TV News LIES

The EU could “respond swiftly and decisively” against the “unjustified” US visa bans on five Europeans involved in combating online hate and disinformation, a European Commission spokesperson has said.

European leaders including Emmanuel Macron accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the visa ban on the figures who have been at the heart of campaigns to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.

Justifying the visa bans, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, wrote on X: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.

European leaders condemn US visa bans as row over ‘censorship’ escalates.

Germany, Spain, the UK and a chorus of EU officials joined the French president in condemning the move.

The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Wednesday shot a migrant who drove a van toward them while fleeing an immigration enforcement operation, resulting in a crash that injured his passenger, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The DHS said in a statement that ICE officers were conducting a targeted operation in the Baltimore suburb of Glen Burnie, Md., when they approached a van and asked the driver, whom they identified as Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, to turn off the engine.

“The driver refused and attempted to flee, then weaponized his vehicle and began ramming his van into several ICE vehicles. He then drove his van directly at ICE officers, attempting to run them over,” the agency added in the statement.

“Fearing for their lives and public safety, the ICE officers defensively fired their service weapons, striking the driver. Sousa-Martins then wrecked his van between two buildings, injuring the passenger,” the statement continued.

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An annual Christmas Eve jazz concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington was canceled because the center’s Donald Trump-appointed board added the president's name to the building last week.

Chuck Redd, the musician who has led the show since 2006, told CNN that he called off the show “when I saw the name change happening last Friday."

The center’s board, which Trump filled with allies who then elected him chair earlier this year, voted to rename the national music, arts, and culture institution after both Trump and Kennedy on Dec. 18.

Democratic lawmakers who hold ex officio board seats due to their roles in Congress argued that the vote, which the administration claimed was unanimous, was conducted improperly. An ex officio board member, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, filed a lawsuit Dec. 22 claiming that the name change is illegal.

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A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to block New York’s so-called Green Light Law, which allows the state to issue driver’s licenses to people without requiring proof that they’re in the country legally.

U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Trump administration failed to support its claims that certain provisions of the state law are preempted by federal law, impermissibly regulate the federal government, or impermissibly discriminate against the federal government.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in February, challenging the constitutionality of the state law, saying it violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states federal laws take precedence over state laws, and asking the court to block enforcement of the statute.

The lawsuit named the state of New York, as well as its governor, Kathy Hochul (D), and its attorney general, Letitia James (D), as defendants.

The DOJ, in the lawsuit, challenged three specific provisions of the law, including one that prevented the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) from disclosing an applicant’s records or information to “any agency that primarily enforces immigration law or to any employee or agent of such agency” without a court order or warrant.

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Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian home in the south of the Israeli-occupied West Bank overnight, breaking in and killing sheep, a Palestinian official said Tuesday. It was the latest in a surge of attacks by settlers against Palestinians in the territory in recent months.

Israeli police said they arrested five settlers.

The settlers killed three sheep and injured four more, smashed a door and a window of the home, and fired tear gas inside, sending three Palestinian children under the age of 4 to the hospital, said Amir Dawood, who directs an office documenting such attacks within a Palestinian governmental body called the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.

Police said they arrested the five settlers on suspicion of trespassing onto Palestinian land, damaging property and dispensing pepper spray, not tear gas. They said they are investigating.

CCTV video from the attack in the town of As Samu’, shared by the commission, showed five masked settlers in dark clothing, some with batons, approaching the home and appearing to enter. Sounds of smashing are heard, as well as animal noises. Another video from inside shows masked figures appearing to strike sheep in the stable.

TVNL Comment:  No settler is ever punished.  There is a separate set of rules for Palestinians and settlers determined to force them out of their homes and land.  There is never an 'investigation.' The world turns a blind eye to the daily horrors.

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The United States and Ukraine have reached a consensus on several critical issues aimed at bringing an end to the nearly four-year conflict, but sensitive issues around territorial control in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland, along with the management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, remain unresolved, Ukraine's president said.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke as the U.S. showed the 20-point plan, hammered out after marathon talks in Florida in recent days, to Russian negotiators. A response is expected from Moscow on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian president briefed journalists on each point of the plan on Tuesday. His comments were embargoed until Wednesday morning. The draft proposal, which reflects Ukraine's wishes, intertwines political and commercial interests to safeguard security while boosting economic potential.

At the heart of the negotiations lies the contentious territorial dispute concerning the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, known as the Donbas. This is "the most difficult point," Zelenskyy said. He said these matters will be discussed at the leaders level.

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ust before she boarded her flight at Logan airport on 20 November, she was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and within 48 hours was deported back to Honduras, a country she left aged seven seeking asylum, with chains on her waist, ankles and wrists.

She told the Globe from her grandparent’s house in San Pedro Sula that her American Dream felt over: “I’m losing everything.”

The east coast US city might be a little short on holiday cheer this year.

Masked men in dark cars roam the streets carrying out immigration raids at traffic stops, supermarkets and courthouses. Fear has emptied some classrooms as teachers report thousands of empty desks because immigrant families fear children targeted as they learn.

An Ecuadorian couple in Boston who suffered human trafficking in the US were arrested by ICE twice in the last four months. In August the 43-year-old mother, who the Guardian is not naming, was detained for two months and 10 days. On 9 December, her husband was also arrested and is currently held in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

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Republicans are attempting to exempt some major polluters from paying for Pfas “forever chemical” cleanup. If successful, it could mark a major setback in US effort to rein in Pfas pollution.

The Republican-led House energy and commerce committee recently held a hearing at which it invited representatives from the water treatment and landfill industries, among others, to make the case about why they should be exempted from rules that hold polluters financially accountable for the cleanup of two types of dangerous Pfas.

Water treatment plants and landfills are major polluters and represent critical points in the effort to curb Pfas water pollution nationwide. Utilities already have to remove hundreds of chemicals, so it is unclear why they are so opposed to removing two types of Pfas, said Scott Faber, vice-president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group non-profit.

“The only real difference is Pfas are more toxic … so the fact that water utilities and landfills are being such crybabies about Pfas says something about how little regard for public health they have,” Faber said.

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