TV News LIES

Amid ongoing disruptions to maritime shipping in the Middle East due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Somali pirates are demanding a $10 million ransom for the release of an oil tanker recently hijacked off the coast of Yemen, multiple security officials tell Drop Site News.

The oil tanker MT Eureka was sailing with the flag of the West African nation of Togo when it was seized by pirates at 5:00 a.m on May 2 near the port of Qana in Yemen in the Gulf of Aden. The hijacking was the second within a ten-day stretch, following the hijacking of another ship, the HONOUR 25, by pirates on April 22.

The seven hijackers steered the MT Eureka towards Somali waters, anchoring near the fishing town of Murcanyo at the tip of the Horn of Africa near the Yemeni island of Socotra, according to three security officials from the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland.

Once anchored, more armed gunmen boarded the tanker, according to security officials who spoke with Drop Site. The officials estimate that there are roughly 30 pirates currently holding the oil tanker and its crew hostage. A total of 12 crew members are also on board—including eight Egyptians, according to a statement about the hijacking from Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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Raneem Mousa lifts a heavy volume from a shattered shelf inside the centuries-old library of Gaza’s Great Omari Mosque.

With a small brush, she gently sweeps away layers of dust before passing the book to a colleague, who wipes it clean with a soft cloth. 

Together, they carry it to what they call the “safest corner” - a small space reserved for the volumes they have managed to salvage.

It is a painstaking, improvised effort to rescue rare books and manuscripts from a historic collection devastated by Israeli bombardment during the genocide in Gaza.

“The library was filled with shrapnel, rubble, and dung from stray animals taking shelter,” Mousa, 35, told Middle East Eye.

Hundreds of shattered books and torn papers were scattered on the ground, covered in stones.”

A master’s graduate in Arabic language, she is among a group of Palestinian women volunteers from the Eyes on Heritage Institute in Gaza City who have launched what they describe as a “first-aid” mission to preserve what remains.

“We began by removing stones and cleaning the space,” she said.

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An Alabama woman has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that her civil rights and those of her infant daughter were violated after jail staff where she was incarcerated allegedly left her to labor alone for more than a day.

Tiffany McElroy, now 28, was booked into an Alabama jail in May 2024. Three days after arriving, she said she felt her water break weeks before she was expected to give birth.

McElroy, who was being held on charges stemming from an allegation of substance use during pregnancy, later discovered she had suffered a pregnancy complication that could have progressed into sepsis. According to the lawsuit, she informed a guard that her water had broken and believed she would be taken to a hospital for treatment.

Instead, the complaint states that another guard who checked on her later that morning accused her of wetting herself and instructed her to return to her cell. The lawsuit says that over the following 24 hours, McElroy repeatedly asked jail employees to call 911, but they never did – even as other inmates pounded on cell windows and tables while pleading for assistance.

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A Democratic challenger who said she intends to drop out of November’s race for the US Senate in Nebraska to clear the way for an independent candidate has won the state’s Democratic primary.

Cindy Burbank ran against William Forbes, who Democrats contended was a Republican plant in the race, with tWhile the state Democratic party endorsed Burbank for the primary, it has backed Dan Osborn for the general election.

While the state Democratic party endorsed Burbank for the primary, it has backed Dan Osborn for the general election.

Osborn, an independent, is seen as the best hope to beat the Republican senator Pete Ricketts in November. Burbank wants to clear the field to give Osborn and Ricketts a head-to-head matchup, she has previously said.

And in the state’s second congressional district, known as the “blue dot” of Omaha and its surrounding suburbs political organizer Denise Powell beat out a crowded field of Democrats to face Republican Brinker Harding in November in a race where Democrats expect to pick up a seat in Congress.

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President Donald Trump will find out in the coming weeks whether the Supreme Court's rejection of his signature tariffs was a one-off or if the justices have more bad news in store for him.

Before adjourning for the summer, the court must still rule on more than 30 cases, including a few that test Trump’s expansive view of presidential power.

Some outstanding decisions could have implications for this year’s midterm elections.

Two pending decisions could protect the rights of gun owners.Others will determine if states can ban transgender athletes from female sports teams, if the maker of the popular Roundup weedkiller can be sued for not warning about possible cancer risks, and whether the federal government can systematically turn back asylum seekers before they reach the U.S. border with Mexico.

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A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing sanctions against Francesa Albanese, a United Nations human rights investigator whose recent work has focused on the Israeli military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found the Trump administration likely violated Albanese’s First Amendment rights when it imposed sanctions on her in July 2025 because the measures appeared to directly target her speech criticizing Israel.

The State Department did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment but previously defended the sanctions as “legal and appropriate.”

“The United States will continue to condemn and oppose her biased and malicious activities, which have long made her unfit for her role,” a spokesperson said in February. “This lawsuit itself is baseless lawfare, and Albanese is a disgrace.”

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Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina attorney whose case garnered national attention, was found guilty in 2023 of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon in the deaths of his wife and son.

The South Carolina Supreme Court on May 13 overturned two consecutive life prison sentences for Alex Murdaugh, saying his conviction in a 2023 murder trial was marred by the "improper" influence of a county clerk and calling the official's actions "shocking jury interference."

Murdaugh, a prominent former South Carolina lawyer whose case has garnered nationalrr attention for years, was found guilty of two counts of murder in the deaths of his wife and son, as well as weapons charges.

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Mounted by dogs, penetrated by carrots, and rectums torn by batons. 

These are just some of the harrowing testimonies of the rape of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, detailed by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in a landmark piece published on Monday.

None of it is new.

Middle East Eye revealed similar testimonies last month, from a report titled “Sexual violence and forcible transfer in the West Bank: How the exploitation of gender dynamics drives displacement,” by the West Bank Protection Consortium.

The group documented at least 16 cases involving sexual crimes perpetrated by Israeli settlers and soldiers.

And in March, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, said in her report to the UN Human Rights Council that "the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty" with acts that include rape of Palestinians with bottles, metal rods and knives.

But for a corporate media giant like the NYT, which has often overlooked and doubted Palestinian narratives, such storytelling is novel, and the Israeli government immediately slammed the decision to run it.

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