TV News LIES

On March 6, Russia fired a missile into the Ukrainian port of Odesa that exploded about 400 metres (1,300ft) from where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was preparing to tour the city with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

“As we were getting into our cars, we heard a large explosion,” Mitsotakis later told reporters. “We were all concerned, especially if you consider that we were in an open space with no cover. It was quite savage.”

Many Western leaders have visited Zelenskyy, but this was the only occasion when there was a plausible threat to their life and safety. Analysts in Athens do not believe it was an accident.

“It was a message to Greece, a message to the Russophilic portion of Greek society,” said Konstantinos Filis, a professor of international relations who directs the Institute of Global Affairs at the American College of Greece.

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A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where human rights officials say torture and abuse routinely took place has been arrested in Los Angeles, court documents show.

Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, was taken into custody last week at Los Angeles international airport on immigration fraud charges, specifically that he denied on his US visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone in Syria, according to a criminal complaint filed on 9 July. Investigators are considering additional charges, the complaint shows.

Al-Sheikh was in charge of Syria’s infamous Adra prison from 2005 to 2008 under President Bashar al-Assad. Human rights groups and UN officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families about their fate. Many remain missing and are presumed to have died or been executed.

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Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, including one that struck an Israeli-declared “safe zone” crowded with thousands of displaced people.

Airstrikes in recent days have brought a constant drumbeat of deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, even as Israel has pulled back or scaled down major ground offensives in the north and south. Almost daily strikes have hit the “safe zone” covering some 60 square kilometers (23 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast, where Israel told fleeing Palestinians to take refuge to escape ground assaults. Israel has said it is pursuing Hamas militants who are hiding among civilians after offensives uprooted underground tunnel networks.

Tuesday’s deadliest strike hit a main street lined with market stalls outside the southern city of Khan Younis in Muwasi, at the heart of the zone that is packed with tent camps. Officials at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital said 17 people were killed.

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On some evenings, Ukrainian mother Margaryta Zakharchuk wanders around her neighbourhood in the sweltering heat waiting for the electricity to come back on so she can take the lift to her 12th-floor apartment.

United Nations vehicles rumble along a deserted road in south Lebanon, past abandoned villages, destroyed houses and burned and blackened farmland — remnants of daily attacks along the border with Israel that now threaten to escalate into all-out war.

For most of the past nine months since the war in Gaza began, Israel and Lebanon confined the border attacks mostly to military targets within a zone a few miles from either side of a historic cease-fire line. But recently, escalated attacks by both sides, which have reached farther into both Lebanon and Israel, have raised concerns about intensified fighting.

Literally in the middle of this confrontation is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, created in 1978 after Israel invaded the neighboring country. Despite the name’s indication that it would be temporary, UNIFIL has become one the longest-serving peacekeeping missions in the world.

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More than a dozen empty flatbed trucks from Gaza rumble through the opening in the massive concrete wall that marks the border here. They park on the Israeli side and forklift drivers jump into action, loading huge sacks of flour, along with boxes of watermelons, mangoes, tomatoes and onions. Within 30 minutes, the trucks turn around and drive the short distance back into Gaza.

This scene plays out multiple times daily at Kerem Shalom, now the main artery supplying Gaza with food and medicine. All this activity raises hope that needed aid will reach the more than 2 million Palestinians trapped inside Gaza.

But here's the catch: Much of this humanitarian aid is piling up on the Gaza side of the border instead of traveling the last few miles to those suffering in the 10th month of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Israel blames the United Nations agencies responsible for collecting this aid and distributing it inside Gaza, saying they need to urgently step up aid deliveries.

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