TV News LIES

Defense attorneys for Luigi Mangione are now withdrawing plans to argue at his state murder trial that he was suffering from "extreme emotional disturbance" in the alleged killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, according to reports.

The development came just a day after Mangione’s lawyers told Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro that they planned to argue that Mangione had lost control of his actions due to an extreme mental health crisis. In a letter to Carro on June 18, the lawyers said they were "at this time" withdrawing his psychiatric defense, Reuters and The Associated Press reported.

Under New York law, murder defendants can seek to convince a jury that their actions can be explained by an "extreme emotional disturbance" that reduces their criminal culpability. Carro would ultimately decide at trial whether there was enough evidence for the murder charge to be reduced.

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Portions of the sealant that was recently applied at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as part of a series of renovations to the landmark appears to have begun peeling off the pool basin on June 18.

Images published by Getty Images show a tear in the sealant and portions of the "American Flag Blue" paint floating to the surface. The images show the latest in a series of problems that have arisen in the wake of the repainting of the reflecting pool as a part of renovations commissioned by President Donald Trump.

Trump announced the plan to refurbish the pool in April, saying the landmark had been the subject of complaints due to its cleanliness levels and leaking foundation. The National Park Service told USA TODAY the pool had leaked 16 million gallons a year.

He told reporters that contractors would sandblast, caulk and resurface the pool basin. The pool is part of a citywide initiative to spruce up landmarks ahead of the Fourth of July and celebrations of the country's 250th birthday.

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Ukrainian drones have hit several locations across Moscow in Kyiv’s biggest air raid on the city since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, setting a major ⁠oil refinery on fire and forcing evacuations at the country’s largest airport.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as a response to Russia’s strike on a historic Kyiv monastery complex earlier this week.

“We do not want this war and never did,” the Ukrainian president said in a voice message to journalists. “But if Ukraine is going to burn, your Moscow will burn too … it is time to end the aggression, time to end this war.”

Russia’s foreign minister in turn announced it would launch huge “group strikes” on Ukraine “on a regular basis” in response to the Moscow raid.

The scale of Ukraine’s long-range attack, apparently designed to shut down operations at the key oil refinery in the Kapotnya area, caught most people by surprise in a city that does not typically warn residents with air raid alarms, and prompted panicked messages on social media.

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Mustafa Al-Shawa awoke at 2:30 a.m. on Monday to the sound of gunfire and the rumble of tanks in Al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. When he was finally able to go outside a few hours later, he found two yellow concrete blocks placed in the middle of the street—the Israeli military had moved them at least one hundred meters further west into Gaza where they now lay close to his home.

“They moved the yellow line forward to the Sanafour Junction. It used to be up by Al-Shaaaf Street,” Al-Shawa told Drop Site News. “This is the yellow line,” he said, pointing to the blocks. “There is another yellow line along Salah Al-Din Street that they have moved closer. Enough of what is happening to us. Enough of this suffering.”

Israel has been steadily encroaching further into Gaza, moving the “yellow line” that demarcates its area of control from 53% of the enclave since the start of the so-called ceasefire in October to well over 60%, in violation of the agreement. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently ordered the army to take 70%.

“We can’t leave the neighborhood because there is nowhere to go,” Al-Shawa said. “If we leave the area we’re in now, we’ll end up sleeping in the streets, in filth. There is no place left. Where are we supposed to go?”

Along certain parts of Gaza, Israeli troops have placed yellow concrete blocks to delineate the new border. Their placement of the blocks further west into the Al-Tuffah neighborhood on Friday accompanied by gunfire, tanks, and quadcopter attacks caused dozens of Palestinians in the area to pack up their belongings and flee later that day.

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Of all the military failures the US has suffered in the past 25 years in the Middle East, the Iran war is probably the most consequential. 

Unlike America’s military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Syria, the Islamic Republic did not just survive another US attempt at regime change. The US-Israel war on Iran was never just about the fate of one regime.

The failure to subdue Iran has halted, or shattered, a much larger ambition: a project to change the shape of the Middle East, with a reborn and rejuvenated "greater Israel" at its head. 

This was the strategic goal of the Abraham Accords, and when Saudi Arabia baulked at signing on the dotted line, a war with Iran was manufactured instead.

Ironically, it took "the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House" to undo Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biggest dream.

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Following the announcement of a memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States, it is time to revisit some criminal documents.

Back in early March, as Israel mobilised all its American cards to launch a war on Iran, Zionist writer Bret Stephens, who has a regular column in The New York Times, where he fervently defends an Israel that trains dogs to rape human beings - published his bucket list of what he wished Israel and the US should achieve against what he thought would soon be a defeated Iran.

With the immediate cessation of hostilities between Iran and the US, it is time to revisit that gaudy, delusional and unhinged column.

Stephens envisaged four scenarios of Israeli victory against Iran. The first was regime change, which he thought "nobody should discount, especially if Iran continues to be battered militarily and politically, perhaps with the loss of additional echelons of leadership".

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Kyiv came under repeated Russian attacks in the early hours of Thursday,  as ballistic missile threats were followed by a new wave of strike drones, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukraine’s Air Force initially warned of a “ballistic threat from the north,” prompting air alerts in Kyiv and several other regions. Authorities urged residents to move to shelters and remain there until the all-clear.

The first missile threat was briefly lifted at 12:58 a.m., but at 1:22 a.m. the military again declared a missile danger. Shortly afterward, the Air Force reported several ballistic missiles heading toward the capital and Poltava region.

A series of powerful explosions was heard in Kyiv at around 1:24 a.m. Explosions were also reported in Poltava. a city in central Ukraine.

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The U.S. military attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, killing one man and leaving two survivors, as the Trump administration continues its monthslong campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America.

The latest attack brings the number of people who have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military to at least 208 since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls "narcoterrorists" in early September.

As with most of the military's statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. A video posted on X showed a boat traveling in the water before being hit by the strike and bursting into flames.

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