TV News LIES

Israel ’s security cabinet on Sunday approved measures that aim to deepen Israeli control over the occupied West Bank and weaken the already limited powers of the Palestinian Authority.

The office of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in a statement announced the decisions that would make it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land, adding that “we will continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

Yonatan Mizrachi, a researcher with the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now, called the decision “very significant.” He said the decision still requires approval by Israel’s top commander for the West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a statement called the decision “dangerous” and an “open Israeli attempt to legalize settlement expansion” and land confiscation. He called for the United States and U.N. Security Council to intervene immediately.

Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned the decision, which it said was “aimed at imposing illegal Israeli sovereignty” and entrenching settlements. The Hamas militant group called on Palestinians in the West Bank to “intensify the confrontation with the occupation and its settlers.”

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With Israel’s reputation reaching record lows among Democrats, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is resorting to ever more sophisticated methods to support its preferred candidates while cloaking its own involvement.

The amount of money that the premier pro-Israel organization is able to spend in elections is extraordinarily valuable to candidates who would otherwise have little chance of winning. But it now comes with a catch: If voters know the money comes from an organization advocating on behalf of Israel, it can do more harm than good.

AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC.

The timing of the donations meant that there was no meaningful transparency before voters went to the polls, and Dexter expressed a mixture of ignorance and umbrage when her opponents suggested the money actually came from AIPAC.

The main super PAC in question (named 314 Action) explicitly denied that any funding came from AIPAC—a claim revealed as a flagrant lie once disclosure records finally became public. But by then, Dexter had triumphed and was on her way to Congress.

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The U.S. has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal to end the nearly four‑year war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, as Russian strikes on energy infrastructure forced nuclear power plants to cut output on Saturday.

If the June deadline is not met, the Trump administration will likely put pressure on both sides to meet it, he added.

"The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule," Zelenskyy said, speaking to reporters on Friday. Zelenskyy's comments were embargoed until Saturday morning.

"And they say that they want to do everything by June. And they will do everything to end the war. And they want a clear schedule of all events," he said.

He said the U.S. proposed holding the next round of trilateral talks next week in their country for the first time, likely in Miami, Zelenskyy said. "We confirmed our participation," he added.

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When New Yorkers finally emerge from the freakish cold of recent weeks, they’ll face another outsize side effect of the wild weather: their utility bills.

Residents typically see bills spike in January and February — but this has been no ordinary January or start of February. The record-breaking cold of this past week hasn’t registered on many bills yet.

In emails and letters to customers, both ConEdison and National Grid are trying to emotionally prepare customers for a big hit.

“We’ve experienced the coldest start to winter in more than a decade,” an email from ConEdison read. “Your next energy bill may be more than you’re used to seeing.”

“Colder weather plays a large role in raising winter energy bills,” National Grid wrote to customers. “When temperatures drop, homes use more energy to stay warm and that increased usage shows up on your bill.”

National Grid warned customers of a close to a 10% bump in their bills following the storm and arctic temperatures. Con Edison didn’t cite a specific number.

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Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance.

But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain.

He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend's car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again.

He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.

"They started beating me right away when they arrested me," the Mexican immigrant recounted this week to The Associated Press, which recently reported on how his case contributed to mounting friction between federal immigration agents and a Minneapolis hospital.

Castañeda Mondragón, 31, is one of an unknown number of immigration detainees who, despite avoiding deportation during the Trump administration's enforcement crackdown, have been left with lasting injuries following violent encounters with ICE officers. His case is one of the excessive-force claims the federal government has thus far declined to investigate.

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Over the last year, US corporate leaders have often explained layoffs by saying the positions were no longer needed because artificial intelligence had made their companies more efficient, replacing humans with computers.

But some economists and technology analysts have expressed skepticism about such justifications and instead think that such workforce cuts are driven by factors like the impact of tariffs, overhiring during the Covid-19 pandemic and perhaps simple maximising of profits.

While AI is having an impact on the workplace, experts suggest tariffs, overhiring during the pandemic and simply maximising profits may be bigger factors

In short, the CEOs are allegedly engaged in “AI-washing”.

“You can say, ‘We are integrating the newest technology into our business processes, so we are very much a technological frontrunner, and we have to let go of these people,’” said Fabian Stephany, a departmental research lecturer at the Oxford Internet Institute.

In 2025, AI was cited as a reason for more than 54,000 layoffs, according to a December report from the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

In January, Amazon alone laid off 16,000 workers after making 14,000 reductions in October.

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After three days of dramatic and often surprising competition, the United States claimed the Olympic gold medal in the figure skating team competition on Sunday night.

It wasn't easy.

After carrying a five-point lead into the final day of the event, the Americans found themselves locked in a tie with Japan entering the men's free skate, the last segment of the competition.

It would all come down to Ilia Malinin, the two-time reigning world champion in his debut Olympics. The 21-year-old had struggled with nerves during his short program Saturday and stepped out of his triple axel and then under-rotated his quad lutz, finishing in a staggering second pThe stakes Sunday couldn't have been higher as his teammates anxiously watched as he took the ice with their fate on his blades.

"I was more nervous watching Ilia than I was [skating] myself," team captain and pairs skater Danny O'Shea said.lace -- a rarity for him and more than 10 points out of first.

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The Brentano String Quartet had finished their performance when a special guest dropped in backstage: the US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “We thanked her for everything she had done for our country,” recalls violinist Mark Steinberg. “It was a nice moment.”

The year was 2016 and the place was the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. Fast forward a decade and old certainties have been shaken: Ginsburg is dead, Donald Trump is president and the Kennedy Center has become a case study in how a seemingly solid American institution can quickly unravel.

The Brentano String Quartet were due to perform there last week but cancelled their show, citing Trump’s hostile takeover of the complex. Steinberg explained: “I would have felt ashamed to walk out on stage there. I can’t quite bring myself to go into the building at this point.

“It would be such a luxury to make art in a vacuum and that’s what I yearn for but that’s not possible right now. Had we appeared there, in my eyes, that would be a way of condoning everything that’s happening and I couldn’t stomach that.”

As the US national capital Washington is first and foremost a politics town, forever in New York’s shadow as a hub of arts and culture. In a 1961 speech Kennedy observed: “Somebody once said that Washington was a city of northern charm and southern efficiency.”

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