TV News LIES

Forces belonging to Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar have arrested a number of members of a Gaza aid convoy in the city of Sirte.

According to a statement published by the Global Sumud Convoy Instagram page, last contact with the activists was made at 3.22pm on Tuesday.

"The detained are civilians from Spain, Poland, the USA, Argentina, Uruguay, Portugal, Tunisia, and Italy - doctors and human rights defenders who volunteered to deliver aid and stand with the Palestinian people," said the statement.

They said the convoy had entered the 5+5 security zone - a contested area established under the Libyan ceasefire agreement signed in October 2020 - to negotiate safe passage to the Gaza Strip.

"They were detained by a security force affiliated with the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) and are still being held by Eastern Libyan authorities (GNS)," they added.

The group urged citizens of the listed countries to contact their embassies and demand their release.

A range of activist-led humanitarian missions have been sent to Gaza since the beginning of the genocide in October 2023, with most being intercepted at sea by Israeli forces.

A number have attempted to travel across land to the crossing at the Egyptian border, though these have also faced numerous legal and security obstacles.

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Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s immigration czar and the architect of some of the government’s cruelest policies, doesn’t care what you think about him. He doesn’t care if you call him “Pee-wee German” or “Weird Stephen” or “Voldemort”, or any of the other nicknames he has inspired; his self-esteem is excellent.

“I have a very, very secure, intact ego,” Miller told Fox News’s Jesse Watters this week after being asked how he felt about his wife, Katie Miller, potentially landing a big distribution deal with Paramount for her terrible Maga podcast. “I’ve never had a larger fan following,” Miller continued. “[A]ny man who works for President Trump is a man that is very, very strong and self-assured in his role.”

Well, yes, I suppose you’ve got to be a very, very strong man to separate babies from their parents – which is what Miller will forever be famous for. Back in Trump 1.0, Miller played a key role in implementing a “zero tolerance” border policy that systematically removed more than 5,000 immigrant children, some just a few months old, from their parents at the US-Mexico border. A Human Rights Watch report released in December 2024 found that as many as 1,360 children had never been reunited with their parents.

Swayed by all the outrage, Trump eventually signed an executive order ending the family separation policy in 2018. But the practice continues, albeit in a different form. A report released on Monday from the Brookings Institution estimates that more than 145,000 US citizen children have had at least one parent detained since the start of Trump’s second administration, amid a mass deportation campaign heavily influenced by Miller.

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World Central Kitchen (WCK) has cut its hot meal distribution in Gaza by half, citing soaring food and fuel costs linked to the wider fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran in February.

The organisation, the largest provider of hot meals in the Palestinian enclave, warned that escalating operational costs have made it impossible to maintain previous levels of aid, NPR reported on Thursday.

Daily meal production has fallen from around one million meals to 500,000.

The cuts come as Palestinians in Gaza remain heavily dependent on aid after more than two years of Israeli attacks and blockade, which have devastated the enclave's food sources and economy.

Earlier this month, WCK said "financial pressure" was already forcing it to scale back operations.

"We will still be delivering hundreds of thousands of hot meals every day to families in need and maintaining one of the largest food relief operations anywhere in the world, but at a reduced level," the group said.

It added that, while it had at times reached a peak of one million meals a day, its capacity could not sustain that output indefinitely.

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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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Israel’s top commander in the occupied West Bank has said the army is killing Palestinians at levels “not seen since 1967”, according to Haaretz.

Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli army’s Central Command, made the remarks in a closed forum, where he also defended looser rules of engagement allowing troops to fire at unarmed Palestinians.

He acknowledged a discriminatory approach whereby Jewish Israeli stone-throwers are not targeted while Palestinians carrying out similar acts are fired at. 

"In three years, we have killed 1,500 terrorists," he said, referring to Palestinians. 

"So how is there no intifada? Why aren’t they taking to the streets? Why is the Palestinian public indifferent? Why are there no disturbances?" Bluth, a settler who has been the Israeli army commander in the West Bank since 2024, added.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the appointment of Yehuda Eliyahu on Monday.

A long-time associate of Smotrich, Eliyahu previously headed the Settlement Administration within the defence ministry, where he oversaw the largest Israeli land grab in the West Bank in recent memory.

His selection was approved last week by a public appointments committee, though not unanimously. 

The committee’s legal adviser opposed the move, arguing that Eliyahu’s decades-long personal relationship with Smotrich posed a conflict of interest.

The Israel Land Authority oversees around 92 percent of state land - roughly 20 million dunams - and manages a budget worth billions of shekels. It plays a central role in land allocation for housing, infrastructure and development projects, and is also involved in administering land in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

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