TV News LIES

The UK has settled out of court by paying a “substantial sum” to a Guantánamo Bay detainee who was suing the government for its alleged complicity in his rendition and torture, according to the inmate’s legal team.

Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah have accused the British intelligence services of providing questions to his CIA interrogators to put to him while they were torturing him at a string of CIA “black sites” around the world where he was held between 2002 and 2006.

They claim that the case has relevant lessons for the UK today, highlighting the legal and moral risks involved in cooperation with the US at a time it is violating international law.

Abu Zubaydah, whose full name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, is a stateless Palestinian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. He was one of the first detainees in the US “war on terror” to be tortured, and was subjected to a full range of what the Bush administration at the time termed “enhanced interrogation techniques”, in secret prisons in Thailand, Lithuania, Poland, Afghanistan, Morocco, and then the US base at Guantánamo Bay, on Cuba’s southern coast.

Now 54, he has been held in Guantánamo Bay without charge ever since, becoming one of its “forever prisoners”.

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Shortly after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison heard something unusual was happening: Federal agents were not going to share their investigative file with their state counterparts.

“It was at least 24 hours before people started publicly saying it,” Ellison said, declining to outline exactly how he heard about the federal denial, which occurred after an initial agreement for the FBI to work with the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to jointly investigate the shooting. “We started hearing they’re not going to release it. They’re going to exclude state authorities from the bullets, the gun, the crime scene.”

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President Donald Trump said he's considering military options in Iran and following through on his threat to attack the Iranian regime after anti-government protests in the country have turned increasingly deadly.

"The military is looking at it, and we're looking at some very strong options. We'll make a determination," Trump told reporters Jan. 11 aboard Air Force One as he returned to Washington after spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

Protests in Iran, which have entered their third week, have resulted in hundreds of deaths, drawing the condemnation of human rights organizations.

"Well, they’re starting to ‒ it looks like it," Trump said when asked if Iran has crossed a red line. "There seems to be some people killed who weren’t supposed to be killed. These are violent ‒ you can call them leaders, I don’t know if they’re leaders. I guess they rule with violence. But we’re looking at it very seriously."

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Stocks fell in overnight trading Sunday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell confirmed the Trump administration had opened a criminal investigation into the central bank.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 200 points shortly after 8:30 p.m. EST, falling 0.4 percent. S&P 500 futures were down 0.5 percent and Nasdaq futures were down 0.7 percent.

The slide came after Powell announced in a stunning statement that he and the Fed were under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which had issued subpoenas to bank officials Friday night and had threatened a criminal indictment.

Powell said the investigation focused on the Fed’s renovations to several buildings at its Washington, D.C., headquarters, and his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee in June about the matter.

The Fed chair, however, dismissed those concerns as “pretexts” to pressure the bank over its interest rate policy.

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Israeli strikes across Gaza have killed at least 13 people, according to health officials, as U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to announce his Board of Peace to oversee the fragile ceasefire.

Health officials and family members said at least one child was among the dead in northern Gaza following several strikes there as well as east of Gaza City. All 13 people were killed on Thursday.

Israel’s army said Friday that it struck Hamas infrastructure and fighters in southern and northern Gaza in response to a failed projectile launched by militants from the Gaza City area.

The phased ceasefire between Israel and Hamas remains in its initial stage as efforts continue to recover the remains of the final Israeli hostage in Gaza.

Officials say that Trump is expected to announce next week his appointments to his Board of Peace, which he has said he will head, marking an important step forward for his Middle East peace plan. The process has moved slowly since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect nearly three months ago.

The U.S. official and another official spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov would be the board’s “designated” director-general. Mladenov is a former Bulgarian defense and foreign minister who served as the U.N. envoy to Iraq before being appointed as the U.N. Mideast peace envoy from 2015-2020. During that time, he had good working relations with Israel and frequently worked to ease Israel-Hamas tensions.

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A video circulating on social media shows dozens of masked men dressed in black hitting and kicking a man on the ground. Israeli settlers beat a 67-year-old man, Basim Saleh Yassin, as he was trying to flee a plant nursery in the West Bank.

The footage shows Yassin running from a group of masked men before falling down. One man kicks him, and another hits him twice with what appears to be a stick. Yassin stays on his knees as he's struck again and then places his hands on the ground. As the men are leaving, one kicks him in the head while others strike him again until he's seen lying on the pavement.

The workers in the German-Palestinian-run nursery fled when they saw the Israeli settlers approaching, however, Yassin is deaf and could not hear the warnings, his family member said, per a report by the Associated Press.

Yassin sustained injuries to his face, chest and back. He was in the hospital with broken bones in his hand, witnesses said.
This is one of many incidents related to rising cases of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the perpetrators are a "handful of extremists", but for Palestinians, the problem is far greater, as attacks have become a daily occurrence.

Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 war and has since settled over 500,000 Jews in the West Bank.

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A Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at an oil depot in Russia's southern Volgograd region, officials said Saturday, after Russia launched a powerful hypersonic missile along with drones and other weapons that disrupted Kyiv's power supply and heating.

There were no immediate reports of casualties, Volgograd Gov. Andrei Bocharov was quoted as saying in a Telegram post published on the channel of the local administration. The post did not specify the damage, but said that people living near the depot may have to be evacuated.

Ukraine's General Staff said Saturday it had struck the Zhutovskaya oil depot overnight. In a statement on Telegram, it said the depot is supplying fuel to Russian forces, adding that damage was being assessed.

Ukraine's long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple the Ukrainian power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, light and running water in what Kyiv officials say is an attempt to "weaponize winter."

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The worst thing about today's media environment is that — bad as it is — it is easy to imagine how things might get worse in 2026.

Traditional journalism outlets buffeted on all sides by misinformation, weak-kneed ownership and a hostile White House will struggle to earn back public trust even as the need for fair, accurate reporting grows.

Smaller groups of wealthy businesspeople control larger swaths of the country's information ecosystem, pitting their overall corporate interests against the public's desire for accurate journalism challenging powerful institutions in society.

And the biggest media deal of recent years is looming over everything, with ominous consequences for streaming, journalism, the film industry and consumers — no matter who finally closes on a purchase.

The real wild card here is the audience, which has more power than it realizes. The fall and rise of Jimmy Kimmel proved that viewers can make their preferences known in ways that preserve free expression, forcing media owners to show some backbone.

But the public will have to get more involved in 2026, weighing in with their viewing choices and their pocketbooks to make sure the options that bring the most freedom and ethical behavior are also the most profitable.

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