TV News LIES

The United Arab Emirates has warned Israel that annexing the occupied West Bank would cross a "red line" and undermine the spirit of the Abraham Accords that normalised relations between the two countries.

A senior Emirati official, Lana Nusseibeh, said such a move would be the death knell of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry said it welcomed the UAE's position.

The Israeli government has not commented. But Nusseibeh's remarks came after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled a proposal for the annexation of approximately four-fifths of the West Bank.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem - land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state - during the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The settlements are illegal under international law.

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IDF reservists were answering the latest call-up to invade Gaza City, but likely in smaller numbers and slower than in the past recruitments, an IDF briefing appeared to clarify on Wednesday.

In fact, military sources have declined to provide statistics during the briefing. Instead, they said that they will give an update on these numbers at the end of the week, indicating both that the call-up is gradual, but also that the initial numbers were not so impressive that the military would want to focus on the issue until it can give the maximum number of those who were showing up.

Often during call-ups, the military rushes out the early numbers and percentages to express its pride in the early responders.

Most of the reservists being called up are in their fifth or sixth round of service since the Israel-Hamas War broke out.Most of the reservists being called up are in their fifth or sixth round of service since the Israel-Hamas War broke out.

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President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is willing to fight to achieve all its objectives if Ukraine does not agree to a deal.

He made the remarks in China after attending a huge military parade seen as a challenge to Donald Trump and the US-dominated world order.

The US president has tried to persuade Putin to end the war, but the Russian leader, while praising Trump's "sincere desire", has so far not done so.

Visiting Kyiv, UK Defence Secretary John Healey told the BBC Trump had brought Putin to the table, and had not ruled out putting more pressure on him.

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A so-called “missing minute” of CCTV footage, a key ingredient of conspiracy theories surrounding the prison death of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been found, contradicting the assertion of Pam Bondi, the attorney general, that it was recorded over.

The video was in a cache of material, including 33,000 pages of records relating to the disgraced financier and former Donald Trump associate, released late on Tuesday by the US House oversight committee. The panel has been looking into Epstein’s August 2019 death at Manhattan’s Metropolitan correctional center.

In July, the same month as a government review confirmed Epstein died by suicide, the FBI released hours of surveillance footage taken from outside Epstein’s jail cell on the night he died. Observers quickly realized from time stamps that a block of one minute, from 11.59pm to midnight on 10 August, was not there.

Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at 6.30am.

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A measure that would allow Texas residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers advanced to the desk of the governor, Greg Abbott, on Wednesday, setting up the state to be the first to try to crack down on the most common abortion method.

Supporters say it’s a key tool to enforce the state’s abortion ban, protecting women and fetuses.

Opponents see it not only as another way to rein in abortion but as an effort to intimidate abortion providers outside Texas who are complying with the laws in their states – and to encourage a form of vigilantism.

Texas bill allowing residents to sue out-of-state abortion pill providers reaches governor

If Greg Abbott signs, state would become first to try to crack down on the most common abortion method

Supporters say it’s a key tool to enforce the state’s abortion ban, protecting women and fetuses.

Opponents see it not only as another way to rein in abortion but as an effort to intimidate abortion providers outside Texas who are complying with the laws in their states – and to encourage a form of vigilantism.

If the measure becomes law, it’s nearly certain to spark legal challenges from abortion rights supporters.

Under the measure, Texas residents could sue those who manufacture, transport or provide abortion-inducing drugs to anyone in Texas for up to $100,000. Women who receive the pills for their own use would not be liable.

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Senator Mark Warner said on Wednesday that a meeting he had scheduled at the headquarters of a US intelligence agency was cancelled following online attacks by the far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.

Warner, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, was set to visit the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Virginia in what he described part of his “responsibility to provide oversight and support to our intelligence community”.

The administration rescinded the invitation after Loomer initiated a “campaign of baseless attacks” against him and the agency’s director, Trey Whitworth, he said.

“I can’t overstate how unprecedented and dangerous this is,” Warner said in a fundraising email. “This administration is taking its marching orders from Laura Loomer – a wackjob with a long history of outlandish fringe views, including 9/11 denialism, anti-Muslim harassment campaigns, and associations with white supremacists.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump told the Daily Caller last week that the pro-Israel lobby is no longer in “total control” over Congress.

“There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad. If you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly,” Trump said, per a transcript that the publication released.

“But today, you have, you know, AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics, and they’ve really, they’ve changed it.”

AOC refers to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a member of the far-left “squad” in Congress.

Ocasio-Cortez and the other “squad” members—Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—are among the Jewish state’s harshest critics on Capitol Hill.

“If you go back 15 years, probably that’s when it started,” Trump said. “Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t. You know, I’m a little surprised to see that.”

TVNL Comment: Is there no problem with a foreign country being in control of the US Congress?  What in Heaven's name has happened to the US?

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A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday ordered the reversal of the Trump administration’s cuts to more than $2.6 billion in funding for research grants for Harvard University.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs sided with the Ivy League school, ruling the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of White House demands for changes to its governance and policies.

The ruling delivers a significant victory to Harvard in its battle with the Trump administration, which also has sought to prevent the school from hosting foreign students and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status.

The government had tied the freezes at Harvard to delays in dealing with antisemitism on its campus, but the judge said the federally funded research had little connection to antisemitism. “A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs wrote.

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