TV News LIES

Palantir Technologies has a permanent desk at the U.S.-led Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC) headquarters in southern Israel, three sources from the diplomatic community inside the CMCC told Drop Site News. According to the sources, the artificial intelligence data analytics giant is providing the technological architecture for tracking the delivery and distribution of aid to Gaza.

The presence of Palantir and other corporations—along with recent changes banning non-profits unwilling to give data to Israeli authorities—is creating a situation in which the delivery of aid is taking a backseat to the pursuit of profit, investment, and the training of AI products, experts say.

The CMCC was established by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in October, one week after the so-called ceasefire went into effect in Gaza to “monitor implementation of the ceasefire” and “help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance from international counterparts into Gaza.” Last week, at the inaugural summit of the Board of Peace in Washington, D.C., Major General Jasper Jeffers—who was tapped in January to lead the International Stabilization Force in Gaza—announced that the CMCC will serve as the Board of Peace’s operational headquarters.

According to the sources, a representative from Palantir sits in the CMCC operations room where aid convoys and distributions inside Gaza are monitored through drone surveillance. The representative integrates convoy and distribution-related data into Palantir’s systems, the sources said.

“The United Nations already has a humanitarian architecture in place to step in during crises, abiding by humanitarian principles and grounded in international law,” UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese told Drop Site. “This profit-driven parallel system involving companies like Palantir, already linked to Israel’s unlawful conduct, can only be regarded as a monstrosity.”

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A message blazoned on the wall of a ruined building in the Donetsk region quickly went viral on Ukrainian social media: “Mr. Trump! I am from Donbas – why should I surrender my home and my region to Russia? Donbas is Ukraine.”

In the photo, on the right, stands Vitaliy Ovcharenko, a sergeant in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who painted this message on a destroyed building in the Donetsk combat zone.

By 2026, Russia’s offensive has slowed to a crawl, while its losses have mounted. The front in Donbas has barely shifted in six months, and the battles for the mining town of Pokrovsk – once home to 60,000 people, now a wasteland where Ukrainian and Russian forces fight over the remnants of apartment blocks – have dragged on for more than a year.

The pace of Russia’s offensive, in 2026, has slowed to a crawl, while losses have mounted. The front in Donbas has barely moved for half a year, and the battles for the mining town of Pokrovsk, once home to 60,000 people, now a wasteland where Ukrainian and Russian forces fight over the remnants of apartment blocks – have dragged on for more than a year.

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Donald Trump has suggested the US could carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba as tensions between Washington and Havana reach a new high after the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

As he left the White House for a campaigning event in Texas on Friday, Trump said: “The Cuban government is talking with us. They’re in a big deal of trouble.”

Although he gave no further details, it has been widely reported that US officials had met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of 94-year-old Raúl Castro, on the sidelines of the Caribbean leaders summit, Caricom, as part of negotiations on opening up the island.

Trump said on Friday: “They have no money, they have no anything right now. But they’re talking with us and maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.”

The president’s comments come as relations between the two countries have sunk to one of their lowest points in an often bitter 67-year history. The US has cranked up pressure on Cuba’s struggling regime after its successful abduction of Venezuelan president and Cuba ally Nicolás Maduro in January.

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Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war is still being fought far away from the frontlines – behind locked doors, in windowless cells, and in silence.

Thousands of Ukrainians remain in Russian captivity. Others have returned carrying memories they struggle to put into words.

One of them is Oleksii, a Ukrainian serviceman of the 13th Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, Khartiia, who spent nearly two years in Russian detention.

Speaking exclusively to Kyiv Post, he described torture, psychological pressure, and what he says was a systematic attempt to erase prisoners as individuals – while clinging to a single reason to survive: his newborn daughter.

“I’m not hiding,” Oleksii said. “You can use my name.”

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The confirmed count of Russian soldiers, officers, sailors and airmen confirmed killed in action or dead of combat injuries in Ukraine has passed 200,000, the research group Mediazona announced on Tuesday, citing new survey findings.

The group, working alongside BBC Russian Service and volunteers in and outside Russia, confirmed all of the Russian military losses, by name, using cross-referenced data from individual obituaries, civil death certificates, geo-located graves, unit rosters, social media updates, funeral announcements, cemetery records and obituaries.

A leak of confidential government data on some 23,000 security checks of individuals found to have been dead by police investigators was a key “breakthrough” for the group’s tracking work, a Mediazona statement said.

As of midday Wednesday, the total count of verified Russian dead in Ukraine stood at 200,186 men. The figure “remains a conservative floor, not a ceiling,” the statement said in part.

Mapping by the group identified 26,600 cities, towns or villages across all thirteen of Russia’s time zones as the homes of men losing their lives in Ukraine. All Russian cities, without exception, have received remains of soldiers sent to Ukraine who then died there, the report said.

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Casualty counts: Over the past 24 hours, seven Palestinians were injured in Israeli attacks in Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 stands at 72,073 killed, with 171,756 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 615 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,658, while 726 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Israeli strikes continue across Gaza, killing one: One Palestinian was killed and several others injured in an Israeli strike on Beit Lahiya on Tuesday, in northern Gaza. Two Palestinians were injured by Israeli gunfire in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera Arabic. Israeli forces launched airstrikes on areas east of Khan Younis, while Israeli artillery targeted western Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and east of the Bureij refugee camp in the central part of the Strip.

Flooding hits displacement camps in Gaza: Overnight, heavy rains flooded hundreds of displacement tents across the Gaza Strip, with submerged roads in areas like Al-Mawasi prompting urgent rescue calls, according to Civil Defense officials. Israel’s siege is blocking heavy machinery and rescue equipment needed to respond, municipal officials report. UNRWA has warned that shortages of shelter materials have left more than a million displaced people exposed to the rain and cold.

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