TV News LIES

Early this month, a single pen stroke effectively ended representative Steve Cohen’s career in Congress. The man who has represented Memphis for 19 years will turn 77 later this month, but he wasn’t planning on retiring. He hadn’t lost any primary. The reason was that his district had been erased around him.

A new electoral map, passed by the Republican-led state legislature and signed by Bill Lee, the governor, divides the ninth district three ways. “Last week Tennessee Republicans silenced the Black vote here in Memphis to make Republican victories likely,” Cohen said in his statement. That’s succinct and accurate.

The new map folds a significant portion of Cohen’s Black constituents into Williamson county, which sits south of Nashville and was, until recently, the subject of a different fight.

To this day, the Williamson county seal depicts a Confederate battle flag draped over a cannon. It was adopted in 1968, at the height of the civil rights movement. A Tennessee court ruled in 2024 that the county could remove it. The state legislature responded the following year by passing a new law specifically designed to keep the flag on the seal. The vote was 70-24 in the House and 27-6 in the Senate, with no Democrats voting in favor. Lee, who is from Williamson county, signed it.

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A massive overnight Russian drone strike partially destroyed a multi-story residential building in Konotop, Sumy Oblast, injuring at least six people and prompting an urgent search-and-rescue operation for residents feared trapped beneath the debris, local officials said.

Konotop Mayor Artem Semenikhin said Russian forces targeted civilian infrastructure in the city, with the strike causing part of the high-rise to collapse.

“Behind me is a multi-story building. Part of it is gone. And there are people there,” Semenikhin said in a video address posted on social media.

Due to a lack of ambulances, the injured are being transferred to the hospital in civilian vehicles, Semenikhin added.

According to the mayor, there were “many” people injured in the attack. Emergency teams were working at the scene to clear rubble and search for possible survivors.

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The two teenage assailants responsible for a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, California, rushed toward the mosque “fully armored” with handguns and rifles, authorities said.

A security guard shot and struck one of the shooters, according to members of the mosque – but the attacker continued charging. The guard – Amin Abdullah – also alerted administrators of the school at the Islamic Center, telling them to go into lockdown, before he was shot and killed. “If it was not for him … The carnage would be much worse,” said imam Taha Hassane. “He sacrificed his life.”

Two other victims – identified by the Islamic Center as Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad – had been on the phone calling the police, when they were killed. A witness shared details of what he saw transpire in an Instagram post from the Islamic Center. Police rushed to the scene and ultimately found the suspected shooters near the masjid, dead from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

The Islamic Center called the three victims “three heroes martyred” and have started a fundraiser for their families and for others impacted by the mass shooting.

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By the time the American surgeon who contracted Ebola in Congo was flown to Germany for treatment Tuesday, he was barely able to stand on his own, according to two leaders of the Christian missionary group where he worked.

Dr. Scott Myhre, the East and Central Africa area director for the group, called Serge, described the scene as Dr. Peter Stafford departed.

“There were people in full — we call it PPE — the personal protective equipment, and they’re completely covered, and he’s hanging on them barely strong enough to walk,” Myhre said. “He looked really tired and really sick.”

Stafford worked at Nyankunde Hospital, which is in Congo’s Ituri province, where the Ebola outbreak is centered. Days before the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the outbreak, Stafford operated on a 33-year-old patient with severe abdominal pain, Myhre said. At the time, doctors thought the patient had a gallbladder infection.

Stafford “did an abdominal procedure and found that the gallbladder was normal and closed him up, but this patient subsequently died the next day,” Myhre said.

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The Israeli police is operating a special department in the occupied West Bank to monitor foreign journalists who wish to enter Israel or the occupied Palestinian territory.

According to a report by Haaretz on Tuesday, the special police department works closely with Israel's Population and Immigration Authority, which is stationed at international crossings as well as the Allenby Bridge Crossing in the West Bank.

Haaretz obtained a police document detailing articles and social media activity by Alessandro Stefanelli, an Italian freelance journalist, who entered Israel and the West Bank several times in the past.

The police deemed Stefanelli critical of Israel, branding him "a journalist and photographer who provides one-sided coverage of Israel".

In July last year, the Italian journalist was informed that his visa to Israel had been revoked, with the Israeli embassy in Rome not providing any explanation as to why his visa was cancelled.

Despite this, Stefanelli tried to enter the West Bank through the Allenby Bridge Crossing, which connects the Palestinian territory to Jordan, but was denied entry by the Population and Immigration Authority.

Stefanelli "calls for international intervention against 'settler violence' and draws a one-sided map" a police report said after he filed a petition to an Israeli court to grant him access to Israel and the West Bank, further accusing the journalist of being "in contact with militants".

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The office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court last month filed a secret arrest warrant application for Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, sources briefed on the matter told Middle East Eye.

Israeli media reports over the weekend claiming the prosecutor’s office had filed five applications for Israeli officials are inaccurate, MEE understands.

An evidence review took place on Wednesday last week to examine the possibility of two more warrant applications, including one for national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, but they have yet to be filed.

MEE understands that the charges against Smotrich include forced displacement as a crime against humanity and war crime, the transfer of Israel’s own population as a war crime, and persecution and apartheid as crimes against humanity.

If approved by the ICC’s pre-trial chamber the warrant for Smotrich would be the first ever issued by an international court for the crime of apartheid.

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More than seven months have passed since a US-mediated ceasefire was announced with the stated aim of ending Israel's two-year genocide in Gaza.

Yet Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes and violations of the agreement, albeit at a lower intensity than before the truce.

The humanitarian crisis caused by the war has also persisted, with Israel maintaining a tight siege on the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli military has justified some of its violations by accusing Palestinian factions of breaching the ceasefire.

However, many of those killed, displaced or arbitrarily detained over the past seven months have been civilians, including children.

With the first phase of the agreement still not fully implemented by Israel, the US has so far failed to advance talks towards the next stage, which was meant to include the disarmament of Palestinian armed groups, the deployment of international stabilisation forces, reconstruction in the strip and a full Israeli withdrawal.

The lack of progress has raised fresh doubts over the future of the fragile ceasefire, as Israel continues to mass forces near Gaza and threatens a renewed assault on the strip.

Middle East Eye breaks down the main Israeli breaches of the ceasefire so far.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Virginia Democrats to revive a voting map designed to help their party wrest control of the U.S. House of Representatives from President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in November’s midterm elections.

The justices declined to halt a ruling by Virginia’s top court that blocked a voter-approved pro-Democratic map for the midterms, denying a request by Democrats in the state. The court’s action came in a brief and unsigned order that provided no rationale. No justice publicly dissented.

Democrats pursued the revised electoral map - crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. House of Representatives seats to Democrats - as part of a nationwide political battle initiated last year by Trump to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit.

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