TV News LIES

The US military launched airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria on Friday in retaliation for an attack on US personnel, two US officials said on Friday.

The attacks come after Donald Trump vowed to hit back after an attack last weekend in Syria by a suspected Islamic State member.

A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described the strikes as a large-scale response that included targets across central Syria.

Trump said on social media that the Syrian government fully supported the strikes and that the US was inflicting “very serious retaliation”.

US Central Command said the strikes hit more than 70 targets across central Syria, adding that Jordanian fighter jets supported the operation.

Syria reiterated its steadfast commitment to fighting Islamic State and ensuring that it has “no safe havens on Syrian territory”, according to a statement by the foreign ministry.

Two US Iowa national guard members and a civilian interpreter were killed on Saturday in the central Syrian town of Palmyra by an attacker who targeted a convoy of American and Syrian forces before being shot dead, according to the US military. Three other US soldiers were also wounded in the attack.

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The latest tranche of files related to Jeffrey Epstein include more photos of the wealth adviser with rich and powerful people from all over the world.

The files released by the Department of Justice on Dec. 19 are in addition to previous releases from the House Oversight Committee, and a batch that USA TODAY received from the nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Some of the records reviewed by USA TODAY are photos with no date, location, or other context. Other records are emails released in batches.

The names include a former president, famous entertainers, businessmen, and a former prime minister.

Former President Bill Clinton appears in multiple photos either with Epstein associates or with young women.

In one picture, a woman whose face is blacked out sits on the 42nd president's lap. Another photograph shows an unidentified person with their face blacked out along with Clinton in a hot tub. The former president is also seen in a picture swimming with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking and who women have accused of participating in their abuse.

Clinton rode on Epstein's private jet 26 times, according to a Business Insider analysis of flight logs.

Gates McGavick, a Justice Department spokesman, posted a Dec. 19 message on X that included the hot tub photo of Clinton in the hot tub with an unidentified person.

Clinton rode on Epstein's private jet 26 times, according to a Business Insider analysis of flight logs.

Gates McGavick, a Justice Department spokesman, posted a Dec. 19 message on X that included the hot tub photo of Clinton in the hot tub with an unidentified person.

"Beloved Democrat President," McGavick said in the post. "The black box is added to protect a victim."

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Republican lawmakers support President Donald Trump’s increasingly hostile military campaign against Venezuela, including lethal U.S. strikes against suspected drug smuggling boats and seizing sanctioned oil tankers coming to and from the South American country.

But there’s one step they aren’t willing to endorse, at least so far: a military invasion involving land-based troops.

“I don’t think having troops on the ground in Venezuela is a good idea,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told HuffPost. “Putting pressure, in terms of the sanctions on the oil — a lot of that oil has already been sanctioned, as you know — I think it’s fine.”

“My views haven’t changed about landing ground troops or offensive operations in Venezuela. I’m not a forcible regime change guy,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) noted.

But the questions surrounding the legality, strategy and wisdom of Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuela and its president-turned-dictator Nicolas Maduro, have so far not resulted in significant Republican pushback against the administration’s approach, even as rumors swirl of further escalations and potential pushes for outright regime change.

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A delegation of 30 Canadians, including six members of Parliament, was denied entry into the West Bank early on Tuesday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-canada-9.7017424
A statement from Israel's co-ordinator of government activities in the territories (COGAT), which manages the civilian authorities and border crossings in the West Bank, said the delegation's entry was being denied "for security reasons."

"Earlier today, several foreign nationals arrived at the Allenby border crossing without prior co-ordination," the COGAT statement said.

"Following checks conducted by the security authorities in co-ordination with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Population and Immigration Authority, their entry into the Judea and Samaria area was denied."

A spokesperson for the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), which had members in the group, told CBC News each delegate was asked to sign a form declaring they are a threat to public safety before they could enter the territory.

But Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi, who was one of the MPs not allowed to enter the West Bank through the Allenby land crossing from Jordan, later told CBC News the NCCM mischaracterized what happened at the border.

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Israeli forces withdrew to the yellow line in October as part of the ceasefire deal with Hamas. The partial withdrawal left Israeli forces in control of more than half of the strip.

The yellow line was intended as the first of three demarcation lines, to which Israeli forces would withdraw as the ceasefire progressed through its three stages.

The Israel Defense Forces said it launched a series of strikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday, targeting what it alleged were one Hezbollah member and several military facilities used by the group.

In a post to X, the IDF said it attacked a Hezbollah member in the Al-Tayyiba area of southern Lebanon.

In an earlier post, the IDF reported several strikes on what it called Hezbollah "infrastructure sites" elsewhere in the region.

Among the targets were an alleged Hezbollah military compound the IDF said was used for training and weapons storage. Several other "military structures" were also attacked, the IDF said.

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Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said Thursday that Russia has deployed a newly developed hypersonic, nuclear-capable missile known as the Oreshnik on Belarusian territory and placed it on combat duty.

“Oreshnik has been in Belarus since yesterday. And it’s going on combat duty,” Lukashenko said during his annual address. He had previously said the Russian missile system would be placed on combat duty in December.

Russia first unveiled the weapon last year after using it in a strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Nov. 21, 2024. Moscow had already stationed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus in 2023 and earlier said it could deploy the Oreshnik missile there by the end of 2025.

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service said Saturday, Dec. 13, that Russia is preparing to deploy the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile in Belarus as part of a broader effort to pressure European countries.

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Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who spent decades dodging bullets and bombs to bring the world eyewitness accounts of war from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq, has died. He was 91.

Arnett, who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his Vietnam War coverage for The Associated Press, died Wednesday in Newport Beach and was surrounded by friends and family, said his son Andrew Arnett. He had been suffering from prostate cancer.

"Peter Arnett was one of the greatest war correspondents of his generation — intrepid, fearless, and a beautiful writer and storyteller. His reporting in print and on camera will remain a legacy for aspiring journalists and historians for generations to come," said Edith Lederer, who was a fellow AP war correspondent in Vietnam in 1972-73 and is now AP's chief correspondent at the United Nations.

As a wire-service correspondent, Arnett was known mostly to fellow journalists when he reported in Vietnam from 1962 until the war's end in 1975. He became something of a household name in 1991, however, after he broadcast live updates for CNN from Iraq during the first Gulf War.

While almost all Western reporters had fled Baghdad in the days before the U.S.-led attack, Arnett stayed. As missiles began raining on the city, he broadcast a live account by cellphone from his hotel room.

"There was an explosion right near me, you may have heard," he said in a calm, New Zealand-accented voice moments after the loud boom of a missile strike rattled across the airwaves. As he continued to speak air-raid sirens blared in the background.

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TikTok has signed a deal to spin-off its U.S. operations to a group controlled by mostly American investors, including software giant Oracle, a company run by billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison.

TikTok's hyper-engaging algorithm and the massive amount of data the app has collected on millions of Americans is set to be overseen by the new U.S. firm. According to the agreement, TikTok's U.S. algorithm will be retrained with only Americans' data. Content moderation rules around what is permitted and what is not will be set by the new investor-controlled entity.

Yet the underlying algorithm will still be owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, with the blessing of American auditors, according to an internal TikTok memo reviewed by NPR and two sources familiar with the deal who were not authorized to speak publicly.

"With an American majority running the content moderation, concerns about foreign propaganda seem to have been alleviated," said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University who studies the regulation of new technology. "But it is possible that the American TikTok might end up censoring or hiding speech that is permissible on the global TikTok platform. I would hope that the U.S. content moderation team would allow speech that the American owners might dislike."

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