entered into talks to buy Saab’s GlobalEye early warning jets, which are based on Canadian-made Bombardier Global 6500 aircraft. The deal is projected to support 3,000 jobs in Canada’s aerospace and defense sector.

Canada picked Saab over Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail jets, which have been plagued by cost overruns. Another option would have been the Aeris X made by L3Harris.

“The first job of the government is to keep Canadians safe. Our government is protecting Canadians and supporting our Allies with an approach that transforms defence procurement,” Carney said in a statement. “With our new strategy, we are building our economy and creating careers in the skilled trades, science and engineering. The GlobalEye procurement will help us secure our North and build our economy at once.”

GlobalEye is equipped with powerful active and passive sensors, able to provide long-range detection and identification of objects at sea, air and on land.

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