TV News LIES

Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.

Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.

The announcement that Almadi, a dual citizen and retired engineer who had lived in the US since the 1970s, would be free to leave the country came after the US president delivered a speech touting US-Saudi ties, including arms sales and investment deals, during a second day of public events in Washington.

“Our family is overjoyed that, after four long years, our father, Saad Almadi, is finally on his way home to the United States!” the Almadi family said in a statement.

“This day would not have been possible without President Donald Trump and the tireless efforts of his administration. We are deeply grateful to Dr Sebastian Gorka and the team at the national security council, as well as everyone at the state department,” it added.

The statement by Almadi’s son, Ibrahim Almadi, also thanked various non-profit organizations, including the James Foley Fund and Hostages America, and House speaker Mike Johnson for supporting the elder Almadi’s cause. He later posted on X that his father was on his way to the US.

TVNL Comment: Why has Trump ignored the pleas to release the 16 year old American boy accused of throwing a rock to protecct his home from settler attacks in the West Bank?

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The Justice Department admitted Wednesday that the operative indictment against former FBI Director James Comey was never presented to the full grand jury — a procedural error defense attorneys say should bar the prosecution.  

The admission came under sharp questioning from U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, after several judges overseeing parts of the case had raised concerns about the government’s presentation and an apparent discrepancy in the grand jury record.

Instead of presenting a new indictment to the full panel after it rejected one of the counts, interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan gave the grand jury’s foreperson an updated version — not seen by the other grand jurors — to sign.

Nachmanoff asked the government several times whether he understood correctly that the operative indictment was never shown to the entire panel. 

“Yes, that is my understanding,” said Tyler Lemons, an assistant U.S. attorney.

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Genocide is a process, not an event. When genocide happens, its roots, and the conditions that allowed it, often become visible only in retrospect. If those conditions remain unchanged and there is no accountability, there’s every reason to believe the violence will return, perhaps even worse, especially if it was never fully halted. This is exactly what we are seeing in the case of Gaza. Demanding accountability from Israeli leaders isn’t just about the past, it’s the only way to challenge a system designed to repeat such violence.

A strange kind of calm has settled over Israel in the weeks since the Gaza ceasefire was declared. The sirens stopped. The hostages who survived the 7 October attack and nearly two years in captivity came home. But this calm – which has not been extended to Gaza, where more than 200 civilians have been killed since the ceasefire supposedly went into effect is built around an unclear plan by Donald Trump that does not address the root causes of the violence, and is merely a mirage. Nothing has changed in the violent political system that Palestinians and Israelis live under. The machinery behind the violence remains intact. The logic of domination still rules.

For nearly two years, Israel waged a campaign in Gaza that meets the clearest definition of genocide: a systematic, often openly declared attempt to destroy a group of people, the Palestinians in Gaza, through killing, starvation, forced displacement, and the destruction of life-sustaining conditions. Genocide is not a metaphor here. It is the only term that fits.

Our organization, B’Tselem, published a report last July titled Our Genocide. We chose this name because we are not observers but part of this horrific story. Israeli and Palestinian researchers, investigators and fieldworkers worked together to document events in Gaza, the West Bank and within Israel. Our conclusion confirms what Palestinians and international experts have long said: this is genocide – a direct assault on a population aiming to destroy the group.

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The World Health Organization has said its workforce will shrink by nearly a quarter – or over 2,000 jobs – by the middle of next year as it seeks to implement reforms after its top donor, the United States, announced its departure.

US President Donald Trump’s administration withdrew from the body upon taking office in January, prompting the agency to scale back its work and cut its management team by half.

Washington is by far the UN health agency’s biggest financial backer, contributing about 18% of its overall funding.

The Geneva-based WHO projects that its workforce will shrink by 2,371 posts by June 2026 from 9,401 in January 2025 due to job cuts as well as retirements and departures, according to a presentation set to be shown to its member states on Wednesday.

It does not include the many temporary staff, or consultants, which UN sources say have been made redundant. A WHO spokesperson confirmed the total number of staff leaving the organisation and said the workforce would shrink by up to 22%, depending on how many vacant posts are filled.

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The widow of Jamal Khashoggi slammed President Trump on Tuesday for seeking to discredit her late husband’s reputation amid a visit from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

Khashoggi, who was an opinions journalist for The Washington Post, was killed in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

“@potus There is no justification to murder my husband. While Jamal was a good transparent and brave man many people may not have agreed with his opinions and desire for freedom of the press,” Hanan Elatr Khashoggi wrote in a statement on the social platform X.

“The Crown Prince said he was sorry so he should meet me, apologize and compensate me for the murder of my husband,” added Khashoggi, who had married her husband in Virginia in 2018, months before he was killed.

She previously submitted a letter to Trump and first lady Melania Trump requesting they back her demands to have her husband’s body returned and receive financial compensation for Khashoggi’s death during the crown prince’s Tuesday White House visit.

However, when asked about Khashoggi’s death, the president defended Crown Prince Mohammed, telling reporters that the leader “knew nothing about that” and alleging “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman.”

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A federal judge officially approved drug maker Purdue Pharma’s latest deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of the opioid epidemic and pay victims, according to multiple media reports.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane on Tuesday, Nov. 18 approved OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the harms of the opioids, the AP reported. The judge's decision orders members of the Sackler family, who own the drug-making company, "to contribute up to $7 billion over 15 years."

The move comes on the heels of Reuters reporting last week that the New York-based judge said he would approve a restructuring plan for the drug maker that includes a $7.4 billion settlement.

The deal aims to resolve claims Purdue Pharma fueled the United States opioid epidemic by selling addictive pain meds linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past two decades.

Some of the money will be given to people who had OxyContin prescriptions, as well as their survivors, the outlets reported.

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Canadian human rights activists are demanding answers from their government after a former United Nations special rapporteur who investigated Israeli abuses against Palestinians was interrogated at the Canadian border on “national security” grounds.

Richard Falk, 95, was stopped at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Thursday and questioned for several hours. He said a security official told him that Canada had concerns that he and his wife, fellow legal scholar Hilal Elver, posed “a danger to the national security of Canada.

The treatment of the couple has sparked anger and calls for an explanation from Ottawa.

“We need answers – and from the highest levels of government,” said Corey Balsam, national coordinator at Independent Jewish Voices-Canada, a group that supports Palestinian rights.

Despite the outcry, Canadian authorities have not publicly addressed the incident. But the office of Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, who oversees the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), has acknowledged the case in a statement to Al Jazeera, saying he is seeking more information about what happened.

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The Trump administration’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza won strong approval at the United Nations on Monday, a crucial step that provides international support for U.S. efforts to move the devastated territory toward peace following two years of war.

The U.S. resolution that passed the U.N. Security Council authorizes an international stabilization force to provide security in Gaza, approves a transitional authority to be overseen by President Donald Trump and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.

“This will go down as one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations, will lead to further Peace all over the World, and is a moment of true Historic proportion!” Trump posted on social media.

The vote endorses Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan and builds on the momentum of the fragile ceasefire he helped broker with allies. It marks a key next step for American efforts to outline Gaza’s future after the Israel-Hamas war destroyed much of the territory and killed tens of thousands of people.

The proposal calls for a yet-to-be-established Board of Peace as a transitional authority that Trump would head. It also provides a wide mandate for the international stabilization force, including overseeing the borders, providing security and demilitarizing the territory. Authorization for the board and force expire at the end of 2027.

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