TV News LIES

The human rights lawyer Noura Erakat was arrested on Tuesday at a Palm Beach county, Florida, budget hearing about the county’s more than $1bn investments in Israeli bonds.

Erakat, a prominent Palestinian-American activist, legal scholar and Guardian contributor, was one of several people in attendance at the public commission hearing who were forcibly removed by local law enforcement. The removal happened when the group attempted to speak out against the county’s investment in the bonds – the largest by a municipal government.

Representatives for Palm Beach county did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a video of Erakat’s arrest posted by Al Jazeera, two law enforcement officers are seen taking her away as she speaks about wanting to exercise “basic free speech”.

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Russia’s intelligence services are plotting to carry out targeted killings in the United States and in European nations supporting Ukraine, federal authorities said Tuesday as they announced charges against five people who remain at large.

An indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court said a network of the intelligence services had paid and attempted to pay individuals in the United States and in other countries to surveil targets to be killed with plans to then kill them.

The associates recruited in the network also had been solicited to carry out acts of terrorism against civilian and military infrastructure in European countries that were perceived to be aligned with Ukraine, the indictment said.

James Barnacle Jr, head of New York’s FBI office, said the FBI disrupted the plans “through relentless work” as members of the Russian intelligence services and their affiliates “conspired to intimidate, threaten, or murder people on US soil and around the world”.

Darren Cox, head of the Washington DC office of the FBI, cited “extraordinary work by multiple FBI field offices, components, and partner agencies that collectively disrupted Russia’s attempts to conduct violent acts in our nation’s capital and throughout the United States”.

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The Trump administration is planning to deliver powerful 2,000lb bombs to Israel as part of an upcoming arms deal, weapons that prompted such concerns about the possibility of mass casualties in Gaza that the Biden administration paused their delivery two years ago.

The $2.8bn package includes 40,000 bombs, made up of 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, according to two US officials and a person familiar with the plan who spoke on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the package, which is not yet final.

Congress has been informally notified about the pending deal, most of which is to be paid for with foreign military financing – in which US taxpayer dollars are given to Israel to turn around and buy the weapons from the United States.

The proposed sale is just the latest in a series of Trump administration steps to improve Israeli’s military capacity. The war on Gaza has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and has decimated the territory. The US had brokered a fragile ceasefire, but it has been violated several times.

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As right-wing governments across Latin America embrace increasingly militarised and technology-driven approaches to organised crime, Israel is positioning its industry as a source of expertise, surveillance capabilities and national security solutions.

The growing cooperation is opening new markets for an industry closely connected to Israel’s military and intelligence establishment, where technologies have been developed and tested through the occupation of Palestine before being marketed abroad.

Colombia’s new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has identified Israel’s artificial intelligence and cybersecurity expertise as a potential weapon in his promised cracrekdown on organised crime.

“A collaboration with Israel would allow these resources to be applied directly to combating criminal structures within the national territory,” the hardline right-wing leader said.

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The National Weather Service has begun the work of renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America in its broad array of products and services, including maps, websites and forecasts, the agency announced Sept. 14.

Among the weather service products that use the name "Lake Ontario" are open waters forecasts, forecasts for the Niagara River and the surrounding region in New York.

Lake Ontario is part of the formal international boundary between Canada and the United States. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Aug. 27 directing U.S. agencies to change the name of Lake Ontario during a round of trade negotiations with Canada.

As recently as Sept. 13, the name "Lake Ontario" was still being used in the forecast discussion of the weather service office in Buffalo. It noted that a few showers were possible "southeast of Lake Ontario during the predawn hours of Monday morning."

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Yemen's Houthi fighters' rapid advance along the Red Sea coast has put them in a prime position to control shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb choke point, while bolstering Iran’s leverage against the US, experts tell Middle East Eye.

“The Houthis have pulled off a military victory that puts them one step closer to be in full control of the Bab el-Mandeb,” Corey Ranslem, CEO of maritime security group Dryad Global, told MEE.

“I think it will actually be easier for the Houthis to exert control in Bab el-Mandeb than it is for Iran in the Strait of Hormuz because the US doesn’t have tangible military assets in the area,” he added.

After days of heavy fighting along a narrow plain known as the Tihama, on Thursday the Houthis routed Yemeni forces loyal to Saudi Arabia and seized the historic and strategic Red Sea port city of Mocha.

Arab media reported that the Houthis made further gains throughout the day. They deployed troops on the Hanish Islands, which sit in the middle of the Red Sea across from Eritrea. Meanwhile, Houthi forces continued to advance south to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the island of Perim.

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