TV News LIES

Down here in the tombs, there aren’t any windows,” writes Tremane Wood from inside his cell, in a modern-day American “dungeon” that few people have ever heard of.

“It’s really like living in cave,” he writes in another letter. “It’s dark and damp. Sometimes this place drives people mad. The hardest part is the isolation.”

Or in another: “You end up loosing [sic] track of days and nights and what day it is … It’s a real form of psychological torture that some people never come back from.”

Wood, 46, spent 17 years incarcerated in H Unit – the underground cells at the state prison in the rural town of McAlester, Oklahoma, where no natural light ever reaches.

According to prisoner letters seen by the Guardian and published here for the first time, H Unit – also known by the prisoners as the “tombs” – features a series of windowless cells that are built banked into the earth. The letters also tell of infestations of vermin, unsanitary conditions, and frequent instances of physical and sexual violence.

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Israel has emptied four facilities within the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex that served as offices for the Islamic Waqf, in what a monitoring group has described as an escalating campaign against the Jordanian-backed body.

The Al-Quds International Institution, a Palestinian organisation that monitors developments in Jerusalem, said on Tuesday that Israeli authorities have used "manufactured security pretexts" to target the facilities.

According to the group, Israeli forces raided the sites in recent months, broke their locks and prevented the installation of replacements.

The facilities were then left open, while anyone attempting to enter them was expelled because they had been used for "activities that threaten security".

The four sites are the Dome of Imam al-Ghazali, located above the Bab al-Rahma prayer hall along the eastern wall of the complex; Dar al-Hadith al-Sharif in the northeastern section of Al-Aqsa; Qubbat Sulayman, an open-air domed shrine opposite King Faisal Gate; and Qubbat Musa, located near Bab al-Silsila (Chain Gate).

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Israeli troops shot at a car in the occupied West Bank, killing a 7-month-old Palestinian baby and wounding his parents, the Palestinian health ministry said, with the bullet striking the boy in the face.

The Israeli military said that soldiers shot at a vehicle perceived to be accelerating toward them near Hebron. It said an initial inquiry found that the three Palestinians wounded were uninvolved civilians.

Israeli military activity, and settler violence against Palestinians, have surged in the territory since the war in Gaza began in October 2023.

The baby’s father, Bethlehem University lecturer Fahd Abu Haikal, told The Associated Press that a bullet struck the windshield before piercing his right hand and striking his son and wife in the back seat Friday evening. Another bullet struck the hood, according to AP journalists who saw the car.

The bullet passed through Sam Fahd Abu Haikal’s face.

“He was the entire world,” Haikal said of the boy, who turned seven months on Friday.

The mother was in critical condition, with shrapnel close to her heart.

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When Leen Ezzeddine stood before her classmates at Harvard Medical School, the moment could have been framed as a familiar story of immigrant success: a Lebanese woman graduating as a doctor from one of the world’s most prestigious institutions.

But Ezzeddine chose to tell a different story.

In her graduation speech last week, she spoke of circumstance, borders, luck and the thin line separating her life from the lives of medical students in Lebanon and Palestine who share the same ambition but are made to study under drones, bombardment and displacement.

That line, for her, was not abstract. While she was pursuing her studies at Harvard, a US missile launched by Israel levelled her family home in Arab Salim, her mother’s village in southern Lebanon, in October 2024.

It was the village where she used to spend her summers, surrounded by cousins, relatives, and her grandparents, Hayat Chamseddine and Ali Zayour, who were later forced to leave and relocate to Beirut after their house was destroyed.

The contrast was stark: she was standing in Harvard as a new doctor, while the village that helped shape her childhood and family memories was being attacked.

That contradiction became the emotional and political centre of her intervention.

Her speech was not only about Gaza, or Lebanon, or the violence of war. It was about what it means to become a doctor inside an elite institution while entire communities are being denied the basic conditions of life.

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US President Donald Trump has threatened or used force against countries representing roughly one in 11 people worldwide, according to a CNN analysis.

The report followed Trump’s remarks during a White House Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, where he warned Oman over tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping route.

“Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ‘em up,” Trump said.

The Strait of Hormuz, which carries about 20% of global oil shipments, has faced growing risks amid tensions in the Middle East.

According to The Guardian, the comments came amid reports that Iran and Oman have discussed possible arrangements involving control or fees for shipping through the strait.

“The Strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump said while discussing regional tensions. “Nobody’s going to control it.”

CNN said US forces have conducted strikes in multiple countries during Trump’s presidency, including Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

Oman is at least the 15th country Trump has threatened, suggested he could attack, or targeted militarily during his time in office.

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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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