TV News LIES

One of my favorite movies is director Don Siegel’s 1964 remake of The Killers. It was supposed to be one of the first “Made for TV” movies but someone at Universal thought it was too violent so it was released theatrically.

Siegel directed two movies, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), and Dirty Harry (1971), that are on my List of The 100 Best Movies Ever Made. And then there’s ... The Killers. As a friend of mine said, “Don Siegel was one of those directors who could make good pieces of a movie, but had a hard time making a complete movie." And The Killers is a very good example of that. It’s almost good. Too bad, because the cast is incredible: Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, Clu Gulager, and … in the last theatrical role of his 27-year long career … and the first time he ever played a bad guy … Ronald Reagan.

Justin Forsyth has resigned as deputy executive director of Unicef following accusations of inappropriate behaviour toward female staff while chief executive of Save the Children.

Forsyth said he was not resigning because of the mistakes he had made while at the charity, but because of attempts to damage aid organisations and the humanitarian sector.

It emerged this week that Forsyth was accused of sending inappropriate texts and making comments to female staff about their appearance on separate occasions in 2011 and 2015 while he was the head of Save the Children.

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Aid agencies, including the Red Cross and World Food Programme, are calling for an urgent ceasefire to allow them to reach the besieged Syrian enclave of eastern Ghouta, as rockets and barrel bombs dropped by pro-regime forces killed dozens more people on the fourth day of an intense assault.

The calls were echoed by the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, who demanded an immediate suspension of “all war activities” in the rebel-held Damascus suburb, which he described as a “hell on earth”.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal woes deepened after one of his closest confidants agreed to testify against him in a growing corruption scandal, complicating the Israeli leader’s efforts to hold on to his job.

Shlomo Filber, the suspended Communications Ministry director and onetime chief of Netanyahu’s bureau, signed an agreement to become state witness. He turned on his former boss less than a week after police recommended pressing charges against Netanyahu in two other influence-peddling cases -- and a day after news broke that police were investigating whether another longtime Netanyahu associate sought to bribe a judge.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office said Friday that a grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for alleged interference in the 2016 presidential elections, during which they boosted the candidacy of Donald Trump.

The indictment says that the defendants by early to mid-2016 were "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ... and disparaging Hillary Clinton."

The indictment said "the organization," known as the Internet Research Agency LLC, "sought, in part, to conduct what it called 'information warfare against the United States of America' through fictitious U.S. personas on social media platforms and other Internet-based media."

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The third most senior official at the Department of Veterans Affairs is stepping down amid findings she misled ethics officials to secure approval for VA Secretary David Shulkin’s wife to accompany him on taxpayer-funded trip to Europe.

Vivieca Wright Simpson, Shulkin’s chief of staff, told colleagues Friday morning that she is retiring after 32 years at the agency and more than two years as Shulkin's most senior aide.

The announcement came two days after the VA inspector general released recommendations that she be disciplined for doctoring an email to an ethics lawyer to show Shulkin was getting special recognition or an award during the trip to Denmark and London last year, the criteria for clearing his wife’s flights on the public’s dime.

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A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist raised troubling question about President Donald Trump and his associations with Russia.

James Risen, a former New York Times and Los Angeles Times reporter now with The Intercept, wrote Friday that Americans can’t be sure “whether Trump has the best interests of the United States or those of Russia at heart.”

“One year after Trump took office, it is still unclear whether the president of the United States is an agent of a foreign power,” Risen wrote. “Just step back and think about that for a moment.”

A Russian who offered stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons and compromising information on President Donald Trump bilked U.S. spies out of $100,000 last year, The New York Times reported on Friday, citing U.S. and European security officials.

The money was delivered to a Berlin hotel room in September and was intended as the first installment of a $1 million reward, according to U.S. officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by the Times, the newspaper reported.

The theft of the secret hacking tools was very damaging to the NSA, which was trying to determine exactly what was missing, the Times said.

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