TV News LIES

Israel on Saturday said it killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza after an explosive device detonated and wounded two soldiers in the territory’s south.

Hamas in a statement did not confirm the death of Raed Saad. It said a civilian vehicle had been struck outside Gaza City and asserted it was a violation of the ceasefire that took effect on Oct. 10.

Saad served as the Hamas official in charge of manufacturing and previously led the militant group’s operations division. The Israeli statement described him as one of the architects of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war, and said that he had been “engaged in rebuilding the terrorist organization” in a violation of the ceasefire.

The Israeli strike west of Gaza City killed four people, according to an Associated Press journalist who saw their bodies arrive at Shifa Hospital. Another three were wounded, according to Al-Awda hospital.

Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused each other of truce violations.

Israeli airstrikes and shootings in Gaza have killed at least 386 Palestinians since the ceasefire took hold, according to Palestinian health officials. Israel has said recent strikes are in retaliation for militant attacks against its soldiers, and that troops have fired on Palestinians who approached the “Yellow Line” between the Israeli-controlled majority of Gaza and the rest of the territory.

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More than a million households are without electricity in Ukraine after a barrage of overnight Russian strikes hit energy and industrial infrastructure, officials said.

Ukraine's internal affairs minister, Ihor Klymenko, said five regions were hit and at least five people were injured, and work was under way to extinguish fires and restore supplies.

While Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have been common throughout the war, Moscow has intensified strikes as the country heads into winter.

It comes as US President Donald Trump's overseas envoy will travel to Germany this weekend to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders for more talks on ending the war.

On Saturday, Zelensky said more than 450 drones and 30 missiles were used by Russia in overnight strikes. Klymenko said the Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Chernihiv regions were hit.

Russia's defence ministry said it used weapons including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in the strikes - which are hard to track as they can change direction mid-flight.

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The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against four more states as part of the Trump administration's attempt to access sensitive voter data. The DOJ is also suing one Georgia county, seeking records from the 2020 election.

The department has now filed suit against 18 states — mostly Democratic-led, and all states that President Trump lost in the 2020 election — as part of its far-reaching litigation.

For months, the Justice Department has been demanding certain states turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists, including any driver's license numbers and parts of voters' Social Security numbers.

In court filings, the DOJ says it wants this personal information to check if states are following federal law on keeping accurate voter rolls.

But most states have refused, citing privacy restrictions.

The latest states to be sued are Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Nevada, the Justice Department announced Friday.

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Afghan immigrants and advocates across the United States are pushing back firmly against the Trump administration’s most recent crackdown on legal immigration, saying the American government is punishing hundreds of thousands of people for the alleged actions of one man.

Since the shooting of two national guard soldiers in Washington DC late last month, with the authorities charging an Afghan man as the suspect, the Trump administration has taken harsh action, especially against Afghans in the US, generating a mix of fear, outrage and defiance in the diaspora.

The government has completely frozen asylum decisions at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), paused visa and immigration applications filed by Afghans and, more widely, halted all legal immigration cases for nationals of 19 countries listed on its travel ban, including citizenship ceremonies.

“The attacker hasn’t been put on trial, but the whole Afghan community has been labeled as guilty,” said Yahya Haqiqi, president of the Afghan Support Network in the US, an organization founded shortly after the fall of Kabul to Taliban control in 2021 that has helped thousands of Afghan refugees settle in Oregon.

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A federal judge ordered the Justice Department on Friday to return data it seized and obtained in 2017 from a longtime friend of former FBI Director James Comey, concluding that prosecutors had violated law professor Daniel Richman’s constitutional rights and misused his material in their quest to indict Comey.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the material from Richman — an image of his hard drive and files from his iCloud and Columbia University email accounts — was handled with “callous disregard” for Richman’s rights. Prosecutors rummaged through the materials without a warrant as they pursued a slapdash case against Comey, the judge found, calling it a “remarkable breach of protocol.”

However, in a significant concession to prosecutors, Kollar-Kotelly ordered that a copy of all the data the government obtained be deposited with a federal court in Virginia. That provision, the judge said, would ensure that prosecutors could seek to regain access to the materials if they can persuade the court there to do so.

“This Court concludes that although Petitioner Richman is entitled to the return of the improperly seized and searched materials at issue here,” the Clinton-appointed judge wrote, “he is not entitled to an order preventing the Government from ‘using or relying on’ those materials in a separate investigation or proceeding, as long as they are obtained through a valid warrant and judicial order.”

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U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed Saturday that two U.S. service members and one civilian were killed, and several others injured, after a gunman tied to ISIS launched an ambush.

“On Dec. 13, two U.S. service members and one U.S. civilian were killed, and three service members were injured, as a result of an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman in Syria,” CENTCOM wrote on social platform X. “The gunman was engaged and killed.”

“As a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with Department of War policy, the identities of the service members will be withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified,” the statement continues. “Updates will be provided as they become available.”

Troops were conducting a joint field patrol when they came under fire alongside Syrian security forces near the city of Palmyra, SANA, the government backed news agency, explained in a post on X.

“The savage who perpetrated this attack was killed by partner forces,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a statement.

“Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you,” he added.

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At least two people were killed, and eight were injured in a shooting at Brown University's campus in Providence, Rhode Island, according to the city's mayor.

"Sadly, today is a day that the city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island prayed would never come," Mayor Brett Smiley said during a news conference on the evening of Saturday, Dec. 13. "We've heard about horrific acts of gun violence and active shooter situations in other places, but not here."

Smiley confirmed the two deaths and said the eight are in critical, yet stable, conditions at Rhode Island Hospital. He advised that the numbers may change as authorities are "still in early hours."

Jack DiPrimio, a 23-year-old student in the university's Master of Public Affairs program, said he was in an academic building listening to music and applying for jobs on his laptop when he received an alert text message to take cover.

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Israel’s security cabinet has signed off on plans to formalise 19 illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, in a move Palestinian officials say deepens a decades-long project of land theft and demographic engineering.

Israeli media reported on Friday that the decision also revives two northern West Bank outposts dismantled during the 2005 “disengagement”.

The Israeli press outlet Ynet claimed the plan “was coordinated with the US in advance”, while Channel 14 said the push came from far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – a settler himself and one of the most hardline figures in Israel’s governing coalition.

Settlement expansion, though illegal under international law, is widely accepted across Israel’s political spectrum.

Palestinian officials condemned the decision, warning that it accelerates Israel’s annexation drive.

Mu’ayyad Sha’ban of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission described it as another step towards erasing Palestinian geography, saying it underscored growing fears about the future of the territory.

Hamas condemned the plan as a dramatic escalation. In a statement, the group said the move “constitutes a dangerous escalation in the annexation and Judaisation project” and reflects a government that “treats Palestinian land as colonial spoils and desperately seeks to entrench a settlement reality, ultimately aiming for complete control over the West Bank”.

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