TV News LIES

The Kennedy Center was ordered this week to pay thousands of dollars to an artist who pulled out of his annual performance when the center was renamed after President Donald Trump.

A judge ruled Monday that musician Chuck Redd was owed more than $250,000 by the center to cover attorney fees and other costs. Redd, who has performed at the center’s annual Christmas Eve jazz show for nearly two decades, canceled his scheduled appearance last December in protest of the center’s name change.

Lawyers for Redd wrote in a statement Tuesday that they found the judgment “appropriate as no citizen should have to spend time and money fending off baseless and politically motivated lawsuits filed by the Trump Administration.”

The Kennedy Center plans to appeal the ruling.

The center previously attempted to sue Redd earlier this year for violating his contract, but the suit was dismissed in June.

Richard Grenell, the center’s former president, wrote in a letter to Redd “that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt,” despite the artist not having a signed contract

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a Wednesday notice that outlined plans to provide Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers with gloves that will deliver painful electric shocks.

The agency is planning to spend up to $20 million on the new devices known as a Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter or G.L.O.V.E. that could be used by officers in the field as they are conducting immigration operations.

Prison and jail staffers have begun to implement the tools behind bars to “de-escalate” chaotic incidents. 

The device works similar to a taser but does not jump as high in voltage, according to KFOR. 

A spokesperson for Compliant Technology, the company that makes the electric shock gloves, told reporters the device uses positives and negatives on the hand pad to trigger a sensory response on the skin upon contact.

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Five teenage boys were killed after the vehicle they were riding in drove off a roadway and plunged down a steep hillside in a Colorado neighborhood over the weekend, authorities said.

The crash occurred late Aug. 8 in a residential area of Grand Junction, a city located in Colorado's Western Slope region, according to the Mesa County Coroner's Office. Local police said first responders were dispatched at about 7:45 a.m. local time on Aug. 9 after receiving a report of a vehicle that had gone over the edge of a cliff in the neighborhood.

When emergency crews arrived, they found a crashed vehicle on the hillside below the roadway and five occupants dead at the scene, the Grand Junction Police Department said in a news release.

Investigators believe the vehicle was traveling south "when it veered off the roadway and down the steep incline of the hillside," according to police. Speed is being examined as a possible factor in the crash, which remains under investigation.

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RAMALLAH: Israeli settlers, under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, have attacked the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah.

Amin Abu Aliya, the head of the Al-Mughayyir Village Council, said that settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in the eastern plain area and local residents confronted the attackers.

Abu Aliya added that Israeli forces entered the village to provide protection for the settlers and detained two young men, Alaa and Hani Abu Aliya.

The forces also fired tear gas, with no injuries reported.

Al-Mughayyir, along with surrounding villages and towns northeast of Ramallah, has been subjected to continued attacks by colonists, alongside ongoing raids by Israeli occupation forces.

According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Israeli forces and settlers carried out 2,256 attacks against Palestinians, their lands and property during July. Israeli forces carried out 1,458 of the attacks, while settlers carried out 798.

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It is early on a Sunday morning, and you are awoken by armed police officers banging on your door. They hand you a letter: the state will freeze your assets for a further six months, denying you access to your own bank accounts because they disagree with the anti-genocide stance you have publicly expressed.

The letter cites a tweet you posted several months ago, in which you criticised the Israeli and US bombardment of Iran. It cites the fact that you have shared an interview with a pro-Palestine activist and an article written by an academic historian on social media. These actions are proof, the letter explains, that you have failed to renounce your "pro-jihadist" convictions.

It sounds like something out of the pages of a dystopian sci-fi novel, but for Elias d'Imzalene, a French anti-genocide activist and founding member of the pro-Palestinian organisation Urgence Palestine, it has become real life.

The crime of which d'Imzalene is accused - and for which his freedoms have been restricted and his assets frozen for more than a year - is not so much a thoughtcrime, to use George Orwell's term, as a wordcrime.

In September 2024, at an anti-genocide demonstration in Paris, he used the Arabic word intifada to refer to the global non-violent uprising against Israel's occupation of Palestine that is still taking place regularly in cities all around the world.

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International law professor William Schabas has expressed his concern over the independence of the next prosecutor of the International Criminal Court following the controversial removal of Karim Khan by member states after an 18-month long misconduct probe. 

The Assembly of States Parties (ASP), the ICC’s governing body, voted on 24 July to dismiss Khan after deciding that "the elected official... committed serious misconduct and a serious breach of duty" by engaging in "prohibited conduct against a subordinate staff member".

The opinion was contrary to the conclusion reached by the judicial process established by the bureau - the executive body of the ASP - to make a legal determination on a United Nations fact-finding investigation that outlined the evidence from the complainant, Khan and more than 30 witnesses.

In March, the panel of three judges appointed by the bureau concluded unanimously that the facts presented in the UN probe did not establish any wrongdoing under the relevant legal framework.

The July removal vote was based on the recommendation of the 21-member ASP bureau a month earlier that effectively disregarded the judges' panel opinion, finding instead that Khan committed “serious misconduct” by engaging in a sexual relationship with a subordinate. Khan has denied any wrongdoing.

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Tennessee primary voters picked a pair of Memphis-area lawmakers to square off in a dramatically reconfigured US House seat central to Donald Trump’s plan to try to hold on to a slim Republican majority in the midterm congressional elections.

Republicans chose state senator Brent Taylor, who was endorsed by Trump, to be their nominee in the revamped 9th congressional district. Democrats picked state representative Justin Pearson, who gained national prominence three years ago when he was expelled from the Tennessee House for protesting in support of gun control measures.

The previously compact Memphis-based district had a majority Black population, but it was cracked apart by Republican officials this year following a US supreme court ruling that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protection for minorities. Republicans hope the redistricting, which is part of a broader national plan pushed by Trump, could give them a clean sweep of all nine of Tennessee’s seats

The new ninth district stretches about 200 miles (320km) east from Memphis across rural areas before reaching north toward Nashville. It previously favored Democrats but now tilts Republican, with 71% of voters new to the district, according to an Associated Press estimate. Some Memphis voters have raised concerns that their representation has been diminished.

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Senate Democrats introduced a new bill on Thursday to roll back Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s news media restrictions at the Pentagon, stating that those are suppressing independent reporting at the department.

The legislation, called the Protecting Pentagon Press Access Act, was introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) that would restore journalists’ access within the Pentagon that was available before the new measures imposed by Hegseth, including the “Correspondents’ Corridor,” a decades-old workspace inside the building that national security reporters utilized.

The bill, which will have a hard time getting traction in the GOP-controlled Senate, would also restore unescorted access to reporters to areas of the department that were accessible without an escort before the late 2025 Trump administration restriction went into effect.

“At a time of war, transparency and independent, accurate reporting matter more than ever,” Schatz said in a statement. “Our bill will reverse the Pentagon’s effort to shut out the free press and make sure the public gets the information it deserves.”

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