TV News LIES

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that the Higher Planning Council will approve the construction of 1,973 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank during its next session.

He did not specify when the council will meet, Israeli Channel 12 reported.

The announcement came a day after Israel approved the building of 1,300 settler homes in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of occupied East Jerusalem.

Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that the Higher Planning Council will approve the construction of 1,973 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank during its next session.

Smotrich said Israeli authorities have approved nearly 30,000 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank this year, describing it as an "unprecedented achievement" for his government.

The Palestinian group Hamas denounced the Israeli move as a "dangerous escalation in the policy of Judaisation and settlement expansion targeting Palestinian land deep inside the West Bank."

"These settlement plans constitute a blatant violation of international law and United Nations resolutions that criminalise settlement construction," it said in a statement.

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A jury on Wednesday convicted an Illinois sheriff’s deputy of second-degree murder, a lesser charge, in the shooting death of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who called 911 to report a suspected prowler.

Sean Grayson could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison or even probation. The jury did not convict him of first-degree murder, a crime that carries a sentence of 45 years to life.

Massey’s supporters were angered by the result. Her father, James Wilburn, called it a “miscarriage of justice.”

“She called for help and she was murdered in her own home. ... Second-degree murder — that is not right. That is not justice for anybody’s family,” Teresa Haley, a civil rights activist in Springfield, Illinois, told reporters outside the courthouse.

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Not only did U.S. Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino show his face in a federal courtroom Tuesday, but he and a judge will be getting to know each other a lot better in the days to come.

That’s because U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said she wants to meet with the Border Patrol’s commander-at-large every weeknight over the next seven days, as federal agents continue their aggressive deportation campaign that’s stretched from Little Village to Lake View.

Their daily meeting around 6 p.m. will give the judge a chance to speak with Bovino about the events of the day.

And as they do so, Ellis will have in her back pocket a request that she fully ban the feds from using tear gas amid the immigration blitz. The judge said Tuesday that, if agents continue to deploy gas, “they’d better be able to back it up.”

“And if they can’t,” she added, “then they will lose that as something they can use.”

Tuesday’s hearing revealed that Bovino has no body-worn camera — nor the training to use one. Bovino admitted that fact, even after telling the judge that 99% of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents here have that technology.

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The detention by immigration authorities of a Chicago man whose 16-year-old daughter is undergoing treatment for advanced cancer is illegal, and he must be given a bond hearing by 31 October, a federal judge has ruled.

Attorneys for Ruben Torres Maldonado, 40, who was detained on 18 October, have petitioned for his release as his deportation case goes through the system. While US district judge Jeremy Daniel said in an order on Friday that Torres’s detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is illegal and violates his due process rights, he also said he could not order his immediate release.

“While sympathetic to the plight the petitioner’s daughter faces due to her health concerns, the court must act within the constraints of the relevant statutes, rules, and precedents,” the judge wrote on Friday.

Torres’s attorney took the ruling as a win – for now.

“We’re pleased that the judge ruled in our favor in determining that ICE is illegally detaining Ruben. We will now turn the fight to immigration court so we can secure Ruben’s release on bond while he applies for permanent residence status,” his attorney, Kalman Resnick, said in a statement on Friday night.

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A group of Democrats is demanding Israel release 16-year-old Mohammad Ibrahim after the Palestinian American child has described the horrific abuses he’s facing at the hands of Israeli officers in military prison.

On Tuesday, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) shared testimony from Mohammad. Israel has held Mohammad in pre-trial detention for eight months, during which Israel has barred him from seeing his family. He has lost a significant amount of weight and contracted scabies in that time.

The boy, who faces charges of rock throwing from Israeli authorities, detailed overcrowding and deprivation in Ofer military prison.

“[My] section consists of 19 rooms, each equipped with four bunk beds,” Mohammad told DCIP. “In each room, eight children occupy the beds, while the remaining children sleep on mattresses on the floor.”

“The mattresses, whether on the beds or on the floor, are extremely light and inadequate. Each prisoner receives two blankets, yet we still feel cold at night. There is no heating or cooling system in the rooms. The only items present are mattresses, blankets, and a single copy of the Quran in each room,” he said.

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