TV News LIES

The US military carried out a new strike on Thursday against a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a US official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported. But it raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody.

The Pentagon, which has labeled those it has targeted in the strikes as “narcoterrorists”, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prior to Thursday’s operation, US military strikes against suspected drug boats off Venezuela killed at least 27 people, raising alarms among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who question whether they adhere to the laws of war.

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Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media.

Adm Alvin Holsey’s abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military’s southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years.

A source told Reuters that there had been tension between the four-star commander and Hegseth as well as questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.

The New York Times reports that an unnamed US official said that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats”.

In a statement shared on social media, Hegseth did not disclose the reason for Holsey’s plan “to retire at year’s end”.

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A Washington, D.C., woman accused of assaulting a federal agent was found not guilty by a jury on Thursday, the latest embarrassment for Jeanine Pirro, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Prosecutors had alleged Sidney Lori Reid kicked a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent during an altercation outside the D.C. Jail in July. Reid had been filming Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers while they were detaining a man who’d just been released from the jail.

Pirro’s office tried three times to indict Reid on a felony assault charge, but D.C. grand juries declined to return an indictment each time — a highly unusual occurrence that suggested the flimsiness of the government’s case.

After whiffing on the felony counts, prosecutors ended up trying Reid on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting or impeding a federal agent — but they couldn’t even win that case. The jury deliberated for less than two hours on Thursday before returning the verdict of not guilty, WUSA9 reported.

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A former U.S. Marine Corps colonel and combat veteran of 24 years resigned in late September, now saying he did so because of President Donald Trump and “concern for our country’s future.”

In an op-ed titled “I resigned from the military because of Trump,” published in The Washington Post on Thursday, Doug Krugman noted that “no commander in chief is perfect,” but said he nevertheless believed that previous presidents took their oaths to the Constitution With Trump, he wrote, he no longer believes that.

The Department of Defense has been in the spotlight during Trump’s second term under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Trump administration has rebranded the department the “Department of War,” fixated on the physical appearance of military personnel, and ordered National Guard troops to heavily Democratic cities despite the opposition of blue state governors.

During an in-person meeting where hundreds of military leaders were summoned to a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, Trump outlined his vision for using the military for domestic purposes to fight the “enemy from within.”

Krugman wrote in his op-ed that although it was not clear to him if Trump was referring to real crime or to political dissent, “military force is not the answer.”

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John Bolton, a former national security adviser turned vocal critic of President Donald Trump, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Maryland on eight counts of transmission of national defense information and 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information.

According to the indictment, from April 2018 to September 2019, Bolton shared over 1,000 pages of “information about his day-to-day activities” as national security adviser in “diary-like entries” with two members of his family; reportedly, according to CNN, Bolton’s wife and daughter. Some of the entries allegedly included top-secret information.

Commenting on the charges against his former national security adviser from the Oval Office on Thursday, President Donald Trump remarked, “I didn’t know that. I think he’s a bad person. I think he’s a bad guy, yeah. Bad guy. Too bad, but that’s the way it goes.”

Bolton has denied any wrongdoing. Abbe Lowell, Bolton’s attorney, told HuffPost on Thursday that the “underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago.”

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Roughly 46,000 full-time U.S. military members are without pay during the federal government shutdown despite President Donald Trump's push to pay active duty troops.

The impacted service members, known as dual-status technicians, are full-time employees of the National Guard and other military reserve units who under federal law must wear their military uniform to work daily, must maintain part-time military uniform to work daily, must maintain part-time military membership and must meet military standards. According to the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill, the military currently has roughly 46,000 dual-status technician positions distributed across crucial functions like helicopter and plane maintenance, technology support, weapons repair and administrative support for isolated units.

The catch? Dual-status technicians are, technically speaking, civilian employees of the Defense Department despite the inherently military aspects of their jobs. And during the ongoing federal government shutdown, the Pentagon's civilian employees are going without pay, though many of them (including most technicians) must stay on the job due to the vital national security nature of their work.

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Israel has imposed new restrictions on aid entering the besieged Gaza Strip and will not open the Rafah crossing as planned, while Israeli forces killed at least nine people in the Palestinian territory as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire came under growing strain.

Israel notified the United Nations on Tuesday that it will only allow 300 aid trucks – half of the number it originally agreed to – daily into the Gaza Strip from Wednesday.

Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, confirmed the UN had received the note from the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza.

The COGAT note said no fuel or gas will be allowed into the war-torn enclave except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud noted that allowing 300 trucks of aid each day was “not nearly enough” for famine-stricken Gaza.

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At least five Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza City, medical sources told Al Jazeera, despite a ceasefire agreed between Hamas and Israel.

Sources from al-Ahli Arab Hospital in told Al Jazeera Arabic on Tuesday that Israeli soldiers killed five Palestinians in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The Israeli military said it opened fire to remove a threat posed by people who approached its forces in northern Gaza.

It said soldiers fired against “suspects” who were “crossing the yellow line” – the line to which Israel’s military pulled back under the ceasefire deal that took effect on Friday – and were approaching soldiers in breach of the agreement.
Will the ceasefire last?

Hamas and Israel agreed last week to cease hostilities and return all remaining Israeli captives – dead and alive – in exchange for about 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The first phase of the agreement should also see a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops. The first step is to relocate soldiers away from the front line to the yellow redeployment line.

TVNL Comment:  Does anyone really believe that Israel will honor a cease fire?  The never have, and never will.  Wait and see.

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