TV News LIES

A 22-year-old visitor to Yosemite national park in California died after he was swept over a 594ft-high waterfall on Saturday, officials confirmed this week.

A fellow parkgoer, Freesia Gaul, was capturing a photo when she noticed the man, reportedly identified by local authorities as Josue Baires Alfaro, in the Merced River.

He did not appear to be a “strong swimmer”, Gaul told SFGate. A former volunteer lifeguard, Gaul jumped into the water in hopes of rescuing him.

“People see calm water, but they don’t realize that under that there’s a huge undercurrent,” she said.

“When you see someone like that, when you make direct eye contact with someone who you know is going to go over, you can’t turn around.”

In turbulent waters, Gaul could not reach Alfaro and struggled herself to stay afloat, SFGate reported. She thought her survival odds were bleak, until a bystander put forth a walking stick that she clung on to to avoid going over Nevada Fall.

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New details of an unverified ransom note previously sent to at least one news outlet following the alleged kidnapping of Savannah Guthrie's mom, Nancy Guthrie, are becoming public four months after her disappearance.

A second ransom note released shortly after the 84-year-old's suspected abduction in Tucson, Arizona, on Feb. 1 claimed that she was dead, NBC News, ABC News and CBS News reported on Monday, June 22. NBC and ABC cited unnamed people "familiar with" the case, while CBS referred to "sources who reviewed the notes."

After stepping back from the "Today" show in February, Savannah Guthrie returned to the program to resume anchoring duties in April. Sitting down with her longtime colleague Hoda Kotb in March, a tearful Guthrie said she and her siblings "are in agony" over her mother's disappearance, adding, "It is unbearable."

"There are a lot of different notes, I think that came. And I think most of them, it's my understanding, are not real," Guthrie told Kotb in a "Today" interview segment released March 26. "But I believe the two notes that we received that we responded to, I tend to believe those were real."

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Everything modern civilization has built rests on two modest skills: Reading and arithmetic. America spent two centuries showing what they make possible. It is now showing what their absence does.

The news from American classrooms is, for lack of a better word, depressing. Reading and math scores have been declining for more than a decade. Some of the fall predated the pandemic, which made matters considerably worse. The latest chapter in the story is the strangest, and perhaps the most disturbing. Professors report freshmen who cannot read basic sentences, let alone finish books. They struggle to follow arguments from beginning to end, as though every paragraph should arrive with a skip button.

The usual suspects line up for blame. Smartphones capture attention before the day even starts. Social platforms tuned to drip-feed dopamine and keep users hooked. Academic standards lowered until failure itself becomes increasingly rare. Grades inflated until everyone graduates feeling truly exceptional. All of it matters, but none of it gets to the heart of the problem.

That’s because the problem in the classroom is civilizational. For most of the last century, IQ scores rose across the rich nations. Each generation outscored the one before. Researchers called it the Flynn effect, after the man who clocked it. Better food, more schooling, smaller families, and greater mental stimulation all contributed to the cumulative gains. The brain had a tailwind, but that tailwind has turned. Studies in the U.S. and beyond now show scores dropping among the young. For a century, the line went up. Now it goes down.

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At least 12 people in a crowd on a Chicago street suffered gunshot wounds after an SUV pulled up and two people inside the vehicle started shooting, police said.

The SUV drove away from the South Side neighborhood, leaving two people, both male, in critical condition following the shooting late on Friday, police said in a news release. One suffered a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The eight men and four women in the group ranged in age from 17 to 47. They were being treated at four hospitals.

Police said another man suffered unknown injuries and refused medical treatment.

Police initially responded to a call of one person shot, and found a woman with two gunshot wounds to her back and a man with four graze wounds to his back. Both were listed in fair condition.

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Three hikers died from suspected heat-related illness in Grand Canyon National Park amid extremely hot temperatures, officials said.

Grand Canyon National Park rangers and emergency personnel responded to incidents on June 12 and June 16, resulting in three deaths, according to a June 19 National Park Service news release. Hikers were on trails in the Inner Canyon, where officials said temperatures in the shade could reach 109 degrees around midday.

“Hiking in Grand Canyon can be a challenge for anyone, especially during the heat of summer,” the park service news release said. Park officials have warned visitors to avoid the Inner Canyon during peak daytime hours because of extreme temperatures.

On June 12, a 72-year-old man died from symptoms of heat-related illness along the South Kaibab Trail. The park service website said the trail offers expansive views but little shade and no water other than a water filling station at the trailhead during the summer.

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More than 26,000 New Jersey residents have been kicked off their monthly food benefits since the Trump administration’s federal work rules took effect, state officials said.

Emergency food advocates say it’s only going to get worse, further straining food pantries that are already seeing surging demand amid soaring gas prices and stubbornly high living costs.

“One of the most alarming things is it's just the beginning,” said Elizabeth McCarthy, CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, an anti-hunger group. “We really expect this to keep happening.”

The work requirements passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump last summer overhauled the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps families afford groceries. The changes required states that were exempt from work requirements because of high unemployment rates to comply and made more groups of people subject to those rules, such as homeless people, veterans and older adults.\

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