TV News LIES

Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died at 29, the Charlotte Chess Center announced on Monday, Oct. 20.

In a statement shared to social media on behalf of the Naroditsky family, the center called the former World Junior Champion's death "unexpected."

"Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator, and a cherished member of the chess community, admired and respected by fans and players around the world," it said. "He was also a loving son and brother, and a loyal friend to many."

The Naroditsky family shares the sad news of Daniel’s unexpected passing. Daniel was a talented chess player, educator, and beloved member of the chess community. We ask for privacy as the family grieves.

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I will not just shut up and dribble… I get to sit up here and talk about what’s really important.” So proclaimed LeBron James in 2018 when confronted with the question of whether athletes have the right to speak about the political and social justice questions of their time.

Yet since 7 October 2023, elite athletes in North America have had startlingly little to say about what most human rights groups in the world, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the United Nations have characterized as Israel’s genocide in Gaza (a situation currently in flux due to a mutually agreed upon ceasefire and prisoner exchange).

To be sure, there have been some exceptions, including the righteously incandescent commentary of the WNBA’s Natasha Cloud, the organizing of Athletes for Ceasefire, Olympic medalist Moh Ahmed’s decision to sign a letter opposing Israel’s involvement in Davis Cup tennis, some oblique references from the NBA’s Kyrie Irving and Jaylen Brown, a symbolic gesture from NFLer Azeez Al-Shaair, and the recent decision of Canadian cyclist Derek Gee to end a contract with an Israeli-affiliated team.

In fact, the most significant moment in North American sport may not come from an athlete at all, but, rather, a courageous dancer at the Super Bowl half-time show in 2024.

Still, in sum, the silence of athletes has been rather deafening. Indeed, for his part, James’ only contribution to the discourse has been a statement of support for Israel. Otherwise, athletes have largely chosen to shut up and dribble.

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A driver rammed into a group of people at a children’s birthday party outside of Washington DC late on Saturday, killing a woman in her 30s and injuring at least 14 others, eight of whom were children.

In a statement released by the Bladensburg police department in Maryland, they announced that the driver of the striking vehicle had turned himself in and had been identified as a 66 year-old man from the surrounding area.

“The hit and run vehicle collision has been updated to a fatality,” they announced in an update on Sunday.

Officers were called to the scene shortly after 10pm, where the vehicle had struck several people gathered outside a home for a child’s birthday party. Eleven people were taken to local hospitals, including children ranging in age from two to nine.

The driver fled the scene of the incident on foot but eventually handed himself in to authorities.

In a statement on social media, the Prince George’s county fire and emergency medical services department confirmed that one woman and child had been transported in critical condition.

The police confirmed on Sunday that one of the women being treated had succumbed to her injuries, and identified her as 31-year-old Ashley Hernandez Gutierrez.

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A new study released Friday says President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies will decrease the country’s workforce by 15 million people over the next decade.

“The Trump administration’s policies on illegal and legal immigration would reduce the projected number of workers in the United States by 6.8 million by 2028 and by 15.7 million by 2035 and lower the annual rate of economic growth by almost one-third, harming U.S. living standards,” the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) wrote in its analysis of deportation efforts led by the White House.

“The reductions in legal immigration include suspending and reducing refugee admissions, the travel ban enacted in 2025, ending Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole programs, prohibiting international students from working on Optional Practical Training and STEM OPT after completing coursework and other changes, such as an expected public charge rule, to restrict legal immigration,” researchers wrote. 

“The analysis does not include the likely significant economic impact of restricting U.S. companies’ access to high-skilled foreign nationals through regulatory and administrative action, which could affect productivity growth,” they added.

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In 2021, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, finally removed the Confederate statues that had inspired a series of violent and eventually deadly white supremacist rallies in 2017.

The statue of Robert E Lee, which had been surrounded by white men with torches in a famous far-right propaganda image, was melted down. But the statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, which stood at the heart of a 2017 Ku Klux Klan rally, was given to a California-based arts non-profit, which pledged to use it for “transformation, not further veneration”.

Today, that same Jackson equestrian statue, chopped apart and reconstructed by American artist Kara Walker, is in Los Angeles, the centerpiece of a new art exhibit reckoning with the US’s white supremacist monuments.

Walker is famous for making art that grapples with racist images and archetypes, from her cavorting mock-historical silhouettes of plantation scenes, to the shark-filled fountain she erected in the Tate Modern as a monument to the British slave trade. Her work made her the obvious choice for transforming a prominent Confederate statue weighted with many decades of violent history.

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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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