TV News LIES

Alexandra Bravo, the prosecutor assigned to investigate U.S. strikes on three Ecuadorian boats and the 36 survivors’ subsequent accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in the coastal city of Manta last month. According to police, on June 14 a hitman aboard a black motorcycle opened fire on Bravo as she and her sister were leaving a café at about 11 a.m. Bravo’s sister, who jumped to protect her, was also killed in the attack.

Upon arriving at the crime scene, officers say they found five 9mm shell casings and Bravo’s injured driver, but no sign of the police detail that had been assigned to protect her. The Police Directorate, which operates entirely under the executive branch, has launched a probe to determine if there’d been an internal security breach.

Bravo is the 26th member of Ecuador’s justice system to be assassinated since 2020 and the second individual investigating state crimes murdered that week. Besides her usual caseload of homicide and organized crime, Bravo had been working the Fiorella, Negra Francisca, and Don Maca cases—a series of drone attacks on civilian fishing ships exposed by Drop Site in April. Two of the boat’s crews returned home and reported being abducted, blindfolded, and starved for eight days by American gunmen in U.S. military uniforms aboard a U.S.-flagged patrol ship, before being abandoned in El Salvador.

The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances endorsed the calls for an investigation, demanding that the U.S. provide information on the whereabouts of the eight still-missing men and any involvement in the matter by April 27. To date, the United States has not responded.

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An unprecedented investment in social media propaganda by Israel is failing to shift the cratering support for the country in the western world amid its ongoing genocide in Gaza, particularly among the younger generation, analysts have told Middle East Eye. 

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March found that a majority, 60 percent of the American public, including 57 percent of Republican voters under the age of 50 and 84 percent of Democrats under 50, view Israel unfavourably.

Much of this is down to an increasing number of younger people using social media rather than mainstream outlets, which are overwhelmingly pro-Israel, for their news. 

To counter this shift, Israeli lawmakers approved a record budget of $730m for public diplomacy - known by its Hebrew name Hasbara - in March, amounting to almost five times its previous annual budget, which was already 20 times pre-2023 levels.

In September 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with several American influencers in New York to enlist them to amplify pro-Israel messaging in the US.

During the meeting, Netanyahu stressed the importance of their role, saying: "We have to fight with weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged in and the most important ones are on social media."

He added that the deal, which saw American billionaire Larry Ellison, alongside several other pro-Israel businessmen, acquire TikTok's US operations, was "the most important purchase going on right now".

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The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) struck a tanker in the Black Sea, a Russian pontoon crossing and a concentration of Russian personnel as part of broader efforts to weaken Mosconotw’s military and economic capabilities.

The General Staff of the AFU confirmed the strikes, which were conducted overnight Wednesday-Thursday.

“A tanker was hit in the Black Sea,” the General Staff said, adding that the vessel transported Russian oil, petroleum products and fuel for the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

The statement did not identify the tanker or provide more details about the extent of the damage.

According to the statement, the AFU also struck a pontoon crossing near Novoekonomichne in the Donetsk region. Russian troops were reportedly using the crossing to support military logistics, alongside transferring personnel and equipment.

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When the ‘“department of government efficiency” was raging unchecked through the federal government in February 2025, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered his subordinates to find cuts of 8% a year for the next five years, theoretically trimming a total of $340m from the Pentagon budget.

The disclosure briefly sent Palantir and defense stocks tanking – though soon the plan evaporated, as if it never existed.

Instead, Hegseth is now demanding a $454bn increase for 2027 military spending, to a total of almost $1.5tn, in what he describes as a “generational investment”.

Adjusted for inflation, that would for the first time match – and even exceed – US military spending at the height of the second world war during national mobilization, according to a chart prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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A Secret Service agent assigned to JD Vance’s protective detail is “the subject of an administrative investigation, and potential criminal inquiry, involving allegations of compromising operational and information security”, according to the Secret Service chief of communications.

The agent came under suspicion after allegedly providing information that appeared in an MS Now report about the vice-president’s planned Marine Corps helicopter trip with his son to a golf lesson, a source told CNN.

The report also claimed there was a “building morale problem” among the agents assigned to protect Vance and his family. The trip was ultimately called off due to severe thunderstorms.

The source said the publication of those travel plans triggered unease among the Secret Service, the FBI and White House officials, who “fumed over operational details being described in the press”. A second source told CNN that investigators identified the individual they believe was responsible for leaking the information.

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Concerns are growing in southern California over a cluster of “exceptionally rare” cancer cases that has sickened multiple children in a suburban community.

Families living in the Orange county neighborhood of Ladera Ranch, home to about 26,000 people, have reported that six children in the community were diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, Katrina Foley, the vice-chair of the county board of supervisors, said in a statement.

Ewing sarcoma is a rare cancer that primarily affects bone and soft tissue and is largely seen in young adults and children.

At a community meeting this week, hundreds of residents turned up to voice their concerns, including several who spoke about additional cancer cases in adults and pets. While the American Cancer Society reports there are “no known lifestyle-related or environmental causes” of Ewing sarcoma, many residents believe the cancer cases are linked to the use of herbicides and pesticides.

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House Democrat calls Trump's new tariffs 'an end-run around the Supreme Court and Congress', not an attempt to end forced labor.

As soon as the Trump administration announced its new tariffs on 85 countries, for supposedly failing to crack down on forced labor, the office of the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, turned its official, government social media account into a political battering ram: posting past statements against forced labor from 15 senators and members of Congress of both parties, in a transparent attempt to head off their criticism of the new tariffs.

One of those lawmakers, congresswoman Linda Sánchez, a California Democrat, denounced the pretext for the new tariffs as a sham anyway.

“President Trump isn’t serious about combating forced labor. He’s trying to make an end-run around the Supreme Court and Congress to reimpose his illegal tariffs,” Sánchez wrote on social media.

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The Trump family is making headlines again after money management companies tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have raked in about $6.3 billion from investments in defense-sector startups that receive hefty government contracts.

According to The Washington Post (1), portfolio funds linked to the Trumps have "invested in more than a dozen defense tech companies and other firms seeking businesses from the Pentagon and federal agencies."

The investment companies cited in The Post's analysis include Plainville, N.Y.-based 1789 Capital, an investment firm that says it's "Funding the Next Chapter of America's Exceptionalism" on its website's home page (2). The firm's leadership team includes Donald Trump, Jr., who's billed as a partner on the 1789 website.

Another firm, American Ventures branch, a branch of Dominari Holdings, holds approximately $1 billion in private assets, with Eric Trump reportedly heavily involved in the company.

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