TV News LIES

Ukraine acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that Russia’s army had entered the Dnipropetrovsk region, a central administrative area previously spared from intense fighting.

“Yes, they have entered, and fighting is ongoing as of now,” said Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian forces in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city. Russian forces have slowly gained ground in costly battles for largely devastated areas in eastern and southern Ukraine, normally with few inhabitants or intact buildings left.

Separately, Ukraine’s military general staff rejected Moscow’s claims to have fully captured the villages of Zaporizke and Novogeorgiivka just inside Dnipropetrovsk oblast.

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More than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait by an Italian master has been spotted on the website of an estate agent advertising a house for sale in Argentina.

A photo shows the painting, Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni) by the late-baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi, also known as Fra’ Galgario, hanging above a sofa in the living room of the property, in a seaside town near Buenos Aires.

The Dutch newspaper AD said it had traced the work, which features in a database of lost art and is listed by the Dutch culture ministry as “unreturned” after the second world war, after a long investigation – and with the unwitting help of the estate agent.

Portrait of a Lady belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a leading Dutch art dealer who fled the Netherlands in mid-May 1940 to escape the invading Nazis but died after falling in the hold of the vessel carrying him to safety and breaking his neck.

Within weeks, Goudstikker’s entire collection of more than 1,100 artworks, including numerous paintings catalogued as old masters, had been bought up, in a forced sale and for a small fraction of its true value, by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.

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A powerful storm kicked up a towering wall of dust that rolled through the city of Phoenix, Arizona, on Monday, darkening the sky, blinding drivers, knocking out power and damaging one of the nation’s busiest airports.

The dust storm, known as a haboob, is pushed by the wind and produced by a weather front or thunderstorm. It typically occurs in flat, arid areas. The storm came from the south-east, and was followed by heavy rain, wind and lightning.

Bernae Boykin Hitesman was driving her son and daughter, ages nine and 11, home from school when the storm arrived late in the afternoon in Arizona City, about 60 miles (95km) south-east of Phoenix.

She had to quickly pull over as the storm engulfed her car. “I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face if I put my hand outside,” she said.

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At least two current and three former Microsoft employees – as well as two other tech workers – were arrested at the company’s headquarters after staging a sit-in demonstration at the company president’s office urging that Microsoft cut ties with the Israeli government.

Police placed the protesters in full-body harnesses and carried them out of the building, according to Abdo Mohamed, a former Microsoft worker and who helped organize the demonstration. “No arrests, no violence, will deter us from continuing to speak up,” he said.

At least two current and three former Microsoft employees – as well as two other tech workers – were arrested at the company’s headquarters after staging a sit-in demonstration at the company president’s office urging that Microsoft cut ties with the Israeli government.

Police placed the protesters in full-body harnesses and carried them out of the building, according to Abdo Mohamed, a former Microsoft worker and who helped organize the demonstration. “No arrests, no violence, will deter us from continuing to speak up,” he said.

In addition to the protesters who staged a sit-in at Microsoft president Brad Smith’s office, other employees, former staff and supporters had gathered outside the headquarters.

The demonstration on Tuesday was part of a series of actions organized by current and former staff over Microsoft’s cloud contracts with the Israeli government. Twenty activists were arrested at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington last week.

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Since the White House press office selected reporters from five pro-Trump, partisan news outlets to ask the president questions during his televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday, readers will not be shocked to learn that they largely avoided subjects he would prefer not to talk about.

In fact, two of them went even further than that, using the opportunity to help Trump make his point about crime in Washington DC by sharing their own stories of being assaulted or harassed.

The first to speak, in what was obviously a pre-planned moment, was Iris Tao of the conspiratorial Epoch Times.

Tao’s outlet, which was founded by Chinese exiles affiliated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement that is repressed as a cult in China, has heavily promoted Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that China was responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I want to mention, you know about crime… we have a young lady here, Iris of Epoch Times,” Trump said, looked down at his briefing notes, where her name was written in large letters. “I heard you were very savagely mugged. Would you like to mention what happened?” he asked.

Tao then described the harrowing experience of being mugged at gunpoint outside her apartment building in January 2023, and struck in the face with a pistol by her attacker when she refused to hand over her phone.

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The Trump administration retaliated on Tuesday against some Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) staffers who signed an open letter of dissent about the agency’s leadership one day earlier, the Washington Post reports.

On Monday, about 180 current and former Fema staffers sent a letter to members of Congress and other officials, arguing the current leaders’ inexperience and approach harms Fema’s mission and could result in a disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina.

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A man was arrested for setting fire to an American flag in a federal park outside the White House on Monday, just hours after President Trump signed an executive order seeking to crack down on those who burn the flag.

The U.S. Secret Service told The Hill they detained a person at approximately 6:15 p.m. Monday in Lafayette Park “for igniting an object” and turned the person over to the U.S. Park Police, which has jurisdiction.

The Park Police said it arrested one person in the park at about 6:30 p.m., citing a violation of 36 CFR 2.13(a)(1), which prohibits fire in public parks, except in designated areas.

The Park Police declined to identify the person, saying such information isn’t publicly available until charges are formalized through court.

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A federal judge on Tuesday threw out the Justice Department’s lawsuit against all 15 federal district judges in Maryland over an order slowing down speedy deportation efforts, calling the administration’s attacks on the judiciary “unprecedented and unfortunate.”

U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen, an appointee of President Trump who sits on a federal court in Virginia, dismissed the lawsuit challenging a May standing order that automatically blocks the deportation of migrants in Maryland who file legal challenges over their detention for two business days.

The Trump administration had argued that the order, which was signed by the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, interferes with the executive branch’s powers and violate various rules.

“Fair enough, as far as it goes,” Cullen wrote. “If these arguments were made in the proper forum, they might well get some traction.”

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