TV News LIES

Lithuania’s top diplomat, Kęstutis Budrys, delivered a stark message to Western allies from NATO’s eastern flank during his Monday visit to Washington: The era of self-deterrence is over.

The time, he insisted, is now to confront Russian aggression with overwhelming force – and budget.

Speaking at the Hudson Institute after a day of meetings with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Benson and other US officials, Budrys offered a stark, cold-eyed assessment from NATO’s frontline. The West, he argued, has been trapped by a Russian-planted idea: that escalation should always be avoided.

“The only thing that you shouldn’t do is escalate – who created this [mantra]?” Budrys challenged. “You shouldn’t be afraid to escalate. This is what works,” he emphasized.
Advertisement

Drawing on Lithuania’s long experience with Russian power, Budrys said that Western restraint only invites more aggression.

He paraphrased Lenin’s maxim – that if you probe with a bayonet and encounter mush, push; if you encounter steel, withdraw – to argue that Russia always advances until it meets force.

Every time the West holds back, he warned, “they think we’re weak – pushovers,” he said.

More...

When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer – the Israeli government – had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world, was born out of Israel’s concerns that data it moves into the global corporations’ cloud platforms could end up in the hands of foreign law enforcement authorities.

Like other big tech companies, Google and Amazon’s cloud businesses routinely comply with requests from police, prosecutors and security services to hand over customer data to assist investigations.

This process is often cloaked in secrecy. The companies are frequently gagged from alerting the affected customer their information has been turned over. This is either because the law enforcement agency has the power to demand this or a court has ordered them to stay silent.

For Israel, losing control of its data to authorities overseas was a significant concern. So to deal with the threat, officials created a secret warning system: the companies must send signals hidden in payments to the Israeli government, tipping it off when it has disclosed Israeli data to foreign courts or investigators.

To clinch the lucrative contract, Google and Amazon agreed to the so-called winking mechanism, according to leaked documents seen by the Guardian, as part of a joint investigation with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.

Based on the documents and descriptions of the contract by Israeli officials, the investigation reveals how the companies bowed to a series of stringent and unorthodox “controls” contained within the 2021 deal, known as Project Nimbus. Both Google and Amazon’s cloud businesses have denied evading any legal obligations.

More...

A car explosion outside the historic Red Fort monument in Delhi has killed at least eight people and started a fire in the surrounding area, according to police.

The cause of the explosion, which took place just before 7pm local time (1330 GMT) on Monday night, is being investigated. The registered owner of the car has reportedly been detained for questioning.

The fire service said the blast injured 19 people, who were being treated at a government hospital. Large train stations across India, the financial capital Mumbai, and the state of Uttar Pradesh, which borders Delhi, were all put on high alert, authorities said.

Police said a slow-moving car had stopped at a red light just outside the Red Fort metro station before the blast. “An explosion happened in that vehicle, and due to the explosion, nearby vehicles were also damaged,” said the Delhi police commissioner, Satish Golcha.

More...

Hamas has handed over another deceased captive’s body from the Gaza Strip as part of the US-brokered ceasefire agreement with Israel.

Negotiations are under way to allow about 150 Hamas fighters trapped in tunnels in southern Gaza behind Israel’s “yellow line” to hand over their weapons and walk free.

President Donald Trump says he expects a US-coordinated international stabilisation force to be on the ground in Gaza “very soon”, adding that despite repeated Israeli violations, the ceasefire “is working out very well”.

Israel’s defence chief orders the army to “destroy all terror tunnels in Gaza” as air raids and artillery fire pound southern Khan Younis despite the truce.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 68,875 Palestinians and wounded 170,679 since October 2023. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks and about 200 were taken captive.

Ukrainian strikes disrupted power and heating to two major Russian cities near the Ukrainian border, local Russian officials reported Sunday.

The report comes as Russia and Ukraine have traded almost daily assaults on each other’s energy infrastructure and U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to stop the nearly four-year war have not advanced.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s top diplomat accused Moscow of deliberately endangering nuclear safety, as he said Russia’s mass drone and missile attack on Friday struck substations that power two nuclear power plants.

And in Russia, the Kremlin spokesman said Moscow intended to honor its obligations under a global nuclear test ban, despite a recent order by President Vladimir Putin to study the possibility of resuming atomic tests.

More...

A Russian drone slammed into an apartment building in eastern Ukraine early Saturday while many were sleeping, killing four people — three in Dnipro and one in Kharkiv — and wounding 12 others, Ukrainian authorities reported.

The attack in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, was part of a large Russian missile and drone barrage across the country that targeted power infrastructure. It also killed a worker at an energy company in Kharkiv, farther north, a local official said.

A fire broke out and several apartments were destroyed in the nine-story building in Dnipro, the emergency services said. Rescuers recovered the bodies of three people, while two children were among the wounded.

Russia fired a total of 458 drones and 45 missiles, including 32 ballistic missiles. Ukrainian forces shot down and neutralized 406 drones and nine missiles, the air force said, adding that 25 locations were struck.

More...