TV News LIES

A controversial move by the Pentagon to reclassify casualties in the Iran war is being taken by US military veterans as a sign of disrespect for the dead.

“It’s such a huge disrespect for the families,” said Michael E Smith, a retired US rear admiral and the founder of National Security Leaders for America. “To claim that they weren’t killed as a result of the war – oh, it was just overseas operations – is just ludicrous.”

In a quiet weekend update to the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), a military database for displaying casualties, the US Department of Defense – renamed the Department of War under Donald Trump – added more than 140 wounded service members.

They also introduced a new casualty category labeled “Overseas Operations” for personnel killed and wounded “starting July 7” which splits the count from the beginning of the US-Israel war on Iran.

Four US service members killed in action by Iranian forces fall under that category: 1st Lt Tyler James Feehan, Pvt Isabella Gonzales, Sgt Angel S. Rampersad and Sgt Michael Emmanuel Swinton.

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The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has continued to spread, with the number of confirmed infections rising to 3,200.

The country's health authorities say that 1,405 people have died from the virus since the outbreak began in late April, with the current fatality rate standing at 43.9%.

Almost 90% of cases have been detected in the northeastern province of Ituri, near the borders with Uganda and South Sudan, according to the World Health Organization.

Experts believe that the actual number of cases may be much higher, with a large number of cases going undetected or unreported. However, authorities attributed part of the sharp increase to improved detection and expanded testing.

The outbreak, declared on May 15, has spread to five provinces in the country's conflict-scarred east.

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Israeli settlers on Sunday launched a series of widespread attacks across the West Bank, setting on fire two mosques in Nablus and Tulkarm and damaging heavy equipment at an industrial facility near Ramallah.

Eyewitnesses told Middle East Eye that settlers also raided several towns and villages, attacked homes, destroyed vehicles and fired live ammunition to terrorise residents.

The attacks targeted communities in the governorates of Nablus, Tulkarm, Ramallah, Hebron, Salfit, Qalqilya, Jericho and Jerusalem, according to Palestinian officials who said settlers were acting under the protection of Israeli forces.

In the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, Israeli settlers burned large parts of the al-Rahma mosque and spray-painted racist slogans in Hebrew on its walls.

Activist Abdul-Azim Wadi, from the village, told MEE that he received a call at 2:30 am informing him that settlers had burned the mosque, located in the southwestern part of the village.

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Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, is “fomenting hate” by calling the Israeli prime minister a war criminal who should be arrested over Israel’s war in Gaza if he visits the city for the United Nations general assembly.

Netanyahu said he intends to be in New York in September to address the annual UN gathering of world leaders, despite the mayor’s suggestion that he is not welcome. Mamdani said on Wednesday that while New York City does not have legal authority to execute an arrest warrant issued by the world’s top war crimes court, he encouraged the federal government to do so.

“He’s supposed to be the mayor of all New Yorkers – Jews, Christians, Muslims, everyone,” Netanyahu said on the Fox News channel’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “But he’s trying to turn one group against the other.”

The prime minister has become an increasingly polarizing figure over Israel’s war in Gaza, which was ignited by the 7 October 2023 deadly attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants. Israel also joined the US in starting the war against Iran on 28 February before launching a ground invasion in southern Lebanon in response to fire from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group.

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A devastating tragedy has unfolded in Michigan after emergency crews responding to a house fire found eight members of the same family, including six children, dead. At least some of the dead inside the home had gunshot wounds.

Deputies with the Ottawa county sheriff’s office and firefighters from the Grand Haven fire department were dispatched at about 11.40am local time on Friday to a residence on Riverside Trail in Grand Haven Township.

Once crews entered the smoke-filled home to extinguish the fire, they made the grim discovery.

“Units made entry inside to battle the fire because there was smoke showing from the residence. When they got inside, they noticed that there were several people deceased inside the home,” Capt Jacob Sparks said at a press conference. “Some of the victims did have gunshot wounds to their bodies.”

Officials confirmed the victims were two adults and six children aged five to 15. Their identities have not yet been released.

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CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten said Friday that U.S. voters from both sides of the aisle have soured on Israel, referencing multiple recent polls confirming a “mammoth” shift in favorability — which Enten suggested could pose a serious problem for the Republican Party.

Enten made his case during an appearance on “News Central” after host John Berman noted Israel has been “one of the key issues” raised by Democrats in recent months, and that continued U.S. military aid to the country is not a partisan matter anymore.

“These are some absolutely huge, mammoth changes, generational changes that we’re talking about,” Enten said Friday. “I think there are a lot of Republicans [who think], ‘Oh, we’ll be able to run against these anti-Israeli Democrats once we hit the general election.’”

The data guru said Republicans can continue to believe that voters feel “very differently” about the matter than Democrats, as criticism of Israel has largely come from the party’s more progressive wing, but noted Israel’s net favorability has been “all negative” since the spring.

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Israeli rights groups have called on the international community to intervene in order to prevent a "pogrom" in the occupied West Bank.

Organisations including B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Palestinian-run Adalah said action was needed to prevent further deaths after Israeli settlers killed four Palestinians on Friday.

A group of armed settlers killed the four Palestinians in the village of Tel, near Nablus, while a Palestinian seized a weapon from one of the settlers and opened fire, killing two of them.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-rights-groups-call-international-community-stop-pogrom-against-palestinians-occupiedmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Though an Israeli army investigation found that the settlers had entered an off-limits area, the Israeli government ordered the army to demolish the home of the Palestinian accused of killing the two settlers.

The military said it was conducting an operation in Nablus to arrest dozens of Palestinians who "participated in the incident".

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Federal green grants canceled last year were selected “solely” based on a state’s political affiliation, the Trump administration said in a recent court filing.

In the filing, Department of Energy (DOE) lawyer Jeff Novak said the department came up with a list of 624 grants slated for potential termination.

Novak said the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) selected 284 of those grants to be included in a tranche of cancellations. 

He wrote that all except one of the 284 grants OMB selected had ties to states that voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and had two Democratic-caucusing senators. Novak noted that the other 340 grants have not been canceled.

“DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state,” he wrote.

He added that the grants’ inclusion in the October cancellations was not “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.”

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