TV News LIES

In a closely watched civil rights case, a panel on the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals blocked Fearless Fund from awarding $20,000 grants to businesses owned by Black women while the case is litigated, siding with conservative activist Edward Blum that the grant program is likely discriminatory.

The appeals court disagreed with a federal judge who ruled in September that the lawsuit was unlikely to prevail on First Amendment grounds.

The defeat for the Atlanta firm working to boost scarce venture capital funding for Black women could have sweeping implications for race-based initiatives in the private sector.

"This is devastating for the Fearless Fund and Foundation, and for the women in which we have invested in. I am shattered for every girl of color who has a dream but will grow up in a nation determined not to give her a shot to live it. On their behalf, we will turn the pain into purpose and fight with all our might," Arian Simone, CEO and founding partner of Fearless Fund and founder of the Fearless Foundation, said in a statement to USA TODAY.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused China on Sunday of helping Russia to disrupt an upcoming Swiss-organized peace conference on the war in Ukraine.

Speaking at Asia’s premier security conference, Zelenskyy said that China is pressuring other countries and their leaders not to attend the upcoming talks. He did not say which ones.

An aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israel had accepted a framework deal for winding down the Gaza war now being advanced by U.S. President Joe Biden, though he described it as flawed and in need of much more work.

In an interview with Britain's Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu, said Biden's proposal was "a deal we agreed to — it's not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them".

 

A launch of Boeing's Starliner space capsule was scrubbed on Saturday just minutes ahead of its scheduled liftoff time.

With 3:50 left in the countdown, the rocket’s computer initiated a hold. The next launch attempt won’t happen until at least Wednesday, NASA said.

An issue with one of the three redundant computer systems at the base of the launch pad that are responsible for initiating the launch sequence prompted the automatic halt, said Tory Bruno, the head of United Launch Alliance, the government contractor trying to launch the Starliner.

“We do require all three systems to be running — triple redundancy,” ULA President and CEO Bruno said at a Saturday afternoon press briefing. “Those three big computers do a health check. … Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up, and that tripped a red line that created an automatic hold."

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The posts are ominous.

“Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions.

The replies were even more so.

“Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former President, what other alternative is there? I’m almost 70 and would rather die than live in tyranny.”

That’s a common version of how many people on the US right reacted to the ex-president’s verdict, drawing on a “mirror world” where Trump is seen as the selfless martyr to powerful state forces and Joe Biden is the dangerous autocrat wielding the justice system as his own personal plaything and a threat to US democracy.

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California firefighters aided by aircraft battled a wind-driven wildfire that began Saturday and continued burning early Sunday morning in an area straddling the San Francisco Bay Area and central California, authorities said.

The Corral Fire began Saturday afternoon near the city of Tracy, 60 miles (96km ) east of San Francisco, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the city of Livermore, according to the California department of forestry and fire protection, or Cal Fire.

Dark plumes of smoke traveled high into the sky over the fire area comprised mostly of grassy hills, where strong winds were expected to continue overnight.

On Sunday morning, Cal Fire announced that the fire had spanned 12,500 acres and was 15% contained. “Strong winds and dry grass have made it difficult to contain,” it added.

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About half of Americans believe former President Trump should end his campaign, describing his guilty verdict as “correct,” according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll published Sunday.

Trump was convicted Thursday of 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents, the first time a former president was ever convicted of a crime. He has appealed the ruling.

Exactly 50 percent of those polled said Trump’s guilty verdict was the correct decision by the New York jury, and 49 percent said Trump should immediately drop out of the presidential race.

Despite that, Trump’s favorability did not fall in the poll compared to previous editions. About 31 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the former president both before and after the conviction.

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Throughout its grinding seven-month war against Hamas, Israel has pledged to investigate a series of deadly events in which its military forces are suspected of wrongdoing. The commitment comes in the face of mounting claims — from human rights groups and the International Criminal Court ’s chief prosecutor — that the country’s leaders are committing war crimes in Hamas-ruled Gaza.