TV News LIES

Attorney General Todd Blanche said he would consider President Donald Trump's views on prosecutions, rejecting the notion of an independent Department of Justice.

"Will I take the president of the United States’ view on something into consideration? Yes, of course," Blanche said in an Aug. 16 interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press." When asked if he would act independently from the White House, Blanche answered: "No, I’m not going to pledge that."

The Department of Justice has largely operated independently of the White House since the Watergate scandal, which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has overseen major changes at the Justice Department, including the firing of dozens of officials and the departure of thousands of lawyers. Critics contend the DOJ has become a tool for targeting Trump's political opponents.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has branded Britain an "Islamic republic", attacking a country whose governments have armed, protected and assisted Israel throughout its genocide in Gaza and wider regional wars.

During an interview broadcast by Army Radio, Netanyahu complained that the favourable British coverage Israel received during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war had disappeared.

The 1967 war began with Israel’s surprise attack on Egypt and ended with Israeli forces seizing the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights.

“Try to find that now in Britain, which you could call the Islamic republic of Britain,” Netanyahu said.

When the host responded, “Isn’t all of Europe like that?”, Netanyahu replied: “Yes, but you know, someone said the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic republic of Britain.”

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In his Beirut office, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah is going over his operating list for the weekend: 11 children in total, with life-altering injuries from Israel’s wars on Lebanon and Gaza.

“There are two siblings who have shrapnel from the 2024 war that is now causing medical problems,” the prominent British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon told Middle East Eye.

“A boy with a partial amputation of his foot that needs reconstruction, from this war, and another boy with an amputation.”

Dr Abu Sittah hopes to finish the stump so that the patient can begin prosthetic rehabilitation.

Another boy with an elbow injury needs a prolonged reconstructive procedure to salvage his elbow joint.

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Alaska US Senate candidate Mary Peltola has rejected the support of Kamala Harris, her fellow Democrat, after the 2024 presidential candidate sent out a seemingly unsolicited fundraising appeal on Peltola’s behalf.

Harris, who lost Alaska – typically a Republican-voting state – by 13 points during her unsuccessful White House run, on Wednesday sent an email from her political organization to supporters of Peltola, a former US House member.

“If there’s anyone who can flip Alaska and secure the Senate majority for Democrats – it’s Mary,” the email, which was signed “Kamala Harris”, said. “But she cannot do it alone.”

It asked recipients to donate to Fight for the People Pac, which Harris set up last year. Donations would be split between Harris’s organization and Peltola, the email said.

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Five people were shot at Virginia State University, with one in critical condition, after an early morning incident outside campus dorms on Saturday, Aug. 15, according to a university post on X. Officials say a campus lockdown was lifted as of 8:22 a.m.

"Officers responded to the 3300 block of Boisseau Street at approximately 1:29 a.m. and discovered five individuals suffering from gunshot wounds outside VSU resident halls," officials said in the post.

The other four victims – one has been confirmed as a VSU student – sustained injuries that were not life-threatening, according to the university. The student has been released from the hospital, the university officials said in a 12:53 p.m. ET update posted on X.

The Chesterfield County Police Department is leading the investigation, and officials ask that members of the campus community avoid the area, according to the university post. VSU university police, federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) officials and the Hanover County Sheriff's Office are assisting in the investigation.

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A German court this month decided that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is protected legal speech, highlighting a growing conflict between constitutional protections and Berlin’s political commitment to Tel Aviv. 

The regional court acquitted a woman convicted in a lower court over social media posts comparing Israel’s conduct in Gaza with the methods of the Nazi regime.

In recent years, Germany’s support for Israel has increasingly shaped policing, administrative decisions and criminal prosecutions.

After 7 October 2023, Germany banned Hamas and Samidoun, a Palestinian advocacy group, while increasingly using laws originally aimed at preventing a Nazi revival to crack down on criticism of Israel.

The recent court ruling, which found that the woman’s use of Nazi imagery in the context of Israel’s conduct in Gaza constituted protected political expression, rejected the prominent notion within German circles that such analogies are inherently criminal in nature.

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Haitham Rashaidh was among the last to leave his home near Ein al-Auja, a natural spring and waterfall north of Jericho in the occupied West Bank. 

His family packed up their tents and heaped all their belongings onto a tractor, and then began the two-hour journey across difficult terrain towards al-Balqa, a sparsely populated area of the Jordan Valley, where they set up camp alongside their displaced neighbours.

Leaving Ein al-Auja felt like losing a part of themselves, Rashaidh explained mournfully. Water once flowed here in a torrent, estimated at thousands of cubic metres daily - yet today, the ground is parched, the spring that once supported a Bedouin community of more than 100 families reduced to a trickle.

Palestinians used to treasure Ein al-Auja as an oasis of calm in a region under siege. But Israel’s diversion of water, alongside continuing settler attacks, ultimately made life in the community untenable.

“We did not leave the first time they tried to push us out,” Rashaidh told Middle East Eye. “We came back, rebuilt what we could, and tried to continue our lives.

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A federal judge says Idaho can’t prosecute doctors who perform abortions to protect a pregnant person’s health or prevent self-harm.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill made the ruling Thursday, writing that Idaho’s “Defense of Life Act” and “Fetal Heartbeat Act” — which together create a near-total ban on abortion — violate the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. Physicians who violate the laws can lose their license and face up to five years in prison.

Both laws include narrow exceptions, including abortions done to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or in some cases of rape or incest where the pregnant person has filed a police report.

The case isn’t about bodily autonomy or reproductive choice, Winmill wrote in the 81-page decision, but rather the “limit of the state’s power to make a woman suffer for the sake of an unborn child.”

Both laws include narrow exceptions, including abortions done to prevent the death of a pregnant woman or in some cases of rape or incest where the pregnant person has filed a police report.

The case isn’t about bodily autonomy or reproductive choice, Winmill wrote in the 81-page decision, but rather the “limit of the state’s power to make a woman suffer for the sake of an unborn child.”

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