TV News LIES

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany has agreed to pay $148 million to settle claims from some 440 people sexually abused by priests and diocesan employees and volunteers.

In a statement, Bishop Mark O’Connell said while the settlement is substantial, “it cannot adequately compensate the survivors for the horrors they experienced.” He added that the settlement can “hopefully provide some solace to all those affected by the pain caused by the perpetrators and the failings of those who could have intervened but did not.”

The settlement comes after child abuse survivors were allowed to file sexual abuse lawsuits as part of a look-back window created by the 2019 New York Child Victims Act. Survivors are also claimants in an ongoing federal bankruptcy case after the Albany diocese filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023.

Then-Bishop Edward Scharfenberger told reporters when announcing the bankruptcy filings that the diocese “doesn’t see any other alternative” after settling 50 child sexual abuse case, and still struggling to settle over 400 more.

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Over the past few days, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, Israeli settlers are reported to have launched a wave of violence in the occupied West Bank.

Since the start of the war on February 28, masked settlers have allegedly killed at least five Palestinians, injured many residents, sexually assaulted and paraded one man, burned cars and homes, and rampaged through villages, according to Reuters reports citing eyewitnesses and rights groups.

While settler violence is hardly new in the West Bank, the latest surge has been enabled by the curbs on movement imposed during the war on Iran, with military roadblocks preventing ambulances from reaching victims quickly, Reuters said.

West Bank — located to the west of the Jordan river — is a part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories along with Gaza. The latest round of violence comes amid the Israeli government’s push for new settlements on the territory “as attention shifts to the Iran war”, according to an Associated Press report.

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Israeli forces have entered the neighbourhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem to evict 11 Palestinians families from their homes.

According to locals and rights groups, 13 Palestinian apartments were seized in Silwan on Wednesday.

Police escorted Israeli settlers from the Ateret Cohanim organisation - who advocate settlement in Palestinian neighbourhoods of Jerusalem - into the Batn al-Hawa area of Silwan.

Video footage showed settlers throwing furniture out of apartment windows and raising the Israeli flag above the buildings.

According to Israeli rights group B'tselem, around 2,200 people in Silwan are facing the imminent threat of forced displacement.

"The ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem is happening now! Large Israeli forces entered the Silwan neighborhood today, 25 March, to evict 11 Palestinian families from their homes," the group wrote on Instagram.

They said the Israeli government was using the distraction of the war on Iran to relocate more settlers into territory in Palestinian areas captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

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A Palestinian toddler was returned from a 10-hour detention by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip with apparent cigarette burns on his thighs, according to medical reports.

Jawad Abu Nassar, aged 21 months, was detained alongside his father, Osama Abu Nassar, 25, in central Gaza on 19 March.

According to the family, Osama had taken his son out at around 10am to buy sweets ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

Osama - who had been grappling with severe trauma after losing his home, his unborn child, and his livelihood during the war - never returned.

“When he left, he seemed to head east instead of west,” Osama’s father, Muhammed Husni Abu Nassar, told Middle East Eye.

“Neighbours called me and said, ‘Hurry, your son is carrying his child on his shoulders and going east.’”

Around 200 metres from the family home in Maghazi refugee camp, Israeli forces are stationed along the so-called “Yellow Line”, a military demarcation established under the Gaza ceasefire that marks the boundary of Israeli control and a no-go zone where civilians risk being shot.

When Muhammed rushed to follow his son, neighbours told him that Osama had already reached the area.

Osama, whose home had been destroyed in an Israeli bombardment, had been living with his wife and their only child in his family’s house. In recent months, his wife had become pregnant but lost the baby amid the hardships of the war.

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Casualty count: Over the three days of the Eid holiday, nine Palestinians were killed—one due to wounds sustained in earlier attacks—and 30 were injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 has risen to 72,263 killed, with 171,944 injured. Since October 11, the first full day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 687 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,845, while 756 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Israeli strike kills three Palestinian police officers in central Gaza: An Israeli strike on Sunday hit a police vehicle in central Gaza, killing three Palestinian officers and wounding eight, according to local reports. The attack comes amid repeated Israeli attacks on police units in recent weeks, in which it has targeted civilian law enforcement to disrupt basic governance and sow chaos. One more person was killed in a separate attack in Gaza City, according to Al-Shifa hospital.

Settlers torch West Bank villages in coordinated raids: Dozens of Israeli settlers carried out coordinated attacks across at least 15 Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, setting homes and vehicles on fire and assaulting residents. The attacks were reportedly “retaliation” for an incident in which an Israeli settler died in an accident with a Palestinian driver. At least nine Palestinians were injured in the attacks, with incidents recorded in Jalud, Fandaqumiya, Silat ad-Dhahr, and Qaryut. Over 15 Palestinians were detained and no settlers were arrested.

An additional 10 Palestinians were injured on Sunday in attacks by rampaging settlers on four Palestinian villages in the Nablus area. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich used the funeral of the settler killed in the accident to advocate for unimpeded settlement of the West Bank, saying that, “We will erase the lines, the definitions, and the letters, and we will settle our land in all its expanses.”

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Up to 10 Palestinians are dying every day in Gaza due to severe Israeli restrictions that prevent them from accessing urgent medical care abroad, the Palestinian health ministry has said.

Zaher al-Wahidi, the director of the ministry's information department, said on Monday that "every day, between six and 10 patients who are waiting to travel abroad for treatment die".

He said there were at least 195 cases classified as life-threatening and warned that if they were not evacuated within the next few hours, their lives could be at risk. 

There are 1,971 other emergency cases that need to be evacuated within weeks, or they could reach critical levels amid their deteriorating conditions. 

Among these cases are 4,000 children and another 4,000 cancer patients.

Medical evacuations out of Gaza have long been a difficult trial for thousands of Palestinians with Israel's years-long siege on the territory. 

Since the start of Israel's genocidal war on the strip, these limitations have only increased, especially with Israeli forces occupying the Rafah crossing and its surroundings.

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