TV News LIES

A U.S. judge denied on Monday the Justice Department's bid to unseal records from the grand jury that indicted the late financier Jeffrey Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell on sex trafficking charges, writing that the records did not answer lingering questions from the public about their crimes or Epstein's death.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who reviewed the transcripts of the witness testimony heard by the grand jury and other evidence the panel saw, wrote that the government's assertion that the materials would reveal meaningful new information about Epstein's and Maxwell's crimes was "demonstrably false."

"A member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials that the Government proposes to unseal would thus learn next to nothing new," Engelmayer wrote.

"Insofar as the motion to unseal implies that the grand jury materials are an untapped mine load of undisclosed information about Epstein or Maxwell or confederates, they are definitely not that," the judge wrote.

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Officials confirmed a second fatality in the steel plant explosion on the outskirts of Pitsburgh on Monday that sent 10 people to the hospital.

Allegheny County Emergency Services and the Allegheny County Police Department responded to the blasts at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works plant in Clairton and confirmed the first fatality that afternoon in a social media statement. A large initial explosion was followed by secondary ones, officials said.

In a separate social media post Monday evening, Allegheny County Emergency Services said the second fatality was a person who had previously been considered missing.

"Officials can confirm there has been a second fatality in connection with this incident," the agency said. "This was the last of the two individuals that was initially unaccounted for."

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The members of U2—Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr.—have each released their own individual statements on Israel’s ongoing starvation of the Gaza Strip. The statements were shared on the band’s Instagram and website, alongside the following joint message: “Everyone has long been horrified by what is unfolding in Gaza—but the blocking of humanitarian aid and now plans for a military takeover of Gaza City has taken the conflict into uncharted territory. We are not experts in the politics of the region, but we want our audience to know where we each stand.”

Bono began his statement by reflecting on reflecting on the October 7, 2023, attacks against Israel by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that governs the Gaza Strip. He discussed the work of his ONE organization, which combats HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa, before acknowledging that “there is no hierarchy to such things.” “[W]hen the loss of non-combatant life en masse appears so calculated… especially the deaths of children, then ‘evil’ is not a hyperbolic adjective,” he wrote. “[I]n the sacred text of Jew, Christian, and Muslim it is an evil that must be resisted.”https://pitchfork.com/news/u2-release-statements-on-israel-and-gaza/

Bono went on to condemn former Hamas chairman Yahya Sinwar and call the October 7 attacks “a diabolical trap for Israel and to get a war going that might just redraw the map from ‘The river to the sea.’” He drew parallels to the 2015 terrorist attack at Paris’ Bataclan theater. “But I also understood that Hamas are not the Palestinian people,” he added, “a people who have for decades endured and continue to endure marginalization, oppression, occupation, and the systematic stealing of the land that is rightfully theirs.”

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For attorney Kelley Henry, the visible blood was the first indication that the execution of her client was going wrong.

At 10.15am on Tuesday inside the Riverbend maximum security prison in Nashville, the longtime Tennessee death row lawyer watched as staff attempted to place an IV into the right arm of Byron Black. Black was locked on to a gurney with crisscrossing black straps over his chest, stomach and legs, and Henry saw blood ooze from the injection site.

For attorney Kelley Henry, the visible blood was the first indication that the execution of her client was going wrong.

At 10.15am on Tuesday inside the Riverbend maximum security prison in Nashville, the longtime Tennessee death row lawyer watched as staff attempted to place an IV into the right arm of Byron Black. Black was locked on to a gurney with crisscrossing black straps over his chest, stomach and legs, and Henry saw blood ooze from the injection site.

The staff managed to insert the IV and cleaned the wound, but then struggled for roughly 10 minutes before finding a vein in Black’s second arm, Henry recalled.

The IVs would be used to inject a lethal quantity of pentobarbital, a sedative, into Black, a 69-year-old wheelchair user with lifelong intellectual disabilities, dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, severe heart failure and prostate cancer. The drug was meant to render him unconscious as it stopped his breathing and killed him.

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A Colorado prison was evacuated as one of the largest wildfires in state history continued to grow, and officials warned residents of remote areas to be ready to leave on Sunday as gusty winds and low humidity fed the flames.

Evacuation orders were already in place for mountain communities as the Lee fire charred more than 167 sq miles (433 sq km) across Garfield and Rio Blanco counties, with just 6% containment. No injuries or structural damage has been reported.

All 179 incarcerated people were safely removed from the Rifle Correctional Center on Saturday “out of an abundance of caution”, the Colorado department of corrections said in a statement. They were temporarily relocated about 150 miles (240km) away to the Buena Vista correctional complex, the department said.

The Lee fire, churning through trees and brush about 250 miles (400km) west of Denver, is now the sixth-largest single fire in the state’s history, according to the Colorado division of fire prevention and control.

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Gaza City—August 11, 2025

In the early hours just after midnight, Israeli forces carried out a deadly strike on a tent used by the Al Jazeera news crew near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, killing the entire team. Among the killed was veteran Palestinian journalist Anas Jamal al-Sharif, long targeted by Israeli threats for his decision to remain in northern Gaza and continue reporting on and showing the world Israel’s war crimes.

Shortly after his death, the administrators of his official Facebook page published the following message, which he had prepared as his final will and testament should he be killed:

This is my will, and my final message.

If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.

First, peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you.

God knows that I have given everything I possess, every effort and every ounce of strength, to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that God would grant me enough years to return, with my family and loved ones, to our original hometown of occupied Asqalan (“al-Majdal”). But God’s will came first, and His decree is carried out.

I have lived through pain in all its details, and I have tasted loss and grief many times. Yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth exactly as it was, without falsification or distortion, so that God may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who suffocated our breath, and those whose hearts were unmoved by the torn bodies of our children and women, and who did nothing to stop the massacre our people have endured for more than a year and a half.

I entrust you with Palestine, the jewel of the crown of Muslims, and the heartbeat of every free soul in this world.

I entrust you with its people and with its wronged, innocent children, who were not given enough time in life to dream or live in safety and peace—whose pure bodies were crushed beneath thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered against the walls.

I entrust you not to be silenced by chains, nor held back by borders. Be bridges toward the liberation of land and people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our usurped homeland.

I entrust you with my family, to treat them well.

I entrust you with the apple of my eye, my beloved daughter, Sham, whom the days did not allow me to watch grow as I had always dreamed.

And I entrust you with my dear son, Salah, whom I wished to stand beside and guide until he became strong enough to bear my burdens and carry on the mission.

I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress, and whose light was my path. I pray that God strengthens her heart and rewards her for me with the best of rewards.

And I entrust you also with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah, Bayan, whom the war separated from me for long days and months, yet she remained faithful to the covenant, steadfast like the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend, patient and steadfast, carrying the trust in my absence with all her strength and faith.

I entrust you to gather around them and to be their support after God Almighty.

If I die, I die steadfast upon the principle, and I bear witness before God that I am content with His decree, faithful in meeting Him, and certain that what is with God is better and everlasting.

O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive me my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family.

Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I have kept my covenant and have neither changed nor altered.

Do not forget Gaza…

And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.

Source: https://institute.aljazeera.net/en/ajr/article/3298

Five Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in an Israeli strike near Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, the broadcaster has said.

Correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, alongside cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa were in a tent for journalists at the hospital's main gate when it was targeted, Al Jazeera reported.

The "targeted assassination" on Sunday was "yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom", it said in a statement.

Shortly after the strike, the IDF confirmed that it had targeted Anas al-Sharif, writing in a Telegram post that he had "served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas".

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The verbal gymnastics by our Defense secretary whenever he orders a Confederate monument to go back up is truly Olympian.

To wit, Secretary Pete Hegseth just ordered the army to refurbish a 1914 Arlington Confederate Monument to the tune of $10 million and restore it by 2027. Hegseth called it a “reconciliation monument … taken down by woke lemmings.”

In his announcement, Hegseth avoids the actual name of the monument, “The Arlington Confederate Monument.” In fact, nothing in his statement mentions the Confederacy at all. There’s a reason for that: Congress passed a law in 2019 preventing the Department of Defense from naming or renaming anything after the Confederacy. Hence, “reconciliation monument.”

In his announcement, Hegseth avoids the actual name of the monument, “The Arlington Confederate Monument.” In fact, nothing in his statement mentions the Confederacy at all. There’s a reason for that: Congress passed a law in 2019 preventing the Department of Defense from naming or renaming anything after the Confederacy. Hence, “reconciliation monument.”

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