TV News LIES

Iran struck the world-famous Fairmont hotel in Dubai, setting the hotel alight, as the war launched by the US and Israel on Iran quickly spread to the rest of the Middle East on Saturday.

Residents watched in shock as an Iranian missile hit the five-star hotel in Dubai’s luxurious Palm Jumeirah area. Social media videos showed fires breaking out near the entrance of the hotel, which led to four people being injured.

Later Dubai authorities said debris from an intercepted drone caused a fire at the city’s famous luxury hotel the Burj Al Arab.

“Civil Defence teams responded immediately and brought the incident under control. No injuries have been reported,” the Dubai media office wrote on its X account.

The media office also said that part of Dubai’s international airport “sustained minor damage in an incident,” without giving further details.

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Shajareh Tayyebeh is an all-girls' school located in the southern Iranian town of Minab. Minab is in Hormozgan Province, which is along the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic international shipping lane, according to the New York Times.

Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesman for Iran’s health ministry, shared an X post on Feb. 28, calling the majority of those killed at the school "young child martyrs."

“God knows how many more children will be pulled out of the rubble,” he wrote in the social media post. “May God give their families strength and patience.”

When the strike hit, Shajareh Tayyebeh, described as an elementary school, was holding its first of multiple rotating school shifts, according to Hengaw, a Norway-based organization focusing on human rights violations in Iran. The group added that around 170 students are enrolled in the school’s morning shift; however, it is unclear how many were in the building during the strike

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The confirmed count of Russian soldiers, officers, sailors and airmen confirmed killed in action or dead of combat injuries in Ukraine has passed 200,000, the research group Mediazona announced on Tuesday, citing new survey findings.

The group, working alongside BBC Russian Service and volunteers in and outside Russia, confirmed all of the Russian military losses, by name, using cross-referenced data from individual obituaries, civil death certificates, geo-located graves, unit rosters, social media updates, funeral announcements, cemetery records and obituaries.

A leak of confidential government data on some 23,000 security checks of individuals found to have been dead by police investigators was a key “breakthrough” for the group’s tracking work, a Mediazona statement said.

As of midday Wednesday, the total count of verified Russian dead in Ukraine stood at 200,186 men. The figure “remains a conservative floor, not a ceiling,” the statement said in part.

Mapping by the group identified 26,600 cities, towns or villages across all thirteen of Russia’s time zones as the homes of men losing their lives in Ukraine. All Russian cities, without exception, have received remains of soldiers sent to Ukraine who then died there, the report said.

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The United States has announced it will soon provide in-person passport services at an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The US Embassy in Jerusalem said it would start providing the service for Efrat, located between the Palestinian towns of Bethlehem and Hebron, on February 27.

It will be the first time the US has “provided consular services to a settlement in the West Bank”, according to a US embassy spokesperson quoted by the Reuters news agency.

The embassy said it would plan similar on-site services in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, the illegal Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit near Bethlehem, and in cities within Israel, such ⁠as Haifa.

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Israeli settlers vandalized a mosque in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Monday, spray-painting offensive phrases and setting a fire, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Worshippers arriving for the day’s first prayers found the damage and a smoldering fire that spewed black smoke across the entrance of the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque in the town of Tell, near Nablus, and stained the ornate doorway.

“I was shocked when I opened the door,” said Munir Ramdan, who lives nearby. “The fire had been burning here in the area, the glass was broken here and the door was broken.”

Security camera footage showed two people walking toward the mosque carrying gasoline and a can of spray paint, and running away a few minutes later, Ramdan said.

The attackers spray-painted graffiti denigrating the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the words “revenge” and “price tag.” In “price tag” attacks, hard-line Israeli nationalists attack Palestinians and vandalize their property in response to Palestinian militant attacks or perceived efforts by Israeli authorities to limit settlement activity.

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The U.S. and Iran are headed to a new round of talks in Geneva aimed at averting a conflict this week—as the U.S. continues to surge military forces to the region in its largest military buildup since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Although talks are scheduled for Thursday, the prospects for a deal that would halt the U.S. drive to war remain fragile. The U.S. has demanded sweeping concessions, including the cessation of all nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil, the end of Iranian support for regional armed resistance movements, and strict limits on the Iranian ballistic missile program—the only meaningful deterrent that Iran was able to employ during its conflict with Israel last year.

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, President Donald Trump wrote, “I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don’t make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them.”

An Iranian official told Drop Site that Tehran understands the erratic nature of the Trump administration, but believes the position its diplomats are outlining to U.S. negotiators represents an unprecedented effort by Iran aimed at preventing a regional war. The official said Iran is directly addressing U.S. concerns on the nuclear issue with concrete proposals, and asserting a willingness to expand talks to other issues once a deal to avert imminent conflict has been concluded.

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