TV News LIES

A broad coalition of former high-ranking Israeli officials, including former prime ministers and defence chiefs, have issued what they termed a “wake-up call” and “final warning”, demanding that the Israeli government act against Jewish settler “terrorism” in the occupied West Bank. 

In a joint statement reported by Haartez on Thursday, the ex-officials, who include former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, warn Benjamin Netanyahu’s government that they will appeal to the Supreme Court if immediate action is not taken to change policies on the matter.

The letter states that the government and its ministers “have done nothing to eliminate Jewish terrorism” and that some of its officials have even provided support to illegal settlement outposts where the attackers reside.

“He [Netanyahu] and all government ministers have done nothing and are doing nothing to eradicate Jewish terror in [the West Bank]," the statement says.

"They do not condemn it, do not require the Israel Defence Forces, the police, the Shin Bet and the Civil Administration to fight it, and some of them, at least, even support this terror by providing financial and equipment assistance, and building illegal farms and outposts that serve as residences for Jewish terror activists."

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Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has proposed a bill to ban trade with Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine, declaring them an impediment to peace.

The Norwegian government said on Friday that it had submitted a bill with legally binding stipulations for consultation. The proposal recommends prohibiting Norwegian citizens and companies from profiting from or supporting Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.

“The Israeli settlements in Palestine are in violation of international law. They contribute to displacement, extreme violence and a development that makes a peaceful solution impossible. We will prohibit trade with the illegal settlements,” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a press release.

The Israeli government has built illegal settlements at a rapid pace, undermining the prospects of a Palestinian state.

The proposal follows a parliamentary resolution and would ban Norwegian exports to, and importation of goods from, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

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The fee would effectively allow Iran to cement its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, but would likely require the cooperation of neighbouring Oman, whose territorial waters border Iran’s.

Iran agreed not to charge any fees in the waterway during the 60-day ceasefire with the US, termed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, but the agreement left open the possibility of a new system afterwards.

Tehran’s newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority circulated a letter within the shipping industry that appears to lay out plans to charge a fee once the 60-day window passes.

“This insurance is provided free of charge to the vessel owner, with all expenses covered by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the letter said, according to Lloyd’s List, a maritime intelligence publication.

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Several dozen people, mostly women, rallied in Kyiv Friday to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, in a fifth year of Russia’s invasion. 

The Kremlin’s forces were last month added to a United Nations blacklist on sexual violence in conflict, outraging Russia.

The protesters called on releasing The protesters called on releasing women held in Russian captivity in Russia and Moscow-occupied Ukraine.women held in Russian captivity in Russia and Moscow-occupied Ukraine.

During its invasion, Moscow has taken thousands of Ukrainian troops and an unknown number of civilians captive.

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A federal appeals court has paved the way for the Trump administration to replace the slavery exhibit it removed at the President’s House Site on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.

Thursday’s decision effectively discards a February injunction ordering the National Park Service to restore the site, which included a series of illustrated panels about the nine people enslaved by George Washington at the executive mansion while he was president in the 1790s.

The panels were taken down, then partially restored, as part of a monthslong legal fight rooted in an executive order issued by President Donald Trump. Citing a 2006 agreement, the city sued the Park Service and the Interior Department in January after it abruptly removed the exhibit to comply with the order.

In its unanimous ruling, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found that the city does not have any “statutory, property, or contractual rights that empower it to curate the exhibits in the President’s House.” The judges also concluded that the Trump administration’s replacement panels, which NPS has posted online, are “full of historical context.”

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More than 26,000 New Jersey residents have been kicked off their monthly food benefits since the Trump administration’s federal work rules took effect, state officials said.

Emergency food advocates say it’s only going to get worse, further straining food pantries that are already seeing surging demand amid soaring gas prices and stubbornly high living costs.

“One of the most alarming things is it's just the beginning,” said Elizabeth McCarthy, CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, an anti-hunger group. “We really expect this to keep happening.”

The work requirements passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump last summer overhauled the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps families afford groceries. The changes required states that were exempt from work requirements because of high unemployment rates to comply and made more groups of people subject to those rules, such as homeless people, veterans and older adults.\

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Weeks after the Civil War's guns fell silent and barely two months after President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas. They had come to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, an order freeing enslaved people in seceded Confederate states. And the date they arrived — June 19, 1865 — is now remembered as the first "Juneteenth."

The Emancipation Proclamation had been issued years earlier during the war, on Jan. 1, 1863. It's the version most commonly emphasized in history books: the executive order that Lincoln himself reportedly said was "the great event of the nineteenth century" and his lasting legacy.

But word of such an order had already been circulating throughout the South for months. A preliminary proclamation, which contained much the same wording as the historic order, was issued on Sept. 22, 1862, days after the Battle of Antietam — the single bloodiest day in American military history. The purpose of it was to "warn that if the Confederate states don't return to the Union by January 1st, [Lincoln] will in fact issue a final proclamation," according to Harold Holzer, a Lincoln historian.

Not all enslaved people immediately knew about Lincoln's orders, but many learned of it while the fighting was still raging. Rumors spread through informal networks, sometimes inadvertently from slaveholders themselves, says Holzer, who directs the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York.

Slaveholders would often discuss the proclamation right in front of the people they enslaved, he says. They wrongly assumed that since enslaved people were prohibited from reading and writing, they would be oblivious to discussion of events around them.

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has accused President Trump of fabricating a story that she "begged" him for a photo at the G7 summit, in a stunning public break between the two leaders once considered allies.

"Donald Trump's statements are completely fabricated. I am frankly stunned," Meloni said in a video posted on X Friday. "I don't ‌know why ⁠the president of the United States behaves like this toward his own allies. After all, it is not the first time."

She added: "I can only say it's a shame he doesn't show the same resolve toward with the enemies of the West and toward the enemies of the United States — toward leaders with whom he, on the other hand, is much more accommodating. But there is one thing he should remember: Italy and I do not beg."

Meloni was responding to comments Trump allegedly made during a phone interview with an Italian journalist. NPR has not been able to independently verify what Trump said.

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