TV News LIES

It might be Trump time in Venezuela.

Just days after jokingly endorsing his secretary of state to serve as president of Cuba, President Donald Trump indicated on Jan. 11 that he might be interested in a similar role in another nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Trump shared a doctored Wikipedia page calling himself the "Acting President of Venezuela" in a Truth Social post, less than 10 days after U.S. forces captured the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores on Jan. 3.

Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s vice president under Maduro who was sworn in as Venezuela's new interim president last week, has said she wants to collaborate with the U.S. administration.

"We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence," she said in an Instagram post on Jan. 4.

Maduro and his wife have been arraigned in a Manhattan federal court on charges including drug trafficking and have pleaded not guilty. They are in U.S. custody in Brooklyn.

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Israeli occupation forces carried out multiple invasions, home break‑ins, abductions, and movement restrictions across the occupied West Bank on Saturday, targeting communities in the northern Jordan Valley, Bethlehem, Hebron in the southern West Bank, Salfit in the central West Bank, Jenin in the northern West Bank, Qalqilia in the northwestern West Bank, Ramallah in the central West Bank, and occupied Jerusalem.

In the northern Jordan Valley, three young men were abducted while working on their agricultural land in Khirbet al‑Hadidiya.

Human rights activist Aref Daraghma identified them as Ahmad and his brother Mohammad Abdullah Bani Odah, along with Aref Omar Bisharat.

Israeli forces also invaded several areas east of Bethlehem, including al‑Ubeidiya, al‑Shawawra, Dar Salah, and Za’atara, with no reported abductions.

In Hebron in the southern West Bank, soldiers abducted two men after invading the Jabal Johar area, stopping and searching civilian vehicles. The abducted men were identified as Wasim Monther Gheith and Omar Nadi Abu Hamdiya.

Soldiers also invaded Dura and ar‑Rihiya, breaking into homes belonging to the Sharha and al‑Tubassi families and ransacking their contents.

Later in the evening, Israeli soldiers shot and injured fifty‑year‑old Shaker Falah al‑Ja’bari in his car, in the Khallet Hadour area east of Hebron, then prevented ambulances and residents from reaching him before taking him into custody.

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Deep strike units of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) destroyed three Lukoil drilling rigs in the Caspian Sea during the evening of Jan. 11, according the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU)

Apart from the three Lukoil drilling platforms in the Caspian Sea, a Russian Buk-M3 anti-aircraft missile system in the occupied Luhansk region, and a Russian army warehouse in the Kherson region were hit.

Ukrainian Defense Forces struck three Lukoil drilling rigs in the Caspian Sea, namely the V. Filanovsky, Yuri Korchagin, and Valery Graifer rigs. These facilities are used to support the Russian occupation army,” the General Staff reported on its Facebook page.

The strikes have been confirmed and damage assessment is underway.

The Buk-M3 anti-aircraft missile system launcher destroyed in the vicinity of the village of Baranycheve in the occupied f Luhansk region. According to the General Staff, this medium-range air defense system is designed to combat aerodynamic targets.

Also, “in order to reduce the enemy’s logistical and combat capabilities,” the statement read, “a strike was carried out on a warehouse of the materiel and technical unit of the 49th Army of the occupiers in the area of the village of Novotroitsk (Kherson region).”

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Scandinavian countries circled the wagons on Sunday and took a defiant posture against President Donald Trump’s continued threats to capture Greenland by force if Denmark refused to make a deal and sell its territory to the US.

Speaking at the “People and Defense” Annual Conference hosted by his country, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson lamented Trump’s “threatening rhetoric” and promised that “Sweden, the Nordic countries, the Baltic states, and several major European countries stand together with our Danish friends.”

He went on to say that a US takeover of Greenland would be “a violation of international law and risks encouraging other countries to act in exactly the same way”.

Also attending the defense symposium in Sweden was Alexus G. Grynkewich, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe and a General in the US Air Force, who delivered an address there about threats to the Alliance’s security in the Arctic.

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Mohammed Ibrahim wants to run and play soccer again, but the 14-year-old has had three surgeries since an accident this summer when he was run over as he tried to grab food off an aid truck for his starving family.

A nurse at this Gaza City clinic changes the gauze on his right leg. He winces in pain.

"Focus with us and calm your mind," she tells him. "You will be just fine."

"It hurts," the boy whimpers. Unable to fight back tears, he bursts out: "I can't! I can't!"

This clinic is run by Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French initials MSF, an international aid group that provides lifesaving care in war zones around the world. But this clinic and MSF's 19 other health care facilities and medical points across Gaza are facing massive pressure, and some may even have to shut down.

Israel banned MSF and dozens of international aid organizations, preventing them from bringing in aid or international staff to Gaza and the occupied West Bank under new security and transparency rules that came into effect on Jan. 1.

"It's a catastrophe. An absolute catastrophe," Ibrahim's mom, Neama Abu Ghanim, says of Israel's decision.

She tells NPR that before coming to this MSF clinic, her son spent months unable to sleep from pain, despite seeking treatment in some of Gaza's still partially functioning hospitals. Gaza's health system was shattered during two years of war.

"When I came here, they helped him with medicine to sleep for even just a few hours at night, which helped me so much," she says.

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The Department of Homeland Security blocked federal lawmakers from visiting an immigration detention facility in Minneapolis this weekend under a new visitation policy from the head of the department.

Under federal law, members of Congress have the right to make unannounced visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. A D.C. federal court ruling affirmed this last month, saying it applies to facilities that are funded by regular congressional appropriations.

But in a Jan. 8 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem obtained by NPR, Noem instructs her staff that visits should be requested at least seven days in advance. She said the detention facilities are run with money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a different bucket of federal funds, and therefore the policy on unannounced visits doesn't apply to them.

The new policy seemed to have been cited on Saturday to block the visit of three Minnesota congresswomen to an ICE detention facility in Minneapolis.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a reconciliation measure that Congress passed last summer with only Republican support, allocated some $45 billion for immigration detention centers as many were operating over their capacity. It also provided about $30 billion to hire more ICE personnel, for transportation costs, and to maintain ICE facilities, among other spending.

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The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC has removed a placard that referred to Donald Trump’s two impeachments and his supporters’ January 6 attack on the US Capitol, according to multiple news reports.

The museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, removed the text when it replaced an old portrait of Trump with a new image of him standing in the Oval Office with a scowl and his fists on the desk.

“Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials,” the former caption stated.

In May, Trump said he had fired the gallery’s director, Kim Sajet, describing her as a “highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position”. The museum’s board of regents rejected the attempt, citing its control over personnel decisions, but Sajet ultimately resigned.

The National Portrait Gallery did not respond to a request for comment.

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The UK has settled out of court by paying a “substantial sum” to a Guantánamo Bay detainee who was suing the government for its alleged complicity in his rendition and torture, according to the inmate’s legal team.

Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah have accused the British intelligence services of providing questions to his CIA interrogators to put to him while they were torturing him at a string of CIA “black sites” around the world where he was held between 2002 and 2006.

They claim that the case has relevant lessons for the UK today, highlighting the legal and moral risks involved in cooperation with the US at a time it is violating international law.

Abu Zubaydah, whose full name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, is a stateless Palestinian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. He was one of the first detainees in the US “war on terror” to be tortured, and was subjected to a full range of what the Bush administration at the time termed “enhanced interrogation techniques”, in secret prisons in Thailand, Lithuania, Poland, Afghanistan, Morocco, and then the US base at Guantánamo Bay, on Cuba’s southern coast.

Now 54, he has been held in Guantánamo Bay without charge ever since, becoming one of its “forever prisoners”.

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