TV News LIES

There's electricity on Kyiv's left bank today, so a small elevator carries visitors up to Liliya Martynivna Lapina's 10th-floor apartment. The 88-year-old has been spending her days in her bed under a pile of blankets by a bright but cold window, trying to stay warm.

She sits bolt upright and seems to come alive as visitors enter her apartment, erupting in a stream of words and enthusiasm over the care package of pasta, sugar, tea and cooking oil that has been delivered. Lapina is wearing multiple layers of colorful wool sweaters and a headscarf.

NPR is accompanying the aid group Starenki, which delivers food and fellowship to the mostly older people stuck in their apartments this winter as they try to survive the frequent heat and power cuts brought on by Russia's assault on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin fails to make significant progress on the battlefield, he is trying to break the Ukrainian people's will by plunging them into the cold and dark in one of the coldest winters in years. The capital, Kyiv, has been particularly hard hit. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged those who could to leave the city. But many people, especially older adults, have nowhere else to go.

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Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has been killed, Iranian state media confirmed early on Sunday, in the opening salvo of a war aimed at regime change that was launched on Saturday by the US and Israel.

Khamenei had not been heard from since the strikes began, and satellite imagery showed that his secure compound was heavily damaged in the initial barrage on Saturday.

The confirmation came hours after Donald Trump announced the death of the ayatollah, who has ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989, in a post on Truth Social.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote. “He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

Trump said that the goal of the military campaign, which began on Saturday morning with a barrage of missiles and airstrikes, was regime change.

“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country,” he wrote.

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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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