TV News LIES

A career federal prosecutor in Virginia has told colleagues she does not believe there is probable cause to file criminal mortgage fraud charges against New York attorney general Letitia James, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The prosecutor, Elizabeth Yusi, oversees major criminal cases in the Norfolk office for the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and plans to soon present her conclusion to Lindsey Halligan, a Trump ally, who was installed as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia last month. Yusi’s thinking was first reported by MSNBC on Monday.

The justice department declined to comment. The US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia did not return a request for comment.

The case sets up another high-profile confrontation between the justice department and Trump, who has fired attorneys who have refused to punish his enemies. Halligan, who has no prosecutorial experience, was put in the role at the urging of Trump after her predecessor concluded there wasn’t probable cause to file criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director. Halligan personally presented the case against Comey to a grand jury after she was appointed and secured a two-count indictment.

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Two years after the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, in which militants killed about 1,200 Israelis, and amid the genocide in Gaza, in which Israel has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, the need for peace has never been more urgent.

Palestinians are desperate for an end to starvation and airstrikes. Israelis want the war to end for the sake of remaining hostages and soldiers. Violence has reverberated across the region. Momentum has been growing around Donald Trump’s proposal, with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas grudgingly indicating acceptance under US threat.

With indirect talks between Israel and Hamas beginning in in Egypt on Monday afternoon, there are frail hopes of progress at last. Yet both parties have made it clear that they reject major parts of the 20-point US plan, which begins with an immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages – followed by the release of Palestinian prisoners – and the resumption of full aid.

For Netanyahu, perpetual war in Gaza and beyond extends his political survival. His far-right coalition partners want to expel Palestinians and settle Gaza. Hamas has no desire to sign itself out of existence, and handing back the last hostages would remove any leverage it retains. It has seen much of its leadership destroyed, as well as life in Gaza – but has also watched international public opinion shift unprecedentedly towards support for Palestinians, pulling governments in its wake. It can recruit from a huge pool of angry and traumatised young men.Egypt on Monday afternoon, there are frail hopes of progress at last. Yet both parties have made it clear that they reject major parts of the 20-point US plan, which begins with an immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages – followed by the release of Palestinian prisoners – and the resumption of full aid.

For Netanyahu, perpetual war in Gaza and beyond extends his political survival. His far-right coalition partners want to expel Palestinians and settle Gaza. Hamas has no desire to sign itself out of existence, and handing back the last hostages would remove any leverage it retains. It has seen much of its leadership destroyed, as well as life in Gaza – but has also watched international public opinion shift unprecedentedly towards support for Palestinians, pulling governments in its wake. It can recruit from a huge pool of angry and traumatised young men.

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A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked President Trump’s deployment of 200 National Guard members to Portland, Ore. 

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted Oregon and Portland officials’ request for a temporary restraining order, barring implementation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s memo that authorized federalizing the troops over the state’s objection.

“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” the Trump-appointed judge wrote. 

Immergut denied the Trump administration’s request to pause her order while the administration appeals. Her order is set to expire in 14 days but could be extended, and she set a trial for Oct. 29.  

State and city officials jointly sued the Trump administration last month after the president vowed to protect “war-ravaged” Portland and its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices he described as “under siege.”

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scientists Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi from Japan won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discoveries in controlling the immune system, creating openings for possible new autoimmune disease and cancer treatments.

This year's prize "relates to how we keep our immune system under control so we can fight all imaginable microbes and still avoid autoimmune disease," said Marie Wahren-Herlenius, a rheumatology professor at the Karolinska Institute.

Sakaguchi told reporters outside his university laboratory that "I feel it is a tremendous honour," Kyodo news agency reported.

The winners for medicine are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute medical university and receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million), as well as a gold medal presented by Sweden's king.

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The Supreme Court on Oct. 6 declined to decide whether Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was wrongly prosecuted for sex trafficking, avoiding a politically sensitive issue that has bedeviled President Donald Trump.

The justices rejected an appeal from Maxwell, who argued that a deal Epstein struck with federal prosecutors in Florida should have prevented her from being charged in New York.

Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for trafficking a minor to engage in sex acts with Epstein, has also sought help from Trump.

Maxwell’s attorneys want Trump to pardon or commute her sentence in exchange for her cooperation in the Epstein investigation and broader sex trafficking issues.

She spent two days talking to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July as the administration scrambled to respond to calls for more transparency over what Epstein did and who else may have been involved. Around that time, federal officials moved Maxwell from a federal prison in Florida to a lower-security facility in Texas.

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Israel continued the bombardment of Gaza as negotiators arrived in Cairo before talks on Monday. The negotiations will mainly focus on US President Donald Trump's peace proposal, which entails the release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and a broader end to the war, which is inching closer to the two-year mark.

While the hopes for the war to end get stronger, Israel continued strikes on the Palestinian coastal enclave, killing 63 people in the last 24 hours, The Guardian reported. Meanwhile, the Egyptian foreign ministry said that the talks on Monday would focus on the first phase of Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza.

The release of the remaining 48 hostages held by Hamas is expected to be the primary concern of the talks. The Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian told journalists that talks in Egypt would be “confined to a few days maximum” Later on Sunday, Trump said that the talks in Cairo are advancing “rapidly” and the first phase “should be completed this week.”

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Syria is holding parliamentary elections on Sunday forthe first time since the fall of the country's longtime autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, who was unseated in a rebel offensive in December.

Under the 50-year rule of the Assad dynasty, Syria held regular elections in which all Syrian citizens could vote. But in practice, the Assad-led Baath Party always dominated the parliament, and the votes were widely regarded as sham elections.

Outside election analysts said the only truly competitive part of the process came before election day — with the internal primary system in the Baath Party, when party members jockeyed for positions on the list.

The elections to be held on Sunday, however, will not be a fully democratic process either. Rather, most of the People's Assembly seats will be voted on by electoral colleges in each district, while one-third of the seats will be directly appointed by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa.

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For the second anniversary of launching mobilization in the Russian Federation, the Chronicles research project and the Extreme Scan group conducted a survey among Russians which proved that almost half of them support the withdrawal of troops from Ukraine.

According to the poll results, 49% of Russians surveyed would support the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine and the start of peace talks without achieving the military goals set by Moscow, while 33% of respondents opposed such a decision. Also, 63% of survey participants were in favor of concluding a peace treaty with mutual concessions between Russia and Ukraine in the coming year.

As many as 32% of respondents said they were ready to participate in the war against Ukraine by order of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, while 30% expressed the opposite intention. 29% of Russians were in favor of a new wave of mobilization.

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