TV News LIES

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair was recently sent by Donald Trump's Board of Peace to ask the Palestinian Authority (PA) to replace any mention of the word "Palestine" in schoolbooks with the Jewish designation of "Samaria", Middle East Eye has heard.

Jeremy Greenstock, who was Britain's ambassador to the UN between 1998 and 2003, told MEE that Blair attempted to exert pressure on the PA and said that if it was serious about being seen by the Board of Peace as capable of reaching an agreement with Israel to end the war on Gaza, then the word "Palestine" should be erased from textbooks.

In a wide-ranging interview on the David Hearst Podcast, Greenstock said the demand was rejected by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Greenstock also said that his former boss was experiencing "difficulties" in his new role overseeing the postwar management of Gaza for the board.

"He recently, I understand, was asked by the Board of Peace to go to Ramallah and ask to remove from the Palestinian curriculum any mention of the word Palestine if they were to be treated by the Board of Peace as capable of coming to an agreement with Israel to end the current conflict that had stemmed from 7 October onwards," Greenstock said, adding that he received this information from a ministerial level source.

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A Pennsylvania police officer was charged on Tuesday with voluntary manslaughter for last week’s fatal shooting of a college student who was looking for his friends late at night and went to the wrong house.

Police body-camera video reviewed by investigators showed the officer yelled: “Drop to the ground,” then: “Stop or I’ll ...”. Before he finished the sentence, he fired two shots at the man who was unarmed and had his hands in the air. He hit 22-year-old Glenwood Earl Pysher IV twice in the chest, killing him.

The officer, Cpl Sean Farrell of Upper Pottsgrove police, had less-than-lethal options and did not need to resort to shooting Pysher, said Kevin Steele, the Montgomery county district attorney, at a news conference.

“The investigation found that Cpl Farrell had less-than-lethal options on his utility belt that he did not employ, including a taser. At the time of the shooting, the officer was a safe distance from Pysher behind a car, and the victim had his hands in the air and did not possess any type of weapon. Mr Pysher was not a threat. This is not a legal use of deadly force, leading to the charge of Voluntary Manslaughter,” Steele said in a news release.

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Aid experts have denounced the US’s “embarrassing” and “pitiful” initial response to the Nepal flood disaster after the US state department announced it was releasing $500,000 in emergency funds to help the relief effort.

The modest sum – which has since been increased – allocated in response to the devastation caused by mudslides in the mountainous Asian country was mocked on social media, where users contrasted it with the amount spent on other Trump administration priorities.

The death toll from last week’s flash floods has passed 1,000, with 4,400 people still unaccounted, according to officials in Nepal and China. Rescue teams are trying to find workers trapped in hydropower tunnels, which were buried in mud.

The US contribution has been upped to $3.6m, which state department officials say will be used to deliver food assistance to feed 10,000 affected households for up to three months, and pay for emergency items such as blankets, mosquito nets and shelter sheets.

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The Mamdani administration will open the New York City’s first day care for the children of municipal workers next week.

The pilot program will open for 41 children on the ground floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, which looms beside the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge at 1 Centre St. City officials said most of the parents work right upstairs at various city agencies, including the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the city comptroller’s office and the Office of the Public Advocate.

“This is something that the private sector sometimes thinks about, but it's not something that we've done in city government before, so we're really excited to try this,” said Yume Kitasei, commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. The agency will oversee the contract with the provider, Imagine Early Learning Centers.

The pilot program will open for 41 children on the ground floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, which looms beside the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge at 1 Centre St. City officials said most of the parents work right upstairs at various city agencies, including the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the city comptroller’s office and the Office of the Public Advocate.

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A Chinese immigrant was found dead just hours after being booked into immigration detention in a U.S. territory, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Lianyong Wei was arrested by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Public Safety on Aug. 21 after allegedly attacking a family in their home, officials said. A day later, Wei, whose legal immigration status ended in 2019, was taken into custody "without incident, pending his removal proceedings."

The 51-year-old was found unresponsive during morning checks the next day by a corrections officer at the Saipan facility, run by the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Corrections. Wei was pronounced dead at approximately 7:30 a.m. local time on Aug. 23.

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A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday blocked an executive order from President Trump that again seeks to restrict birthright citizenship.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman granted a preliminary injunction in a case brought by two immigration advocacy groups that had also challenged the Trump administration’s initial attempt last year to limit who is eligible for automatic citizenship at birth.

Boardman wrote in a 35-page opinion that the new directive was “almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class,” pointing to the Supreme Court decision in June that struck down Trump’s Day 1 executive order.

This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,” Boardman, a Biden appointee, wrote.

Her order prohibits the administration from enforcing the new restriction against any child born after February 19, 2025, to one or both parents who were not lawfully in the country at the time.

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Israeli attacks on Gaza have escalated in the last 24 hours, with five Palestinians killed, the Palestinian health ministry is reporting.

On Tuesday morning, at least seven air strikes hit an area west of Gaza City within a 10-minute period, killing a child, while Israeli soldiers opened fire in Deir el-Balah, killing another child.

Al Jazeera described chaotic scenes in Gaza City following "intense" Israeli attacks, reporting that 10 blasts were heard in al-Kateeba - one of the city's most densely populated areas.

Palestinian journalist Abdulrahman Ismail reported in a post on X that the attacks in Gaza City targeted an area "near a field hospital and thousands of tents sheltering displaced Palestinians".

"Quadcopter drones then surrounded the area, opening fire and dropping explosives at anyone moving, as the sound of clashes echoed nearby. Israeli drones simultaneously spread across Gaza City, while smoke bombs were reported over Al-Shati," Ismail said.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky warned international airlines and insurers on Tuesday that Russian airspace is becoming “completely unsafe” as Ukraine expands drone and missile strikes against military targets and parts of Russia’s economy supporting the war.

“The war started by Russia is closing its skies,” Zelensky said in his Tuesday evening address. “Drone-infested skies are no place for civilian aviation.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and other state institutions will provide international aviation organizations with information about the risks, while foreign ambassadors in Kyiv and Moscow have been urged to relay the warning to their governments.

Zelensky  said the growing danger over Russia was a direct consequence of Moscow’s intensified attacks on Ukraine, which he said have sharply increased since August.

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