TV News LIES

After a week of nationwide protests over the direction of Ukraine's military strategy in the ongoing war with Russia, the Ukrainian military has a new armed forces commander, Mykhailo Drapatyi.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named Drapatyi to replace military chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, whom he fired late Tuesday.

"There is a difficult task ahead, so we are not making loud promises," Drapatyi wrote in a Facebook post after his appointment was announced. "We are working with responsibility for our decisions and for the people who hold the front line and help Ukraine stand firm."

The 43-year-old major general, widely viewed as a reformer, takes the reins at a time of political and military transition in Ukraine. He is also the face of a younger, post-Soviet generation of military leaders in Ukraine who are adapting more quickly to a tech-focused approach to the battlefield.

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A three-year-old girl landed in the intensive care unit earlier this month after a rattlesnake bit her while she was trying to grab an Amazon package.

Addy, the young girl, ran out with her mother on 13 July to pick up a package dropped over the gate to their home in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles.

“Tragically, a southern pacific rattlesnake was hiding under the brown padded envelope and bit Addy’s left hand,” her father, Manny Barajas, wrote in a fundraising campaign note.

Addy’s mother, Lynn, took the girl to meet first responders at a nearby grocery store parking lot, who took her to hospital and administered a dose of anti-venom. The hospital then transferred her to another facility with a pediatric ICU, where she received two more doses of anti-venom, according to Barajas.

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A modelling scout who recruited women for Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home near Paris, French officials have said.

Daniel Siad, 69, was under investigation by the prosecutors specialising in human trafficking in France, accused of rape and other charges. His name appeared in more than 1,000 documents in the US Department of Justice Epstein files that were declassified earlier this year.

Siad was one of several French men accused of aiding Epstein to traffic and abuse women. He had not yet been questioned by investigators, but had denied the allegations, saying he wanted to give his version of events.

He was found dead in his home on Monday evening. An investigation to determine the cause of death has been opened and an autopsy is to be carried out.

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The US House of Representatives passed a $1.15tn defense policy bill in a near-party-line vote on Wednesday, after Democrats refused to back the measure amid the war with Iran and Donald Trump’s push to impose new restrictions on voting nationwide.

A key plank of the president’s plan to spend $1.5tn on the military in the 2027 fiscal year, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed the Republican-controlled chamber by a 216-212 vote, with all but six Democrats opposing its passage. Seven House Republicans broke ranks to oppose the measure, which now goes to the Senate.

The NDAA is a mammoth bill with effects across the armed services, and Congress passes it each year with bipartisan margins. This year’s version includes pay raises of 5-7% for the military, as well as the codification of the name “Department of War” for the Pentagon. The bill’s large overall cost is itself a key feature, which top House Republicans say is necessary to make generational investments in the armed forces.

“For the first time in 40 years, we’ve been presented a budget that accounts for the true cost of American deterrence. This topline begins to reverse the damage caused by decades of underinvestment in the US military,” Mike Rogers, the House armed services committee chair, said before the vote.

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More than 400 state lawmakers from all 50 states are demanding an end to attacks on telehealth abortion care.

The lawmakers have signed onto an amicus brief, shared exclusively with HuffPost, that the advocacy organization State Innovation Exchange submitted Wednesday to the Fifth Circuit Court in the Louisiana v. FDA case.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration loosened restrictions around the abortion pill mifepristone, including repealing the in-person dispensing requirement, to ensure people could access the medication without exposing themselves to the virus. Louisiana seeks to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement and ban access to the medication by mail.

Abortion pills by mail, or telehealth abortion care, has revolutionized access to reproductive healthcare since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 — accounting for around 30% of all abortions in 2025.

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The Trump administration on Wednesday announced what it described as a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, hailing it as an economic triumph. But critics and nuclear experts have raised concerns around safeguards to prevent Riyadh from developing a nuclear weapon.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart, the Minister of Energy His Royal Highness (HRH) Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, signed the agreement. The announcement noted the deal is a “123 agreement,” adhering to U.S. federal law requiring the partner country to meet nonproliferation and security objectives.

The administration said the nuclear cooperation agreement lays the groundwork for a “decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation.”

“The 123 agreement provides great access for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy program, benefiting American industry, workers, and supply chains while helping to meet Saudi energy needs,” the administration said in its statement.

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When Elon Musk and his youthful Department of Government Efficiency warriors boasted of taking a “chainsaw” to the U.S. Agency for International Development, they did more than destroy a government agency. They violated the law by summarily firing USAID’s public servants while placing millions of people around the world in mortal danger.

The thousands of public servants, fired without due process, care deeply about the agency’s mission. They did not deserve to be fired, nor did they deserve the efforts by the president himself to pile on by besmirching their reputation.

These actions have ramifications far beyond the impact on the individuals involved. They place every government employee at risk. Career professionals in the State Department and the intelligence community have also been summarily relieved of duty.

If the courts fail to intervene, our nation will be sent hurtling back in history to the era of the corrupt spoils system. That era ended when the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 created a system based on merit. The law was updated in 1978 and it explicitly states that a public servant can only be removed if there is evidence of misconduct or poor performance — and only then after providing an opportunity for due process.

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On 16 July, activists launched a digital campaign under the hashtag "They Lied to You" to refocus global attention on Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and to challenge the perception that the October 2025 ceasefire agreement brought Israel's military attacks on the besieged strip to an end.

The campaign, which has gone globally viral on X and Instagram under both the English (#TheyLiedToYou) and Arabic (#كذبوا_عليكم) hashtags, began in Gaza, where Palestinians are sharing live footage of continued bombardments, systematic starvation, and disease to show that Gaza’s crisis has only deepened as Israeli attacks continue.

“They tricked you that the war is over… war didn’t end, it only ended on your screens. In reality, the people of Gaza are being killed, displaced, their homes are being destroyed,” said Gaza journalist Hani Aburezeq in a video posted on Instagram.'

One X user, reponding to a post about a Palestinian child in Gaza who lost his whole family to an Israeli strike said: “They lied to you.. Gaza is being slaughtered in silence before the eyes of the world, which also watches in silence.

"Gaza is not outside the tragedy but outside the coverage, deliberately marginalised by the media.”

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