TV News LIES

“On the US calendar it’s still March 4,” Jabbarli said, “but so much happens in a single day that sometimes it would normally take months or years.”

Ramin Jabbarli is a sociologist and the director of the Seattle-based Foundation for Inclusive Society, an NGO that regularly monitors the human rights situation in Iran. He told Kyiv Post that since airstrikes began last Saturday, it has not only been the internet – but even phone lines have been cut off.

“It’s not only about protests,” Jabbarli said. “They don’t want information to spread quickly… They want to limit communications.”

Monitoring group NetBlocks reported Iran’s connectivity falling to around 1% of ordinary levels during the blackout. Jabbarli said some footage escapes via satellite links like Starlink or through devices brought out of the country, but described those routes as limited and risky.

The most urgent political question, Jabbarli said, is what comes after Khamenei – and whether the succession stabilizes the system or becomes another trigger for conflict.

“There are different alternatives being discussed,” he said. “One is Khamenei’s son. Another is [Iran’s first supreme leader Ruhollah] Khomeini’s grandson. Hassan Rouhani is also mentioned.”

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Israel’s military issued warnings to residents of dozens of border villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate “immediately” Wednesday as airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut intensified and Hezbollah claimed more attacks.

Lebanon was dragged into the broader war in the Middle East early Monday when Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, triggering Israeli retaliatory airstrikes that killed more than 70 people, wounded more than 400 and displaced tens of thousands of people from southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The ongoing conflict is not the first between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah began firing into Israel a day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. After months of low-level fighting, a full-scale war erupted in September 2024 and Israel later launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.

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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said Dunkin’ and other companies will need to prove that their ingredients are safe, prompting Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) on Wednesday to reply back, “Come and take it.”

Kennedy, while at a rally at Brazos Hall last week in Austin, Texas, said, “We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, ‘Show us the safety data that show that it’s OK for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it.'”

He added, as the audience applauded, “I don’t think they’re going to be able to do it.

“The reforms aim to ensure American foods follow the highest safety and nutritional standards globally,” MAHA Action, Kennedy’s nonprofit health advocacy group, said in a statement explaining Kennedy’s announcement.

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State Rep. James Talarico defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas in the Texas Senate primary Tuesday, March 3 in a battle of two national Democratic rising stars.

Talarico will face whichever Republican prevails in a May 26 runoff, either incumbent Sen. John Cornyn or embattled state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Talarico, 36, is a Presbyterian seminarian and former elementary school teacher now running a populist campaign in the Lone Star State with faith-based undertones.

The Democratic contest provided a stark contrast for Texas primary voters. Talarico, who is White, faced Crockett, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, in a race that raised questions about race, electability and stylistic differences. No Democrat has won a statewide race since 1994, but former Rep. Beto O'Rourke came within about 2.5 percentage points of Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.

While Crockett entered the race three months after Talarico, she was the favorite due to her star power and fundraising prowess. She had gained nationwide fame for her cutting comments about Republicans, such as slamming former House peer Marjorie Taylor Greene as a "beach blonde bad built butch body" for insulting her false eyelashes.

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Israel closed all crossings into Gaza indefinitely when it attacked Iran, imposing a siege that has already pushed up food prices and threatens to plunge 2 million people into a new hunger crisis.

After more than two years of war, and with Israeli forces in control of about 60% of the territory, almost all of Gaza’s food must be brought in.

Humanitarian groups feeding much of the population say the supplies they had on Saturday, when the war began, will only last a few more days.

“If [the borders] stay closed, World Central Kitchen will run out of food this week,” said the organisation’s founder and chief, José Andrés, in a post on social media.

“We are cooking 1m hot meals every day. We need food deliveries every single day.”

One international food security expert said there was just a week’s supply of fresh food in Gaza.

Community bakeries that supply some of the most vulnerable people have only enough flour for about 10 days of bread, and there are about two weeks’ supply of aid parcels.

Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza last spring followed by extreme restrictions on food shipments. Together they caused a famine last summer.

Hundreds of people were also killed trying to reach the food distribution points of a new logistics organisation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which only operated in Israeli-controlled areas.

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US President Donald Trump said his “biggest surprise” since unleashing a war in the Middle East has been Iran’s attacks on the Arab Gulf states, which the US counts as some of its closest and richest partners.

“Unbelievable,” a former US intelligence official told Middle East Eye in response to Trump’s comment.

“It’s as if the US was operating and planning in a bubble for the last year. This is what Trump was warned of in conversations with Gulf rulers, and presumably his own intelligence briefings,” the person added.

Not even a year has passed since Trump gave a speech in Riyadh praising the “gleaming marvels” of the oil and gas-rich region’s cities, and now Iranian drones and ballistic missiles are slamming into those very towers and the energy infrastructure that made them possible.

In his May speech, Trump also trashed “interventionists”. His remarks were welcomed not only by ordinary people in the Gulf but also by its wealthy rulers, who are increasingly seeking to manage the region on their own - sometimes through violent means, as in Sudan, and at other times through negotiation.

Now, the US’s willingness to engage in an all-out war on the Islamic Republic as its Gulf allies take the retaliatory blows is shaking the foundations of their security partnership in the first place, analysts and officials in the Gulf say.

“To my knowledge, the US has not spelt out to leadership what our gain is if we join a full-scale war on Iran,” a Gulf official told MEE. “But the cost is obvious.”

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Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) tore into Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a 10-minute tirade criticizing her from everything to her handling of the deaths of two Minnesotans to killing her own dog in a monologue that garnered applause from the audience of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I’m giving you a performance evaluation here – I’m not looking for a response,” said Tillis, adding that “time after time after time, I’ve been disappointed.”

Tillis, who is retiring at the end of his term next year, accused Noem of holding up federal emergency funding, violating U.S. citizens rights in carrying out immigration enforcement and quashing independent oversight of her department in a move he said would prompt him to renew his hold on DHS nominees.

He faulted her for indiscriminate immigration enforcement.

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As groups of families and others gathered Sunday evening at cafes around Niloofar Square—a middle-class area in eastern Tehran—after breaking their fast for Ramadan, a series of explosions struck the area, leveling several buildings and killing over 20 people, according to witnesses at the scene and later reports from local news sources.

Witnesses who spoke to Drop Site said two explosions hit the area—a smaller strike in the vicinity, followed by a larger one that devastated much of the neighborhood, a tactic known as a “double tap” strike that is used to inflict maximum casualties.

Videos of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside. In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors. Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled across their seats.

“We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone’s hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor,” said Shahin, a witness who had been at the cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. “There were scalps torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and two people were martyred.”

As has been the case with nearly all of the bombings in Iran, it remains unclear whether this attack was carried out by the U.S. or Israel. Israel has used “double tap” strikes in Gaza, Lebanon, and elsewhere. In one prominent incident, the Israeli military killed 22 Palestinians, including five journalists, in a double tap strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in August. The U.S. repeatedly engaged in double tap strikes during the so-called “War on Terror” in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and, most recently, in a September 2025 attack on an alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean.

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