TV News LIES

Six months after approving the largest sexual abuse settlement in US history, officials in Los Angeles announced the county tentatively agreed to pay another huge sum, nearly $1bn, to settle more than 400 additional claims against county employees.

In April, Los Angeles county approved a historic $4bn settlement with about 11,000 claimants and allegations of sexual abuse in LA juvenile facilities that dated back decades. On Friday, the county said it had reached another major settlement for $828m, pending approval by the board of supervisors, the county governing body, and the county claims board.

“Our settlements balance our obligation to compensate victims and treat their experiences with compassion, with the need to put strong protections in place to protect taxpayers from fraud,” Kathryn Barger, the chair of the Los Angeles county board of supervisors, said in a statement.

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A Chicago woman shot multiple times by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents was recently indicted by a grand jury on federal charges of impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon.

Prosecutors allege Marimar Martinez, 30, rammed the vehicle of federal agents with her own before they shot her, which they say was an act of self-defense. They also claim Martinez was armed.

Martinez’s lawyer, Christopher Parente, said footage from one of the agent’s body-worn cameras contradicted that account, and Martinez will plead not guilty at an arraignment scheduled in the coming days.

According to Parente, that camera footage captured one of the officers saying, “Do something, bitch,” before opening fire.

The footage has not been made public.

Another person, 21-year-old Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, was also indicted on Thursday in the same case.

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Devices were found inside his front pocket and a backpack he was carrying on the scene, in addition to a tent encampment set up in close proximity to the cathedral, the records show.

A man arrested outside the annual Red Mass ceremony held at St. Matthew’s Cathedral had over 200 explosive devices in a tent on the church’s stairs, according to police. 

Louis Geri, 41, touted homemade explosives when officers approached him on the step ahead of the service typically attended by Supreme Court justices to ring in a new term, according to court records reviewed by the Washington Post.

Authorities also found vials of nitromethane, a colorless, organic compound used in explosive devices, the court records showed.

Geri said he had a background in explosives and told officers at the scene that the vials were intended to be used as grenades with rubber bands to secure the fuse, according to court records, per the Post.

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Portland is bracing for the deployment of 200 national guard troops as Donald Trump moves ahead with plans to bring the US military into another Democratic-run city.

Oregon filed a lawsuit to block the deployment, which the state has warned will escalate tensions and lead to unrest when there is “no need or legal justification” to bring federal troops into Portland.

Trump on Saturday claimed Portland is “war ravaged” and that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities there are under attack, but there is no evidence of that and protests outside Ice sites have been small.

It is the latest development in Trump’s years-long fixation on the Pacific north-west city of 635,000 that extended through the president’s first term in the White House. The president has frequently sought to paint the city as out of control and, as he described in September, like “living in hell”.

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Donald Trump’s plan to deploy national guard troops and federal immigration agents to Chicago is already having an impact on the city’s Mexican community.

Organizers have canceled several local events tied to Mexican Independence Day, which occurs on 16 September.

People of Mexican descent constitute about 21% of the city’s population, according to census data, and hold annual events around the holiday that attract thousands of people.

But Trump recently inaccurately described Chicago as “the most dangerous city in the world” and said: “We’re going in.”

The administration plans to send 230 agents, most of whom work for Customs and Border Protection, to Chicago from Los Angeles as part of an increased effort to make immigration arrests, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

At least three events connected to the holiday have been canceled or postponed. Organizers decided to cancel El Grito Chicago, an event that drew 24,000 people last year, and was scheduled for 13-14 September.

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Donald Trump told reporters that he might send national guard troops into Portland, Oregon, apparently because he was misled about the scale of small protests there by a TV report that incorrectly presented video recorded in 2020 as having taken place this summer.

“I will say this, I watched today, I didn’t know that was continuing to go on, but Portland is unbelievable, what’s going on,” Trump said. He then claimed, incorrectly, that he had seen video evidence of “the destruction of the city”.

Trump, apparently misled by video of 2020 protests, threatens to send troops to Portland

Donald Trump told reporters that he might send national guard troops into Portland, Oregon, apparently because he was misled about the scale of small protests there by a TV report that incorrectly presented video recorded in 2020 as having taken place this summer.

“I will say this, I watched today, I didn’t know that was continuing to go on, but Portland is unbelievable, what’s going on,” Trump said. He then claimed, incorrectly, that he had seen video evidence of “the destruction of the city”.

In fact, a handful of protesters have demonstrated outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in a remote area of Portland along the south waterfront this year, but the scale of the protests, which attract dozens at most, is nothing like the 2020 protests following the police killing of George Floyd that regularly drew thousands to tens of thousands of demonstrators to a central part of the city for months.

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