TV News LIES

Democrats are now all but certain to elect another Black woman to the U.S. Senate after Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won Tuesday’s bitter and expensive primary in Illinois.

Stratton overcame a crowded Democratic contest for the state’s open Senate seat, defeating front-runner Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi with the help of millions of dollars of outside spending — much of it from her old running mate, Gov. JB Pritzker.

She is widely seen as the favorite to succeed Sen. Dick Durbin in the blue state and would become the sixth Black woman to have ever served in the upper chamber.

The contest was defined by heavy outside spending and intraparty fissures over race. It became contentions during the final weeks, with Krishnamoorthi and Stratton trading sharp attacks on the debate stage and blasting each other in TV ads over corporate money and immigration policy.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus — who backed a different contender, Rep. Robin Kelly, in the primary — also warned that Pritzker’s interference could split the Black vote and cost Democrats a chance at electing a Black woman to the Senate this year.

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The head of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center resigned March 17, saying he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” the first top Trump administration official to quit over the conflict.

Joe Kent, a decorated former Army Ranger and CIA paramilitary officer, was a top aide to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who oversaw all U.S. counter-terrorism efforts in the U.S. and overseas.

In a March 17 post on social media platform X, Kent said that “after much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.”

“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in a letter to President Donald Trump, who nominated him for the top U.S. counterterrorism job on Feb. 3, 2025.

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A federal judge on Tuesday ordered that the near shutdown of Voice of America was illegal and has ordered the government to reinstate more than 1,000 people who were placed on leave from the media organization.

The order by District Judge Royce Lamberth amounted to a sharp rebuke to the administration, which has aggressively sought to shrink and remake VOA through Kari Lake, the ally of President Donald Trump who has served as CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Lamberth said in a pair of rulings that Lake’s moves to close the agency violated federal administrative law and directed that the employees return to work by March 23. He also ordered a resumption of international broadcasting, which the U.S. has used for decades to promote press freedom around the world.

Beginning in early 2025, hundreds of journalists were placed on administrative leave and then targeted for layoffs, with more than 600 cuts announced by summer and ultimately roughly 85 percent of staff eliminated across the agency. The reductions were so deep that VOA, which once broadcast in nearly 50 languages to hundreds of millions of people, was pared down to a skeleton operation with only a handful of language services still running.

Lamberth issued a scathing review of the government’s “flagrant and nearly year-long refusal” to uphold statutory requirements set by Congress, adding that Lake “thumbed her nose” at the requirements.

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In early October 2025, Lebanese paramedic Haj Qassem Sultan stood outside Marjayoun Government Hospital in southern Lebanon and addressed Lebanese TV.

“Our message is clear. Even if we are killed one by one, we will not abandon our duty,” he said. “We will continue to serve Khiam and Marjayoun and Al-Taybeh and Debbine and all of our sacred land.”

He was attending a memorial for seven of his colleagues who were killed exactly one year earlier in an Israeli airstrike on ambulances parked outside the hospital. Five other paramedics, including Sultan, were wounded in the attack, in what human rights groups said was an apparent war crime.

On Friday, Sultan was killed in another Israeli strike on an Islamic Health Authority (IHA) medical center in Burj Qalaouiyah in southern Lebanon’s Bint Jbeil District. The bombing destroyed the facility, killing 12 people, including on-duty doctors, paramedics, nurses, and three patients.

The majority of the victims worked with the IHA, a healthcare and emergency service provider affiliated with Hezbollah that operates rescue and medical services in Beirut’s southern suburbs and across much of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

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Britain was an active participant in some Israeli war crimes in Gaza, a tribunal chaired by Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and two international law specialists has found.

The highly publicised Gaza Tribunal was held last September and its findings were published in a report on Monday.

It was held after the Labour government blocked a bill put forward by former Labour leader Corbyn for a public Chilcot-style inquiry into Britain's military cooperation with Ihttps://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-was-active-participant-israeli-war-crimes-corbyn-tribunal-findssrael.

The Gaza Tribunal took evidence from eyewitnesses, UN rapporteurs, journalists, medics and academics.

Monday's report concludes that Britain has "failed in its fundamental obligation to prevent genocide, has been complicit in atrocity crimes, and in some instances has even been an active participant in these crimes".

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Israel is set to keep Al-Aqsa Mosque closed through the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr and beyond, Middle East Eye has learnt.

Sources familiar with the occupied East Jerusalem mosque’s affairs said Israeli authorities informed the Islamic Waqf, the body responsible for administering the site, of the decision in recent days.

Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, was closed by Israeli authorities earlier this month, citing the “security situation” amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The unprecedented closure, particularly during the month of Ramadan, has been condemned by Palestinians as the latest attempt by Israel to exploit security tensions to impose further restrictions and consolidate control over Al-Aqsa.

This has been the first Ramadan since Israel seized East Jerusalem in 1967 that Palestinians have been unable to perform Friday prayers at the mosque.

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Ukrainian forces struck a major Russian microelectronics factory in Bryansk with Storm Shadow cruise missile air-launched missiles, damaging a facility that produces critical components for Russia’s missile systems, Ukraine’s military said.

Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed the strike on the Kremniy El Group plant, describing it as part of a broader campaign to reduce Russia’s military-industrial capacity.

“Kremniy El is a critically important link in the chain of production of Russian ‘high-precision’ weapons,” the General Staff said in a statement.

“The plant specializes in discrete semiconductor devices and integrated microchips that serve as the ‘brains’ and ‘nervous system’ of modern weapons.”

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Officials in Cuba reported an island-wide blackout Monday in the country of some 11 million people as its energy and economic crises deepen and its power grid continues to crumble.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines on X noted a "complete disconnection" of the country's electrical system and said it was investigating, noting there were no failures in the units that were operating when the grid collapsed.

It was the third major blackout in Cuba over the past four months.

Tomás David Velázquez Felipe, a 61-year-old resident of Havana, said the relentless outages make him think that Cubans who can should just pack up and leave the island. "What little we have to eat spoils," he said. "Our people are too old to keep suffering."

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