TV News LIES

The verse was Al Imran 3:13, the passage describing the Battle of Badr, where a vastly outnumbered and poorly equipped Muslim force routed a much larger army “by the will of God”. It was a clear reference to what many are increasingly calling Iran’s victory over the US and Israel in their war on the country.

Badr was fought in what is today Saudi Arabia in 624 CE. The question is whether the recitation was a compliment, a taunt, or both - but it was unlikely to have been random.

Read generously, the verse gestures at one of Islam’s first victories and a shared civilisational memory between Tehran and Riyadh.

But Iran has not only survived the war but arguably, it may have emerged from it stronger, with control of the Strait of Hormuz now tantalisingly close to becoming a fait accompli.

When the Saudi delegation stepped forward to pay respects at the coffin of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran’s Grand Mosalla, the Quran recitation that followed did not go unnoticed.

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Nearly a year after floodwaters destroyed their home along the Upper Guadalupe River, Juliet and Scott Welden watched construction crews build a new one on the same property.

This time, the house was elevated 8 feet above the ground in hopes that it can withstand another catastrophic flood.

“We watched the water enter our home, and the floors buckled,” Juliet Welden said. “The furniture floated. Rooms began collapsing, and the water kept rising.”

The force of the current pushed the couple out of their house. They survived by clinging to a large bush as the flood tore through their neighborhood.

At least 130 people died along the Upper Guadalupe River after torrential rain struck the Texas Hill Country during the Fourth of July holiday. The Weldens’ rebuilding effort has been supported by federal disaster assistance and contributions from churches, foundations and other community organizations.

“The local community — there’s a lot of love, compassion, kindness, generosity,” she said, adding that churches and private groups often provided the most immediate assistance.

The Weldens expect to move into their new home in October.

Less than 100 miles away, survivors along Sandy Creek describe a much different recovery.

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New York City health officials are investigating a cluster of 10 Legionnaires’ disease cases on the Upper East Side, the city health department said.

Officials confirmed the first two cases on Thursday. By Friday night, the count had grown to 10, all concentrated in the Carnegie Hill and Yorkville neighborhoods, officials said.

All cooling towers in the area are being tested, according to the department. The cluster, officials said, was not connected to plumbing and residents in the affected ZIP codes — 10028 and 10128 —  could safely drink tap water, shower, cook and run air conditioners.

Past outbreaks, including a deadly one last summer, have been the result of the Legionella bacteria spreading through the air from mist let off by cooling towers.

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Lawyers for Donald Trump have requested more time to pay a $5m civil judgment to magazine columnist E Jean Carroll from 2023, days after the US supreme court declined to hear an appeal.

In a new filing, the president’s attorney said that since his former lead counsel, Justin Smith, took up a position as a federal judge last month (a post he was nominated to by Trump), his new lead counsel, Josh Halpern, needed more time “to become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances” of the case.

A jury awarded Carroll damages after concluding that Trump had sexually abused her in 1996 and then defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019. Trump deposited money in an escrow fund to pay the award but is trying to delay the release of an amount that is now nearly $5.8m with interest.

Trump’s attorneys requested that the court extend the deadline for a response to Carroll’s request for payment to 14 July, arguing that the “plaintiff faces no risk of material harm as a result of granting this request”.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin is coming under rare public criticism at home, a significant signal of how the pressures from the more than four-year war in Ukraine are hurting the country.

Fuel shortages and rising inflation, high-profile attacks against Russian energy infrastructure and cities, and mounting military casualties are prompting prominent figures to start pinning the blame on Putin.

“It is a crisis,” said Vladimir Milov, a Russian economist in exile who served as deputy minister of energy in 2002. “What we are seeing right now is an extreme acceleration of public admissions that we are in trouble.”

German Gref, head of Russia’s largest bank Sberbank, is one of the most high-profile elites in Russia to issue blunt criticism calling for the war to end. 

“I don’t think there’s a single person who isn’t concerned about anything other than a rapid end of hostilities, that’s clear,” he reportedly said on Russian state TV earlier this week, responding to overwhelming negative economic trends.

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President Trump’s talk of boosting U.S. munitions stockpiles is facing the harsh reality of America’s production capacity. 

Even if Congress passes his enormous $1.5 trillion request for defense spending, which is looking less likely with each passing week, defense contractors are simply unable to rapidly refill caches that have been badly depleted during the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

Trump met last week with the CEOs of Lockheed, Boeing and Honeywell, a gathering during which Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg grilled executives over delays on key programs, Reuters reported.

“You’re not doing enough” was the initial message to executives, a source told the outlet.

But the highly sophisticated missiles and interceptors take years to churn out at the mercy of government funding cycles. That means recently announced intentions to expand assembly lines are still years away from yielding tangible results.

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President Trump on Friday issued a “fierce rebuke” of communism as part of his Independence Day kickoff speech, injecting partisan rancor into remarks commemorating America’s 250th birthday with Mount Rushmore as the backdrop. 

Speaking in Keystone, South Dakota, Trump declared that “such doctrines can be given no quarter,” issuing a thinly-veiled dark threat against less than a handful of rising Democratic candidates running as Democratic Socialists and progressives.

“As we approach this magnificent anniversary, we see our American identity under a renewed attack,” Trump warned. 

“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” he continued.

“Communism is the enemy of free people everywhere, everywhere in the world, never works, it’s the enemy of the Constitution, above all, it’s the enemy of July 4, 1776 – it is the enemy indeed.”

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A group of people wearing symbols of the White supremacist organization Patriot Front gathered and paraded in parts of the nation's capital on July 4.

The group was spotted at Union Station and the Eastern Market metro station in Washington, DC, on Independence Day. The Eastern Market station is one of the closest to the Capitol building.

Videos posted on social media captured the individuals marching in their signature blue shirts, chinos and white face coverings. Several wore hats with the Patriot Front logo. The group marched to a drum beat outside Union Station, the city's main train station, and carried flags that included an upside-down American flag and a Confederate flag in a video shared on social media by WTOP reporter Mitchell Miller.

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