TV News LIES

Anderson Cooper is signing off after 20 years.

The CNN anchor, 58, bid farewell to "60 Minutes" on the newsmagazine show's May 17 episode, his last as a correspondent. After the season finale, which featured a report by Cooper about London's cab industry in the age of autonomous vehicles, CBS News released an extended farewell interview with the journalist.

Cooper grew emotional as he delivered his final "I'm Anderson Cooper." After choking up for several seconds and looking down as he held back tears, he looked straight into the camera and said the line three times, a standard for the show.

In the "overtime" segment, Cooper went down memory lane, recalling the "dangerous" and "dumb" things he's done for the show, such as diving with Nile crocodiles and being "temporarily" blinded after riding a jet ski over massive waves in Portugal.

Though a montage of recognizable faces showed Cooper's interviews with Prince Harry, Lady Gaga, and the late Donald Sutherland, Cooper seemed to fondly look back on impactful sit-down interviews with "compelling characters" who are not household names, such as a Holocaust survivor and people combating child malnutrition in Niger.

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Something dangerous is happening within Israeli society, and it could have consequences for the entire region.

Since the beginning of the genocidal war in Gaza, Israeli society has consciously created a broad consensus around a violent discourse centred on revenge - one that encourages war not only against Palestinians, but across the region as a whole. 

Almost every public opinion poll finds overwhelming support for the war, and very little criticism of the continuous chain of crimes committed over the past two-and-a-half years. But this culture of revenge and violence has also turned inwards, affecting Israeli society itself.

Research increasingly reveals the psychological and social costs of the war, amid the spread of violence into every sphere of Israeli society.

As early as 1968, a year after the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Jewish philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz published a foundational essay in which he coined the notion that “occupation corrupts”.

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More than seven months have passed since a US-mediated ceasefire was announced with the stated aim of ending Israel's two-year genocide in Gaza.

Yet Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes and violations of the agreement, albeit at a lower intensity than before the truce.

The humanitarian crisis caused by the war has also persisted, with Israel maintaining a tight siege on the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli military has justified some of its violations by accusing Palestinian factions of breaching the ceasefire.

However, many of those killed, displaced or arbitrarily detained over the past seven months have been civilians, including children.

With the first phase of the agreement still not fully implemented by Israel, the US has so far failed to advance talks towards the next stage, which was meant to include the disarmament of Palestinian armed groups, the deployment of international stabilisation forces, reconstruction in the strip and a full Israeli withdrawal.

The lack of progress has raised fresh doubts over the future of the fragile ceasefire, as Israel continues to mass forces near Gaza and threatens a renewed assault on the strip.

Middle East Eye breaks down the main Israeli breaches of the ceasefire so far.

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France has pledged to broaden its defense commitment to Ukraine by offering specialized technical and operational cooperation to counter Russia’s intensifying use of ballistic weaponry.

The announcement followed a high-level telephone consultation between President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, May 16.

Writing on his official Facebook page, President Zelensky explicitly framed the development as a major milestone for Ukraine’s heavily strained air defense architecture.

“I thanked Emmanuel for his principled condemnation of Russian strikes on our cities and communities. These attacks make very clear what Russia is and why we all need to strengthen our collective defense against all threats. France is ready to work on anti-ballistic capabilities. This is a strong decision and an important step. We also discussed boosting our ability to repel Russian attacks right now,” Zelensky noted.

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Brilliant splashes of green, purple and pink will streak the night sky for many stargazers in North America on Saturday and Sunday night, as energized particles from space collide with the Earth's atmosphere to create the dazzling effect, known as the Northern Lights or aurora borealis.

The northern United States and much of Canada will have the best view of the natural aurora phenomenon, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The best sightings will come from where the aurora is directly overhead, but hopefuls can catch sight of the light show from up to 1000 km away.

The best time to catch the streaks of light will be just after sunset or just before sunrise; the aurora is not visible during the day.

The beautiful display of lights results from a form of space weather, according to NASA, when high-energy space particles violently collide with atoms of gas in a planet's atmosphere, close to its magnetic pole.

The geomagnetic storm causing this latest aurora is expected to be at its strongest on Saturday night, and will provide onlookers with their best chance to see the show, according to the NOAA.

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Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert suggested that Donald Trump blocked funds for a clean drinking water project in her state over the prosecution of election denier Tina Peters.

Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, commuted Peters’ nearly nine-year prison sentence on Friday, ordering her release on 1 June. The former Colorado county clerk had allowed unauthorized people to access voting records amid efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Boebert welcomed the commutation the same day, taking some credit, but giving even more to Trump.

“I’m proud of the relentless pressure my office and I applied, working hand-in-hand with President Donald Trump, to highlight Tina’s case and demand fairness,” the congresswoman wrote. “This outcome would not have been possible without the continued pressure and advocacy from President Trump who always knew Tina deserved fairness under the law.”

In comments to 9News Denver on Friday, Boebert also said that she hoped the release of Peters would convince Trump to stop blocking funds for a federal project to bring clean drinking water to Colorado. “We were told that Tina was the reason we couldn’t get water,” Boebert said, an apparent reference to Trump exerting on Colorado’s governor the same kind of pressure he put on Ukraine’s president in 2019, when he withheld congressionally mandated military aid to try to force Ukraine to open a sham investigation into Joe Biden. Trump was impeached for that scheme in 2019.

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Donald Trump may agree to drop his massive $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the launch of a $1.7bn fund to compensate people he says were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, according to reports.

The case is the latest example of how Trump has taken over the justice department – which typically operates at arm’s length from the White House – and deployed it for his own ends.

Among other people, more than 1,500 January 6 rioters would be eligible to receive compensation from the fund, ABC said. The treasury department’s Judgment Fund, a pool of taxpayer funds reserved to pay out court judgments and settlements, would allegedly become the vehicle for Trump’s self-styled victim compensation fund.

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Thousands of people from across the country descended on Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, on Saturday. They arrived by bus, by car and by plane to gather for the All Roads Lead to the South rally, following the supreme court’s Louisiana v Callais decision last month, which essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act and severely limited protections against voting discrimination.

Organized by a coalition of national and local civic engagement groups, the rally took place outside the Alabama state capitol building, in the same plaza where the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches – three nonviolent demonstrations in support of Black voting rights – are enshrined.

“We’re here, Montgomery, not at a stopping point, but at a starting point,” Steven L Reed, mayor of Montgomery and the first Black person to hold the position, told the crowd. “We’re here in this city because of the spirit, because of the courage and because of the commitment of our forefathers and foremothers who got us to this point.”

Following the supreme court decision, Republican-led states rushed to redraw their voting maps in ways that weaken Black political power. Tennessee and Florida have already passed new maps, while Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia seem poised to follow. Mississippi temporarily paused redistricting efforts, with the state’s governor promising to revisit the issue soon.

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