National and international media news & headlines compiled by CLG

France sends combat troops to Ukraine battlefront | 4 May 2024 | France has sent its first troops officially to Ukraine. They have been deployed in support of the Ukrainian 54th Independent Mechanized Brigade in Slavyansk. The French soldiers are drawn from France’s 3rd Infantry Regiment, which is one of the main elements of France’s Foreign Legion (Légion étrangère). The Legion today is run by French officers but the rank and file are all foreigners. The initial group of French troops numbers around 100. This is just the first tranche of around 1,500 French Foreign Legion soldiers scheduled to arrive in Ukraine. These troops are being posted directly in a hot combat area and are intended to help the Ukrainians resist Russian advances in Donbas. The first 100 are artillery and surveillance specialists.

U.S. put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel | 5 May 2024 | The Biden administration last week put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-made ammunition to Israel, two Israeli officials told Axios. It is the first time since the Oct. 7 attack that the U.S. has stopped a weapons shipment intended for the Israeli military. The incident raised serious concerns inside the Israeli government and sent officials scrambling to understand why the shipment was held, Israeli officials said… The administration in February asked Israel to provide assurances that U.S.-made weapons were being used by Israel Defense Forces in Gaza in accordance with international law. Israel provided a signed letter of assurances in March. The Israeli officials said the ammunition shipment to Israel was stopped last week.

Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors –Some of the most outspoken groups against Biden and Israel get funding from foundations attached to some of the biggest names in Democratic circles. | 5 May 2024 | Joe Biden has been dogged for months by pro-Palestinian protesters calling him “Genocide Joe” – but some of the groups behind the demonstrations receive financial backing from philanthropists pushing hard for his reelection. The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Gates, Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker, according to a POLITICO analysis. Two of the organizers behind protests at Columbia University and on other campuses are Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Both are supported by the Tides Foundation, which is seeded by Democratic mega-donor George Soros as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it in turn supports numerous small nonprofits that work for social change.

Bomb threat emailed to nearly two dozen Jewish sites in NYC as disturbing text revealed – sources | 5 May 2024 | Authorities are investigating a disturbing bomb threat emailed to more than two dozen synagogues and Jewish institutions in the Big Apple – and to temples upstate and on Long Island. “Hello, if you see this email just have notice of a bomb I have set inside of your building,” the email sent Saturday read, law enforcement sources told The Post. “This isn’t a threat,” it said. “I have set a bomb in your building, you have a few hours to disarm or else blood will shatter everywhere.” Sources said the threat came from a group calling itself “Terrorizers111.” A similar threat was emailed to the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

3 NYC synagogues targeted with false bomb threats – police | 4 May 2024 | Three Manhattan synagogues received false bomb threats on Saturday, according to police. The Upper West Side’s Congregation Rodeph Sholom, located at 7 W. 83rd Street near Central Park, was evacuated after police received a report of a bomb threat around 3:15 p.m. Police confirmed that the threat was unfounded. Another threat – which was also determined to be false – prompted an evacuation at the Chabad of Midtown at 509 5th Avenue around 4:30 p.m…

California tuberculosis outbreak kills 1, infects 14 as officials declare health emergency –Alarming outbreak infected 14 people, with 9 people hospitalized | 4 May 2024 | A deadly outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) has occurred inside a California hotel housing homeless people, leading to the death of one person and forcing city health officials to declare a public health emergency. The alarming outbreak at the unnamed hotel infected 14 people, resulting in nine people being hospitalized, the Department of Health and Human Services for Long Beach announced Thursday. The identity of the deceased individual has not been released. Officials say the health emergency was announced to strengthen the city’s preparedness and ability to respond to the outbreak. Around 170 people have likely been exposed to TB and the Health Department is in the process of screening contacts for TB via symptom review, blood or skin tests and chest X-rays.

‘Damning’ report details Biden regime’s Big Tech censorship push, deciding which books were permissible to read  –Emails also revealed Biden regime wanted to crack down on ‘vaccine misinformation’ | 3 May 2024 | Internal communications of executives from Big Tech companies reveal “damning discoveries” of the Biden regime’s attempt to muzzle the platforms, a new House committee report published this week revealed. Following House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) subpoena last year, tech giants like Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft were investigated regarding their communications with the federal government. Jordan said at the time that he wanted to “understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.” The House Judiciary Committee’s 800-page report, titled “The Censorship-industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information, and Critics of the Biden Administration,” included several instances where the platforms censored information relating to COVID-19 due to top-down pressure. Big Tech altered their content-moderation policies in 2021, the report said. Facebook, YouTube and Amazon all adjusted their policies to censor information ranging from COVID-19 “misinformation” to what kinds of books were permissible on the Amazon Marketplace.

Trump compares Biden regime to Nazis –Resorting to “Gestapo” tactics is the only way that Joe Biden can win in November election, the former U.S. president has declared | 5 May 2024 | Donald Trump has accused Joe Biden’s regime of stooping to the level of the Nazi secret police to prevent him from winning this year’s election. “These people are running a Gestapo administration,” the former U.S. leader told Republican donors at an event in Florida on Saturday, according to audio shared with multiple national news outlets. “And it’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win, in their opinion.” Trump is currently facing four criminal cases… Saturday was not the first time Trump has compared Biden to the tyrants of the 20th Century. In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas earlier this year, he decried the “Stalinist show trials being carried out at Joe Biden’s orders,” and in a campaign ad last year, described Biden as a “corrupt Third-World dictator.”

Prosecutors admit key evidence in Trump document case has been tampered with –Legal experts call revelation a “serious violation” as Jack Smith’s team admits it also misled court. | 3 May 2024 | In a stunning admission, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team is admitting that key evidence in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents criminal case was altered or manipulated since it was seized by the FBI, and that prosecutors misled the court about it for a period of time. Legal experts told Just the News the revelation could prove to be a serious problem for prosecutors and a violation of court rules to preserve evidence in the state it was seized. In a new filing Friday, Smith’s team said that the order of documents in some of the boxes of memos that were seized by the FBI from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was altered or jumbled, leaving two different chronologies: one that was digitally scanned and another the physical order in the boxes… Smith’s team, in a footnote, also conceded it had misled the court about the problem by previously declaring that the evidence had remained in the exact state it had been seized.

Prosecution witness Hope Hicks offers testimony benefiting Trump, backfiring on DA Bragg | 4 May 2024 | Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called former President Donald Trump’s then-communications aide, Hope Hicks, to the witness stand in the so-called hush m-ney trial in which she offered testimony that may have actually benefited the 45th president. Trump’s attorneys argued that his motivation to silence the accounts of fKaren McDougal and Stormy Daniels wasn’t to help his 2016 campaign, but rather to protect his family, specifically former First Lady Melania Trump, according to Politico. When Hicks took the stand, she took the position that while Trump preferred that the Stormy Daniels story came out after the election instead of before, his main interest in keeping these allegations buried was to shield Melania from hearing about it. Bragg has claimed that Trump paid Daniels to be quiet to benefit his campaign, resulting in allegations that he was unlawfully attempting to influence the election.

Hundreds protest Massachusetts illegal immigrant policies –Protesters were angry that the state House rejected an amendment to the bill that would have given homeless veterans priority for housing over illegal immigrants. | 5 May 2024 | Hundreds of demonstrators turned out in Boston to protest Massachusetts’ right to shelter law, after lawmakers failed to include a provision that would have given priority to homeless veterans over illegal immigrants. Demonstrators outside the Massachusetts State House on Saturday held signs opposing current federal border laws and the state policy, according to local outlet WCVB. The protest comes after Democratic Gov. Maura Healey signed a bill earlier in the week that sets a nine-month limit on how long families can live in the state’s emergency shelters while also approving a plan that would bring total shelter system spending to 826 million for the current fiscal year. Protesters were angry that the state House rejected an amendment to the bill that would have given homeless veterans priority for housing over migrants.

Portion of I-95 to remain closed for several days after tractor-trailer carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline explodes into massive inferno –Local hazmat teams and other authorities flocked to the site to clean up the hazardous material, reports said. –Officials urged drivers to look for other routes. | 2 May 2024 | A tanker truck filled to the brim with gasoline slammed into a tractor-trailer and burst into a fiery inferno Thursday morning on Interstate 95 in Connecticut. The blaze — which shut down both sides of the highway, a major East Coast artery — erupted at about 5 a.m., according to the Hartford Courant. And if that’s not enough of a travel nightmare for drivers, the portion of the major highway affected by the fire will remain closed for the next two to five days, WTNH reported. The tanker, which was carrying about 8,500 gallons of gas, hit the truck and a passenger vehicle near Exit 15 near the Fairfield Avenue overpass, the Courant said.