TV News LIES

President Donald Trump commuted U.S. Rep. George Santos’ seven-year prison sentence, releasing him from jail on Oct. 17.

Santos, a 37-year-old Republican from New York, reported to the Federal Correctional Institution Flatiron Satellite Camp in New Jersey on July 25 to begin a seven-year prison sentence for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. As part of the plea, he admitted to filing false campaign finance reports, charging donors’ credit cards without authorization and fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits, among other acts that began years before he ran for Congress in 2022.

Santos represented parts of Queens and Long Island for 11 months. He recently published an open letter directly appealing to Trump in fawning language.

“George Santos was somewhat of a “rogue,” but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” wrote Trump in a Truth Social post. “At least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN! George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated. Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY. Good luck George, have a great life!”

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The controversial US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has confirmed it suspended operations in Gaza after the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October.

Despite being funded until  November, the organisation said its final delivery was on Friday.

The GHF has been heavily criticised after hundreds of Palestinians were killed while collecting food near its distribution sites. Witnesses say most were killed by Israeli forces.

Israel has regularly denied that its troops fired on civilians at or near the sites and the GHF has maintained that aid distribution at its sites has been carried out "without incident".

The group's northernmost aid distribution site, known as SDS4, was shut down because it was no longer in IDF-controlled territory, said a spokesman.

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"Of course, I was happy about being released, but not happy of being displaced with no safety in place, no life necessities," said 23-year-old Abdullah Wa'el Mohammed Farhan, one of the former Palestinian prisoners freed on Monday as part of a ceasefire deal that President Donald Trump helped broker.

Standing outside a tent in Khan Younis, where he and his family are living, Farhan told ABC News that he was imprisoned for 20 months as the war with Israel raged on. He said that while detained, he and the other Palestinian prisoners were "completely isolated from the world."

"When I was told about my release, I didn’t believe it because more than once [Israeli authorities] told us about our release and moved us from one prison to another while being tortured and beaten," Farhan said.

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News of the phone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, in which they agreed to meet in person to discuss the war in Ukraine, will have come as an unwelcome surprise to Kyiv.

The country is being hit hard.

The last 24 hours alone have seen Russia launch dozens of missiles and more than 300 drones at multiple targets.

Once again, they include a large amount of civilian infrastructure with further damage to the country's gas supply network, just as the first signs of cold herald a long, hard winter ahead.

Attacks on the electrical grid are already leading to nationwide power outages.

For Ukraine's government it's a sign of Russian desperation.

The frontlines are at effective stalemate, involving huge loss of life for incremental territorial gains.

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The US Chamber of Commerce has sued the Trump administration over its new policy of imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B worker visas.

In a press release regarding the lawsuit, the Chamber said the new fee is unlawful since it “overrides provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that govern the H-1B program, including the requirement that fees be based on the costs incurred by the government in processing visas.”

Last month, President Donald Trump announced that he would increase the fee on the H-1B visa to $100,000 per year. The program allows US employers to hire foreign workers in speciality fields, and technology companies in particular rely heavily on workers who receive H-1B visas.

Critics of H-1Bs and other work visa programs say they are often used to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labour. But business groups and major companies have said H-1Bs are a critical means to address a shortage of qualified American workers.

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Indiana University has ordered its student-run newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student (IDS), to cease printing new editions and fired the school’s director of student media, who also served as the paper’s adviser, according to multiple reports. Students at the school are criticizing these moves as censorship.

The university’s directive to halt print editions came just hours after Jim Rodenbush, the school’s director of student media, was terminated, according to a letter from IDS editors.

The editors said Indiana University and the media school “previously directed the IDS to stop printing news coverage in our newspaper. Only the special editions, traditionally included as inserts in our paper. Telling us what we can and cannot print is unlawful censorship. The Student Press Law Center agrees and had told the university to reverse course.”

They wrote: “After former director of student media Jim Rodenbush resisted, IU fired him. When we asked them to rescind the order, it cut print entirely.”

Rodenbush confirmed to NBC News on Thursday that he was fired on Tuesday.

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The US military carried out a new strike on Thursday against a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a US official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported. But it raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody.

The Pentagon, which has labeled those it has targeted in the strikes as “narcoterrorists”, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prior to Thursday’s operation, US military strikes against suspected drug boats off Venezuela killed at least 27 people, raising alarms among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who question whether they adhere to the laws of war.

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Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media.

Adm Alvin Holsey’s abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military’s southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years.

A source told Reuters that there had been tension between the four-star commander and Hegseth as well as questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.

The New York Times reports that an unnamed US official said that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats”.

In a statement shared on social media, Hegseth did not disclose the reason for Holsey’s plan “to retire at year’s end”.

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