TV News LIES

• Russian forces bombarded Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, again on Saturday night, after a day of pitched fights around the city. Most of the more than 150,000 Russian troops who had massed around Ukraine are now fighting in the country, U.S. officials said.

• The Biden administration and key European allies announced on Saturday that they would remove certain Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system, essentially barring them from international transactions.

• President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine tried to rally international support and said in a video that his country’s fighters had “withstood and successfully repelled enemy attacks.”

• Russian forces have killed at least 198 people, including three children, and 1,115 people, including 33 children, have been wounded, according to the Ukrainian National Guard, and a U.N. official said more than 150,000 Ukrainian refugees had fled.

Judges in Pennsylvania and North Carolina handed down new congressional maps on Wednesday that will affect the layout of 31 congressional seats, finalizing district lines in one state and inching closer to resolution in the other.

In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court adopted a map that made few changes to the current districts but erased one Republican-held seat, while in North Carolina, a panel of judges adopted a map drawn by a special master that would likely split the congressional delegation evenly, a big boost for Democrats, who currently hold five out of 13 seats.

The North Carolina order would make bigger changes to the makeup of the House, but it may not be enacted: Republican lawmakers in North Carolina quickly announced they’d appeal the new maps to the state Supreme Court. If left in place, both maps look set to draw a pair of GOP congressmen into the same district in each state, kicking off expensive primary fights.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday issued new COVID-19 mRNA vaccine guidance, expanding the recommended time between the initial two vaccine doses to eight weeks for some people over the age of 12, particularly young men.

Days before a new legislative map for North Dakota was set to be introduced in the state house, leaders of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and Spirit Lake Nation sent a letter to the governor and other state lawmakers urging them to rethink the proposal.

“All citizens deserve to have their voices heard and to be treated fairly and equally under the law,” they wrote, arguing that the proposed map was illegal, diluting the strength of their communities’ voice.

But instead, in early November, the Republican-controlled legislature approved the map, with only minor changes. And the Republican governor, Doug Burgum, quickly signed it.

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A French fashion agent linked to Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on Friday night, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

Jean-Luc Brunel, 76, was in detention awaiting a trial on charges of rape of a minor and sexual harassment.

He was suspected of being involved in a global paedophile ring organised by the late disgraced financier Epstein, who took his own life in prison while awaiting trial for sex crimes, in 2019.

US prosecutors accused Brunel of finding young girls for his longtime associate and financier.

New guidance on prescribing opioids unveiled Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention avoids the strict limits found in a 2016 version that accelerated a nationwide drop in pain pill prescriptions but led to backlash from chronic pain patients.

The 229-page document advises doctors to limit new opioid prescriptions and discuss alternative therapies with patients. But the new guidance largely avoids figures on dosage and length of prescription and warns against abruptly or rapidly discontinuing pain pills for some chronic pain patients.

"We've built in flexibility so that there's not a one-size-fits-all approach," said Christopher Jones, acting director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

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The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) retrieved multiple White House record boxes last month that were improperly kept at former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago property, The Washington Post reported.

The boxes reportedly contained important records of communication, gifts and letters from world leaders, which, according to the Post, is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The newspaper added that the boxes retrieved from the Florida estate included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as well as a letter from former President Obama to Trump.

Inside one of the only federal women’s prisons in the United States, inmates say they have been subjected to rampant sexual abuse by correctional officers and even the warden, and were often threatened or punished when they tried to speak up.