TV News LIES

Russian infantry assaults against Ukrainian positions fell off moderately following loss of access to the tactically critical Starlink satellite communications system by Kremlin forces and the widely-used Telegram messaging app – but they have not stopped, news and field reports, and official statements over the past week have shown.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company on Feb. 4 shut down gray and black market Starlink terminals operating in Russia and Ukraine, following a Ukrainian government request.

The switch-off did not significantly damage the ability of the Ukrainian military, widely using white market Starlink terminals, to digitally share battle intelligence and targeting information instantaneously, and in some sectors it gave piloted strike drones immune to jamming.

The access denial at the same time turned hundreds of gray and black market Starlink terminals used by Russian combat units for their own enciphered information-sharing and drone operations in Ukraine, into useless junk.

On Tuesday, Russian users of the Telegram messaging app reported critical slowdowns in access and data transfer speed, following a reported Russian state move to pressure Russian Telegram-users to shift to the state-developed app Messenger Max.

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Israeli authorities have arrested several people and charged two on suspicion of using classified information to place bets about military operations on the popular prediction market platform Polymarket.

Prosecutors say a civilian and a military reservist have been indicted for bribery and obstruction of justice, with an undisclosed number of others also arrested for placing Polymarket wagers based on classified information, according to a statement released Thursday by officials in Tel Aviv.

While the names of those charged and the specific bets they made were not disclosed, the announcement comes weeks after Israeli media reported that security agencies were probing whether military officials were turning secret intelligence about military strikes into Polymarket bets.

Kan News, Israel's public broadcaster, reported last month that government investigators were examining Polymarket bets on an Israeli strike on Iran in June 2025, when the countries fought a 12-day war.

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Pressure is mounting on Israel to scrap its plans to expand settlements in the West Bank ahead of a meeting between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.

The Israeli prime minister has authorised steps that would make it easier for Israeli settlers to buy land in the occupied West Bank, while granting Israel broader powers in an area the Palestinians see as the heartland of a future state.

Eight U.S. Democratic senators on Tuesday urged Trump to oppose the settlements, which they said would go against the country’s longstanding policy on the issue, as well as the president’s own position.

The group’s statement reads: “We have long expressed our concern that these reckless moves make the possibility of a two-state solution, where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace and security, further out of reach.

“We urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to reverse course. When President Trump meets with Prime Minister Netanyahu this week, we also urge the president to clearly reinforce the opposition of the U.S. government to Israeli government actions that set the conditions for irreversible annexation.”

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Ukrainian forces repelled major Russian assaults in a single day in the Pokrovsk direction (Donetsk region), killing around 90 Russian soldiers.

In a Jan. 31 Telegram report, the Spartan National Guard brigade said it had jointly repelled a Russian assault alongside the “Ptakhy Madyara” unit and adjacent forces, as Moscow committed up to 90 assault troops to the attack.

“The enemy attempted an offensive in the Pokrovsk direction. Under the cover of fog, the enemy tried to advance using cars, motorcycles, and ATVs,” the report said.

Ukrainian units stopped the assault completely, destroying Russian manpower and equipment.

“Spartan, together with adjacent units, repelled the enemy assault - almost four platoons of Russians were destroyed in a single day,” the brigade said.

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For 200 days, Abu Ismail Hammad has been digging beneath his home in Gaza City, painstakingly collecting the remains of his wife and unborn child. He has been using a flour sifter to find their bone fragments hidden in the sand.

His entire family was killed just under two months into Israel’s genocidal assault, when an airstrike hit their home in the Sabra neighborhood on December 6, 2023. His five children—Ismail, Mohammed, Ghaith, Jana, and Joudi—aged between eight to 16 years old, were all killed, along with his wife, Naama Alaa Al-Din Hammad. Naama was nine months pregnant with their sixth child, a girl they were planning to name Haifa, after her martyred aunt. His brother, sister-in-law and all of their children were also killed.

Hammad had left the apartment to go upstairs to another floor just 15 minutes before the strike. He was badly injured in the attack. Hammad was the sole survivor.

Wounded and displaced, and with the war raging, it took him a year before he was able to return, at the end of 2024, to begin trying to recover their bodies. After a few weeks, he was forced to stop again as Israel’s assault in the area intensified again. In November, soon after the so-called ceasefire went into effect, Hammad returned once more to find them.

He showed Drop Site pictures of them all together, smiling before the war, their faces slightly distorted by his heavily cracked phone screen.

Hammad spent weeks clearing away tons of rubble and then began to dig. “I was able to recover my brother, his wife, and their children. When I reached the living room in my home, it became clear that it was completely burned. I realized that the fate of my children was unknown—that they were burned and their bones had melted away. I then went to the room where my wife had been and I found her bones,” Hammad told Drop Site News. “How did I know it was my wife? First, the location of the room. Second, the bones of the unborn child were found in the same place, because the pregnancy was complete.”

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Israel’s government is deepening a push by far-right ministers to expand its authority and settlements in the West Bank, giving it broad new powers in a territory that would make up the heart of any future Palestinian state.

Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday approved new measures that would ease land purchases by Israelis from Palestinians and grant Israel the authority to police water-related offenses, damage to archaeological sites and environmental hazards in so-called Areas A and B. The areas are now administered by the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords, which aimed to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians through a two-state solution.

Under the new changes, sealed land registries will be published, making it easier for prospective buyers to find and approach owners. A law preventing the sale of West Bank land to outsiders that has been in place since Jordan controlled the territory will now be repealed.

The moves follow Israel’s approval last summer of thousands of housing units in a controversial settlement near East Jerusalem, and the rapid expansion of outposts and roads that have further divided Palestinian areas.

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