TV News LIES

Russian drones slammed into two Ukrainian cities, killing at least one person in nighttime attacks, authorities said Friday, as a Kremlin official said he expected an announcement next week on dates for a fresh round of direct peace talks.

Russia’s overnight drone assault targeted the southern Ukraine port city of Odesa and the northeastern city of Kharkiv, hitting apartment blocks, officials said.

The barrage of more than 20 drones injured almost two dozen civilians, including girls aged 17 and 12, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

“Russia continues its tactics of targeted terror against our people,” Zelenskyy said on messaging app Telegram, urging the United States and the European Union to crank up economic pressure on Russia.

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Senior White House adviser Kari Lake issued mass layoff notices Friday to 639 employees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the federal outlet which owns the Voice of America and through which Congress directs money for other government-funded international networks, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.

The vast majority of the job cuts, intended to be a permanent reduction in the size of the workforce, affects Voice of America, the government-owned international network that has beamed news reports to countries under autocratic regimes since World War II.

In a press release, Lake called her action "part of a long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy." She said 85% of jobs, or 1,400 positions, had been eliminated in total, in keeping with an executive order in mid-March from President Trump.

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A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Harvard University from hosting international students.

An order from U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs preserves the ability of Harvard to host foreign students while the case is decided. It marks another victory for the Ivy League school as it challenges multiple government sanctions amid a battle with the White House.

Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security in May after the agency withdrew the school’s certification to host foreign students and issue paperwork for their visas. The action would have forced Harvard’s roughly 7,000 foreign students to transfer or risk being in the U.S. illegally. New foreign students would have been barred from coming to Harvard.

The university called it illegal retaliation for rejecting the White House’s demands to overhaul Harvard policies around campus protests, admissions, hiring and other issues. Burroughs temporarily halted the action hours after Harvard sued.

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Nearly 1,000 ships have experienced “persistent and sometimes severe” GPS signal jams every day the past week near Iran as the country continues to face bombardment from Israel’s military, a French naval monitoring firm warned Friday.

The Maritime Information, Cooperation and Awareness (MICA) Center wrote in a post on the social platform X that the situation “makes it harder to navigate safely at night, in poor visibility and/or when traffic density is heavy.”

“[It] also can lead to accidental situations,” the group wrote.

The MICA Center said it’s possible the GPS issue may have contributed to the recent collision of two giant tankers, ADALYNN and Front Eagle, in the Gulf of Oman near the United Arab Emirates, but the organization cautioned that the crash remains under investigation.

Israel and Iran have been exchanging strikes for the past week, after Israel launched a surprise attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities and military sites.

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A federal judge ordered the release of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, marking a blow to the Trump administration's efforts to keep him in immigration detention in connection with his pro-Palestinian activism.

U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey said June 20 that the evidence submitted to the court − which government lawyers failed to contest − showed Khalil, a 30-year-old lawful permanent resident, was neither a flight risk nor dangerous, and his prolonged detention since March was potentially punitive.

It was an extraordinary turn of events in the ongoing case, the first of several in which the Trump administration sought to detain and deport students and scholars over pro-Palestinian speech or activism. Justice Department lawyers have said the secretary of state can order a person's removal if their actions threaten foreign policy interests.

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Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has ruled that several key pieces of the massive bill to implement President Trump’s agenda run afoul of the Byrd Rule and must be taken out of the package to allow it to pass with a simple majority vote on a special procedural fast track.

The parliamentarian ruled against several provisions under the jurisdictions of the Senate committees on Banking, Environment and Public Works, and Armed Services.

These included a provision that would have placed a funding cap on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which would have cut $6.4 billion from the agency by reducing its maximum funding to zero percent of the Federal Reserve’s operating expenses. The funding cut would have eliminated the agency.

The creation of the CFPB was one of the central reforms of the Dodd-Frank Act that Democrats passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

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