TV News LIES

Ukraine's first medal of the 2024 Olympics belongs to women's fencer Olga Kharlan, but she insists it is for more than just herself.

Kharlan beat South Korea's Choi Sebin 15-14, coming back from a six-point deficit, for the women's saber fencing bronze medal on Monday. She then dedicated the medal to her country amid its ongoing war with Russia.

"I brought a medal to my country, and it's the first one, and it's going to be a good start for all our athletes who are here because it's really tough to compete when in your country is at war," Kharlan told reporters after the match. "Every medal, it's like gold. I don't care (that) it's bronze. It's gold."

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Two Al Jazeera correspondents were killed in a reported Israeli airstrike in Al-Shati refugee camp, northern Gaza, on Wednesday, according to the news network, sparking condemnation from advocacy groups and highlighting the dangers for local reporters covering the war.

Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi, who lived in the besieged enclave, were killed in an airstrike on their car in the al Shati refugee camp, according to the Qatar-based network. The journalists, both aged 27, were reporting live for much of the day from a location close to the family home of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in the Iranian capital of Tehran on Tuesday.

Al-Ghoul was wearing a press flak vest when he was killed, according to his colleague. He had not seen his wife and two-year-old daughter Zeina, who were displaced in central Gaza, in 10 months. “These days are not like any other,” he said in a post on X in June. “Zeina began running, talking, asking questions… She was growing up without me seeing her.”

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Athletes from 206 countries waved their national flags as boats carried them down Paris’ Seine river during the Olympic Opening Ceremony last week.

One boat carried 37 athletes wearing stark white sweat suits with no clear country affiliation. The riders excitedly waved flags emblazoned with the Olympic rings. They smiled and posed for photographers along the river, making hearts with their hands and cracking jokes with each other as they passed.

They are the IOC Olympic Refugee Team, made up of athletes from 11 different countries. The team debuted at the 2016 Rio Olympics and has grown consistently since then.

Gonzalo Barrio, the team’s manager, told NPR’s Morning Edition, “these are athletes who can no longer compete for their country of origin and who cannot yet compete for their new country.” This year’s team is made up of athletes from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and more.

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The federal government today expanded the number of children known to have died in the repressive boarding school system that, for more than a century, pulled Native American children from their homes and communities. The Interior Department also called for billions in federal funding to begin a “healing” process.

The report concludes a three-year investigation that saw, for the first time, the federal government accepting responsibility for its role in creating the system, which included more than 400 schools across 37 states.

“The federal government – facilitated by the Department I lead – took deliberate and strategic actions through federal [Indian] boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

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Failure to halt the war in Gaza lies at the heart of the latest lethal savagery in the Middle East. The assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, will be celebrated in Israel as just revenge for the 7 October atrocities. But Islamist hardliners in Iran and militant groups across the Arab world will see it as further proof of their belief that the state of Israel is a menace that must be destroyed at all costs.

And so the hatred, the violence and the misery will continue unchecked, and will in all probability worsen and spread. Just because this homicidal cycle is familiar does not mean it cannot accelerate. Few parts of the Middle East – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan – have escaped the toxic fallout of the Gaza conflict. In Washington DC and Britain, domestic politics are roiled by the fury and the grief. The UN’s impotence is daily, humiliatingly exposed. No one is immune to this poison.

It would have been preferable if Haniyeh, in common with Hamas leaders based in Gaza, had faced trial at the international criminal court (ICC) – and been made to answer for his crimes. That now cannot happen. Instead, Israel has once again sought “justice” through extrajudicial murder. Only in April, a covert Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus killed a top Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps general – and brought the region to the brink of all-out war. There have been numerous similar killings.

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As wildfires raged across the western US, authorities said on Wednesday that human remains had been found inside a burned house in Colorado.

There are nearly 100 active wildfires burning in the west, including a massive wildfire in California that has grown swiftly in recent days to become the fifth-largest in state history.

In Colorado, a wildfire near the city of Loveland in the Rockies grew to more than 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) on Tuesday evening as more homes were placed under mandatory evacuation orders and a looming column of smoke could be seen for miles around.

A body was discovered in a home that burned about 1 mile (1.6km) north of Lyons, Colorado, according to Curtis Johnson, the Boulder county sheriff. He said detectives were assisting the investigation into the death but declined to provide further details.

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The United Auto Workers (UAW) union endorsed Kamala Harris for US president on Wednesday, boosting the vice-president in the swing state of Michigan as her recently launched campaign ramps up.

UAW president Shawn Fain, who spoke by phone last week with Harris, praised her record “of delivering for the working class” and said she “will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed”.

The 370,000-member UAW said its executive board voted to endorse her after endorsing Joe Biden’s re-election bid in January. The US president withdrew from the race on 21 July.

Many UAW members live and work in Michigan, where the union is based. Biden and Donald Trump have made campaign appearances there.

Prior to Biden ending his re-election bid, Reuters reported that the UAW’s executive board met to discuss concerns about his ability to beat the former president.

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