TV News LIES

Three civilians and an off-duty NYPD officer were killed when an active shooter opened fire in a Manhattan skyscraper in Midtown Monday evening, sources told Nexstar’s WPIX.

The shooting took place in the lobby of Blackstone, the building that houses some of the country’s top financial firms and the National Football League, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Law enforcement officials located identification on Tamura’s body, including a concealed carry permit from Las Vegas, the people said. 

The building was being evacuated as of 7 p.m.

At 7:13 p.m., Mayor Adams confirmed on X that an active shooter investigation was taking place in Midtown.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed on X that the shooter had been neutralized: “At this time, the scene has been contained and the lone shooter has been neutralized.”

More...

If you’re hiking or camping in the arid Southwest and West in the next few months, get ready for what could be the experience – or fright – of a lifetime.

Across the United States, in California, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas, tens of thousands of tarantulas will being crawling out of their burrows in search of females – making for a fascinating, if a little creepy – display of the wonders of nature.

It’s tarantula mating season.

“If you’re lucky enough you can sometimes see them in hordes crossing the roads at certain times of the year,” said Dan McCamish, a senior environmental scientist with California State Parks.

His advice? Leave them alone.

"It’s a wild animal – it doesn’t want to be picked up and loved and hugged,” he said. “In general the species is very docile, but if you were to handle one they could bite you.”

More...

One meal a day. Forced to choose which of her kids get fed. In the market, because all the banks are closed and there is a cash liquidity crisis, $20 for a single egg; $1,400 for a bag of flour that might last 20 days.

Such is the plight of Gazans like Amal Nassar, 35, an English teacher from Deir Al-Balah in the central part of the Palestinian enclave. Nassar, her three children and her husband are among more than 2 million Gazans who remain trapped almost two years since the war that began after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

"We don't have enough to eat," Nassar said in a WhatsApp message over the weekend. USA TODAY has written about Nassar's story of giving birth to her daughter Mira in a war zone without access to pain relief.

More...

A federal judge blocked enforcement of a provision in President Donald Trump's recently enacted tax and spending bill that would deprive Planned Parenthood and its members of Medicaid funding, saying it is likely unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a preliminary injunction on July 28 after finding the law likely violated the Constitution by targeting Planned Parenthood's health centers specifically for punishment for providing abortions.

That provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by the Republican-led Congress, denied certain tax-exempt organizations and their affiliates from receiving Medicaid funds if they continue to provide abortions.

The Department of Justice argued that "the bill stops federal subsidies for Big Abortion" and urged Talwani not to let Planned Parenthood and its members "supplant duly enacted legislation with their own policy preferences."

Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said the law's text and structure made clear that it was crafted to cover every member of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the parent organization, even if they were not named.re

More...

In a tent by the Mediterranean Sea, Hidaya Al-Motawaq cradles her crying baby boy and tries to offer what comfort she can. "Khalas," she murmurs repeatedly. "Khalas, khalas." Enough, that's enough.

Mohammad is a year and a half old and nearly all bone. His eyes protrude, as does his swollen stomach. His spine is so sharp and so defined, it seems it might poke through his thin skin.

Al-Motawaq, 30, says she no longer has breast milk to give him, because she herself is malnourished.

A widow, Al-Motawaq went from hospital to hospital, looking for food or milk to offer Mohammad and her other child, his five-year-old sister, but says she has been unable to find any. The one remaining pediatric ward treating malnutrition in Gaza closed down this month, citing a lack of food and medical supplies.

More...

An investigation has been triggered after a three-year-old boy died after being left in a hot car by a contractor for the state human resources department in Alabama.

Ke’Torrius Starkes Jr, who was in foster care, had been picked up in the late morning on Tuesday by the worker after a supervised visit with his father, the New York Times reported. He was supposed to be transported to a daycare program by a worker for the department, which oversees child protection other social s

ervices.

Instead the boy was left alone strapped in a vehicle with tinted windows on a hot day in Bessemer, a suburb of Birmingham.

The Birmingham police department said officers went to a private home in Bessemer to respond to a report of an unresponsive child at around 5.30pm and found that the boy was “accidentally left inside of a vehicle while in the care of a third-party contracted worker through the Department of Human Resources”.

The boy was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said.

More...

Tom Lehrer, the popular and erudite song satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities, has died. He was 97.

Longtime friend David Herder said Lehrer died Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not specify a cause of death.

Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return.

A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and current events. His songs included “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “The Old Dope Peddler” (set to a tune reminiscent of “The Old Lamplighter”), “Be Prepared” (in which he mocked the Boy Scouts) and “The Vatican Rag,” in which Lehrer, an atheist, poked at the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church.

More...

Former President Barack Obama added to growing calls for aid in Gaza as dozens of Palestinians have perished from starvation and global experts warn of looming famine in the region.

“Aid must be permitted to reach people in Gaza,” Obama wrote in a Sunday statement on X. “There is no justification for keeping food and water away from civilian families.”

Obama’s statement comes as Israel has resumed its military offensive in Gaza, and imposed a blockade of goods that has stymied access to food, water and medical supplies. Although Israel has previously claimed that there are routes for aid to enter the Palestinian territory, physicians, human rights organizations and civilians have reported scant ability to access or distribute these resources, growing cases of starvation and violent attacks by Israeli soldiers at aid sites.

More...