TV News LIES

The sheer scale of it was boggling. A total of 69 artists, speakers and activists were to appear at Ovo Arena Wembley.

There were stars of music: Damon Albarn, Bastille, PinkPantheress, Hot Chip and a festival’s worth of others. There were stars of stage and screen: Benedict Cumberbatch, Florence Pugh, Guy Pearce, Ramy Youssef and a huge supporting cast. There were the firebrands, the podcasters, the people you’re sure are important but you have no idea why. And there were the people who, well, you don’t really know what they’re bringing: the former footballer Eric Cantona, the Love Island host Laura Whitmore, the Chicken Shop Dates YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg.

To one of the evening’s artists, Paul Weller, it might have all seemed very familiar: the combination of righteousness and music was reminiscent of the big events of the Thatcher years – the GLC Jobs for a Change festival in Battersea Park in July 1985, or the Artists Against Apartheid’s Festival for Freedom on Clapham Common the following summer. (Weller played with the Style Council at the latter, which offered a similarly eclectic experience: Archbishop Trevor Huddleston reminiscing about giving Gary Kemp his first guitar, before Spandau Ballet premiered Through the Barricades.)

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NATO is "at war with Russia" over Ukraine, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir President has said.

The comments by Dmitry Peskov come amid a spike in tensions between the alliance and Moscow following Poland's shooting down of Russian drones that entered the alliance member's airspace last week.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said at the time that the drone incursion was a ploy by Russia to test the alliance.

Peskov said Monday it was "obvious" the alliance was "de facto involved in this war." Newsweek has contacted NATO for comment.

NATO has not directly entered the war, nor are its troops deployed to fight, but Peskov's comments echo those made by the Kremlin and its supporters who refer to the assistance Kyiv has received from NATO allies, including the U.S.

His comments highlight the friction between Moscow and NATO as concerns grow Russia is testing the alliance's resolve, with tensions heightened further after Romania said it had to deploy fighter jets in response to another incursion of its air space.

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Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra said that Israeli soldiers conducted a raid at his West Bank home on Saturday, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.

Israeli settlers attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told The Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.

The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, for his whereabouts and went through her phone, he said, while his 9-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.

As of Saturday night, Adra said he had no way of returning home to check on his family, because soldiers were blocking the entrance to the village and he was scared of being detained.

Israel’s military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of West Bank where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.

As of Saturday night, Adra said he had no way of returning home to check on his family, because soldiers were blocking the entrance to the village and he was scared of being detained.

Israel’s military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The firm guarding sites where aid is distributed in Gaza has been using members of a US biker gang with a history of hostility to Islam to run its armed security, a BBC investigation has found.

BBC News has confirmed the identities of 10 members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club working in Gaza for UG Solutions - a private contractor providing security at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, where hundreds of civilians seeking food have been killed in scenes of chaos and gunfire.

We can reveal that seven members of the gang are in senior positions overseeing sites at the controversial aid operation backed by Israel and US President Donald Trump.

UG Solutions (UGS) defended its employees' qualifications for the job, saying it does not screen people out for "personal hobbies or affiliations unrelated to job performance".

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International aid initiative Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) has said one of its boats was attacked by a drone at Tunisia’s Sidi Bou Said port, the second such reported strike in two days.

The GSF, which is seeking to break Israel’s naval blockade and deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Gaza using civilian boats, said in a statement early on Wednesday all passengers and crew were unharmed and that no structural damage had been caused.

The flotilla, which is carrying aid and pro-Palestinian activists including Greta Thunberg, posted a video on Instagram of Wednesday’s alleged attack, showing a luminous object hitting the boat and fire erupting immediately afterwards on board. It was not possible to immediately verify the video.

GSF reported the first attack on Tuesday saying one of its vessels had been struck by a drone in Tunisian waters. Tunisia’s interior ministry said reports of a drone hitting the boat on Tuesday had “no basis in truth”, and that a fire broke out on the vessel itself.

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The Israeli army issued evacuation orders and targeted high-rise buildings in Gaza City on Saturday, urging Palestinians to flee south ahead of an escalating offensive to seize the city of nearly 1 million.

Aid groups warn that a large-scale evacuation would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza City, which the world’s leading hunger watchdog announced last month was officially suffering from famine as a result of Israeli restrictions on food aid.

Most Palestinian families have been repeatedly displaced in the nearly two-year-long war and say they have nowhere left to go. The Israeli military has previously bombed tent encampments designated as humanitarian zones.

“There is no safe tent, no safe house, no safe place, no safety at all,” said Nadia Marouf, who fled Israel’s offensive in the north with her children and resettled in Gaza City — only to see her tent destroyed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike that wiped out a 15-story building and surrounding encampment.

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