TV News LIES

Barney Frank, one of the first openly gay members of Congress and the progressive Democratic namesake of the Dodd-Frank Act, died on May 19, according to media reports. He was 86.

Frank had entered hospice care at his home in Maine in April, his sister told NBC Boston.

Frank represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 to 2013. He served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011, and was a leading sponsor of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, enacted to provide financial stability following the 2008 mortgage crisis.

"In the aftermath of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Barney Frank was the gravelly-voiced, smart-as-a-whip congressman who fought hard to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over the finish line," U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement on May 20. "His one-liners were wicked and wickedly funny. Barney delivered for working people, and the world is a poorer place without him."

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Two activists seized by Israeli forces in international waters while en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been threatened with death or lengthy imprisonment, their lawyers said on Monday.

The legal centre Adalah, which represents Thiago Avila and Saif Abu Keshek, said the pair have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement since their capture last week.

On Tuesday, a court in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon extended their detention until Sunday.

Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained late on Wednesday when Israeli naval forces raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece.

They were taken to Israel and accused of assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership of and providing services to a terrorist organisation, and transferring funds to such a group. Both deny the charges.

Since their detention, the men have been held in cells under constant bright light, a practice intended to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation, according to Adalah. They are also blindfolded whenever taken out of their cells, including during medical examinations, which it described as a serious breach of medical ethics.

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Mahmoud Khilla waited for nearly two and half years for the remains of his family to be retrieved from under the rubble of their home before he decided to take matters into his own hands. The Israeli military bombed the five story building in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, on December 21, 2023, demolishing it with two missiles and killing all 39 people inside. Mahmoud had gone out just 10 minutes earlier to get some food for dinner. He returned to find a massacre.

“There was no warning strike, no call, no prior warning,” Khilla told Drop Site News. “There were 24 children in the house under the age of 17. They killed them all.” Eighteen of the bodies were pulled out in the immediate aftermath, but 21 remained buried, including his wife, children, father, brother, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and other relatives.

“For nearly 30 months, we repeatedly called on Civil Defense, the municipality, and local institutions to come and clear the rubble so we could retrieve the bodies. There was no response,” Khilla, 40, told Drop Site. “We appealed to everyone but there is no equipment, no tools. They couldn’t clear the rubble.”

Khilla spoke sitting in a chair on top of the wreckage of where his family home once stood—a small mountain of broken concrete with tentacles of twisted rebar protruding outward at awkward angles.

“I had a son who was just 40 days old. My brother Ahmed had a daughter who was 8 months old. His eldest daughter was 7 years old. My brother Mohammed’s son was in second grade, and the older one was in tenth grade,” he said. “There is no peace of mind. You always think—in winter you think, in summer you think—what has happened to them? You keep thinking about it 24 hours a day, it becomes an obsession. One eventually reaches his limit.”

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A massive overnight Russian drone strike partially destroyed a multi-story residential building in Konotop, Sumy Oblast, injuring at least six people and prompting an urgent search-and-rescue operation for residents feared trapped beneath the debris, local officials said.

Konotop Mayor Artem Semenikhin said Russian forces targeted civilian infrastructure in the city, with the strike causing part of the high-rise to collapse.

“Behind me is a multi-story building. Part of it is gone. And there are people there,” Semenikhin said in a video address posted on social media.

Due to a lack of ambulances, the injured are being transferred to the hospital in civilian vehicles, Semenikhin added.

According to the mayor, there were “many” people injured in the attack. Emergency teams were working at the scene to clear rubble and search for possible survivors.

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The two teenage assailants responsible for a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, rushed toward the mosque “fully armored” with handguns and rifles, authorities said.

A security guard shot and struck one of the shooters, according to members of the mosque – but the attacker continued charging. The guard – Amin Abdullah – also alerted administrators of the school at the Islamic Center, telling them to go into lockdown, before he was shot and killed. “If it was not for him … The carnage would be much worse,” said imam Taha Hassane. “He sacrificed his life.”

Two other victims – identified by the Islamic Center as Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad – had been on the phone calling the police, when they were killed. A witness shared details of what he saw transpire in an Instagram post from the Islamic Center. Police rushed to the scene and ultimately found the suspected shooters near the masjid, dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

The Islamic Center called the three victims “three heroes martyred” and have started a fundraiser for their families and for others impacted by the mass shooting.

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More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes.

The wind-driven Sandy fire was reported on Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48km) north-west of Los Angeles.

By Tuesday evening, the fire had consumed about 1,698 acres (683 hectares) and destroyed at least one home, according to the Ventura countyThe flames were initially pushed by gusts that topped 30mph (48km/h), but firefighters were aided by calmer winds overnight, said a department spokesperson, Andrew Dowd.

“We’ve made a lot of progress against this fire with those improved weather conditions,” Dowd said. Crews hoped to make further progress before winds increased again, he said.

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Donald Trump displayed his supremacy over the Republican party on Tuesday when voters in northern Kentucky rejected the maverick congressman Thomas Massie in favour of the US president’s hand-picked challenger.

Ed Gallrein, a retired navy Seal and farmer who was recruited into the race by Trump, defeated the seven-term incumbent in a primary election in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district in what the president’s allies framed as a test of whether dissent could still exist inside today’s Republican party.

The election took place as voters in five other states – Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon and Idaho – went to the polls to decide their nominees for the November general election, in what was the biggest primary night of the year so far.

In Georgia’s gubernatorial race, lieutenant governor Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson advanced to a runoff for the GOP nomination, while former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Democratic nomination outright. And in Alabama, Trump ally Tommy Tuberville won the Republican primary for governor, while former senator Doug Jones secured the Democratic nomination.

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By the time the American surgeon who contracted Ebola in Congo was flown to Germany for treatment Tuesday, he was barely able to stand on his own, according to two leaders of the Christian missionary group where he worked.

Dr. Scott Myhre, the East and Central Africa area director for the group, called Serge, described the scene as Dr. Peter Stafford departed.

“There were people in full — we call it PPE — the personal protective equipment, and they’re completely covered, and he’s hanging on them barely strong enough to walk,” Myhre said. “He looked really tired and really sick.”

Stafford worked at Nyankunde Hospital, which is in Congo’s Ituri province, where the Ebola outbreak is centered. Days before the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the outbreak, Stafford operated on a 33-year-old patient with severe abdominal pain, Myhre said. At the time, doctors thought the patient had a gallbladder infection.

Stafford “did an abdominal procedure and found that the gallbladder was normal and closed him up, but this patient subsequently died the next day,” Myhre said.

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