TV News LIES

Aid experts have denounced the US’s “embarrassing” and “pitiful” initial response to the Nepal flood disaster after the US state department announced it was releasing $500,000 in emergency funds to help the relief effort.

The modest sum – which has since been increased – allocated in response to the devastation caused by mudslides in the mountainous Asian country was mocked on social media, where users contrasted it with the amount spent on other Trump administration priorities.

The death toll from last week’s flash floods has passed 1,000, with 4,400 people still unaccounted, according to officials in Nepal and China. Rescue teams are trying to find workers trapped in hydropower tunnels, which were buried in mud.

The US contribution has been upped to $3.6m, which state department officials say will be used to deliver food assistance to feed 10,000 affected households for up to three months, and pay for emergency items such as blankets, mosquito nets and shelter sheets.

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The Mamdani administration will open the New York City’s first day care for the children of municipal workers next week.

The pilot program will open for 41 children on the ground floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, which looms beside the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge at 1 Centre St. City officials said most of the parents work right upstairs at various city agencies, including the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the city comptroller’s office and the Office of the Public Advocate.

“This is something that the private sector sometimes thinks about, but it's not something that we've done in city government before, so we're really excited to try this,” said Yume Kitasei, commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. The agency will oversee the contract with the provider, Imagine Early Learning Centers.

The pilot program will open for 41 children on the ground floor of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, which looms beside the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge at 1 Centre St. City officials said most of the parents work right upstairs at various city agencies, including the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, the city comptroller’s office and the Office of the Public Advocate.

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A Chinese immigrant was found dead just hours after being booked into immigration detention in a U.S. territory, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Lianyong Wei was arrested by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Public Safety on Aug. 21 after allegedly attacking a family in their home, officials said. A day later, Wei, whose legal immigration status ended in 2019, was taken into custody "without incident, pending his removal proceedings."

The 51-year-old was found unresponsive during morning checks the next day by a corrections officer at the Saipan facility, run by the Northern Mariana Islands Department of Corrections. Wei was pronounced dead at approximately 7:30 a.m. local time on Aug. 23.

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A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday blocked an executive order from President Trump that again seeks to restrict birthright citizenship.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman granted a preliminary injunction in a case brought by two immigration advocacy groups that had also challenged the Trump administration’s initial attempt last year to limit who is eligible for automatic citizenship at birth.

Boardman wrote in a 35-page opinion that the new directive was “almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class,” pointing to the Supreme Court decision in June that struck down Trump’s Day 1 executive order.

This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them,” Boardman, a Biden appointee, wrote.

Her order prohibits the administration from enforcing the new restriction against any child born after February 19, 2025, to one or both parents who were not lawfully in the country at the time.

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Israeli attacks on Gaza have escalated in the last 24 hours, with five Palestinians killed, the Palestinian health ministry is reporting.

On Tuesday morning, at least seven air strikes hit an area west of Gaza City within a 10-minute period, killing a child, while Israeli soldiers opened fire in Deir el-Balah, killing another child.

Al Jazeera described chaotic scenes in Gaza City following "intense" Israeli attacks, reporting that 10 blasts were heard in al-Kateeba - one of the city's most densely populated areas.

Palestinian journalist Abdulrahman Ismail reported in a post on X that the attacks in Gaza City targeted an area "near a field hospital and thousands of tents sheltering displaced Palestinians".

"Quadcopter drones then surrounded the area, opening fire and dropping explosives at anyone moving, as the sound of clashes echoed nearby. Israeli drones simultaneously spread across Gaza City, while smoke bombs were reported over Al-Shati," Ismail said.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky warned international airlines and insurers on Tuesday that Russian airspace is becoming “completely unsafe” as Ukraine expands drone and missile strikes against military targets and parts of Russia’s economy supporting the war.

“The war started by Russia is closing its skies,” Zelensky said in his Tuesday evening address. “Drone-infested skies are no place for civilian aviation.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and other state institutions will provide international aviation organizations with information about the risks, while foreign ambassadors in Kyiv and Moscow have been urged to relay the warning to their governments.

Zelensky  said the growing danger over Russia was a direct consequence of Moscow’s intensified attacks on Ukraine, which he said have sharply increased since August.

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A Utah judge ruled Tuesday that the man accused of killing Charlie Kirk must stand trial for aggravated murder, a felony charge that makes him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

After several hours of closing arguments in Provo, Utah, judge Tony Graf ruled there is sufficient evidence to try Tyler Robinson, 23, who has been charged with the murder of one of the US right’s most prominent figures.

Robinson pleaded not guilty after Graf’s ruling. A trial date has yet to be set.

A key factor in charging aggravated murder is whether the shooter knowingly created a risk of death to anyone else as he carried out the killing.

Judge Graf said: “These circumstances support a reasonable inference that defendant was aware that other individuals were positioned near Mr Kirk when he fired.”

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A new system to screen millions of mail-in ballots for this November’s US midterm elections was thrown together so hastily, and tested so little, that a single scanning glitch could see entire batches of ballots turned away, a whistleblower has told Congress.

The project – a key part of Donald Trump’s new restrictions on voting – is “perilously rushed and potentially unlawful”, according to the US senator Richard Blumenthal, who disclosed the warning in a letter to David Steiner, the postmaster general, on Tuesday.

Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the US Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, said the account he had received made clear the US Postal Service “lacks the technical or operational capability” to roll it out safely before ballots go out to voters.

The system stems from a March executive order by Trump tightening federal control over mail-in voting, directing USPS to check ballots against a federally approved voter list before sending them – a break from its usual role of simply delivering whatever is handed over by states. Courts have blocked and unblocked parts of the order repeatedly since, amid lawsuits arguing it oversteps into territory the constitution leaves to states.

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