TV News LIES

A federal judge has ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the abandoned Jeffrey Epstein investigation that took place between 2005 and 2007.

The Dec. 5 order states that while the government's previous attempts to release the grand jury transcripts were denied, U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith was ordering their release in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was passed in November.

The law requires the attorney general to make publicly available “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice” related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and accused sex trafficker who died by suicide in 2019.

The Justice Department has until Dec. 19 − 30 days after President Donald Trump signed the bill − to release the information it has, which is expected to go beyond the files Smith has released.

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Palestinian sources report that at least 11 Palestinians were wounded in multiple attacks by settlers across the West Bank.

Seven Palestinians were wounded in a settler attack on farmers north of Hebron in the southern West Bank, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency WAFA reports.

All seven were taken to a hospital in nearby Halhul after settlers from the Karmei Zur settlement attacked them with stones, clubs and tear gas, WAFA says.

Footage from the area published by Palestinian media appears to show settlers throwing rocks over a road. It was unclear if the incident captured in the footage was the same as the one reported by WAFA.

Citing a security source, the outlet also reports that four settlers severely beat an 18-year-old Palestinian man west of Ramallah. The victim was taken to a hospital, where his condition was described as stable, according to WAFA.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reports that a 26-year-old man was hit in the foot by IDF gunfire in Qalqilya; a 64-year-old man was assaulted by settlers near the Allenby Bridge border crossing with Jordan; and a man and his daughter were assaulted by settlers south of Nablus, on the Ramallah-Nablus road and their vehicle was set on fire.

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Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain have said they will boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, following the decision to allow Israel to compete.

The response on Thursday came immediately after the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which runs the competition, said there would not be a vote on whether to exclude Israel, despite calls from some countries to do so.

Opponents of Israel’s participation criticise it over its genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza – which has so far killed at least 70,125 people – and over allegations that it unfairly intervened in the most recent competition to the benefit of its entrant.

In a statement which cleared Israel to take part, the EBU said on Thursday that its members had shown “clear support for reforms to reinforce trust and protect [the] neutrality” of the contest.

The changes, which include the reintroduction of an expanded professional jury at the semifinal stage, aim to discourage governments and third parties from disproportionately promoting songs to sway voters.

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Arafat Qaddous worked construction jobs in Israel.

He was one of around 130,000 Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank with permits from the Israeli authorities to cross the separation wall into Israeli territory as a laborer. With his lawful employment inside the Green Line, which separates the West Bank from Israel, he was able to go back and forth from his hometown of Iraq Burin, near Nablus in the north, to whichever Israeli city offered work.

Before the Covid pandemic, the 51-year-old Qaddous’s work in Israel sustained his wife and five children.

His brother Qusai said Arafat’s living conditions worsened over the years, as work opportunities dried up during the pandemic, his family’s needs grew, and the West Bank’s economy tanked.

“There are hardly any jobs in the West Bank,” Qusai said, “and prices of food and goods are extremely high.”

Things got even worse after October 7, 2023: Israel indefinitely paused Palestinian workers’ permits after Hamas’s attack, and Qaddous lost his permit. So when an opportunity presented itself — a job in Taybeh, inside Israel — he took a chance.

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Ukraine wants "real peace, not appeasement" with Russia, its foreign minister said on Thursday at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the security and rights body seeking a role for itself in a post-war Ukraine.

The path ahead for peace talks is currently unclear, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, after what he called "reasonably good" talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. envoys.

"We still remember the names of those who betrayed future generations in Munich. This should never be repeated again. Principles must be untouchable, and we need real peace, not appeasement," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told the OSCE's annual Ministerial Council.

He was referring to a 1938 agreement with Nazi Germany in which Britain, France and Italy agreed to Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland in what was then Czechoslovakia. The agreement is widely used as shorthand for failing to confront a threatening power.

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A US appeals court on Thursday handed a victory to Donald Trump in his effort to keep national guard troops in Washington DC, pausing a lower court order that would have ended the deployment in the coming days.

In a written order, the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit lifted an injunction that said the troops needed to leave the nation’s capital by 11 December.

The DC circuit’s order, while not a final judgment, allows Trump to continue a deployment he began this summer and has ramped up in response to a 26 November shooting of two national guard members near the White House.

The order came in a lawsuit filed by the DC attorney general, Brian Schwalb, a Democrat and the capital city’s top legal officer.

More than 2,000 national guard soldiers have been in Washington since Trump’s initial deployment in August, part of the president’s contentious immigration and crime crackdown targeting Democratic-orled cities.

The guard troops in the city include contingents from the District of Columbia, as well as Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia, Georgia and Alabama.

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Donald Trump has replaced the architect originally selected to oversee his $300m planned gilded ballroom.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the news on Thursday and cited three people familiar with the matter, architect James McCrery II and his boutique firm had been leading the project for more than three months, up until late October.

The president and McCrery disagreed at times, particularly over Trump’s interest in expanding the 90,000-sq-ft ballroom’s size, the Washington Post reported. However, it was ultimately the firm’s limited staff and missed deadlines that prompted the change, one person said.

It is unclear whether McCrery chose to step aside voluntarily. However, one source noted that he and Trump parted on good terms.

Trump has now selected Shalom Baranes as the project’s new architect, which the White House confirmed. Baranes, whose previous work includes significant federal projects such as the main Treasury building near the White House, received strong praise in a written statement from the White House spokesperson David Ingle.

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The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks.

Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, “Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization”.

“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed,” the statement added.

The latest strike comes as the Pentagon and the White House have struggled to answer questions about the legal basis for the campaign to kill suspected drug smugglers with military strikes, with US lawmakers promising to investigate the first such attack, in September, in which two survivors clinging to wreckage were killed in a follow-on strike.

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