TV News LIES

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco filed for bankruptcy on Monday, saying a Chapter 11 reorganization will facilitate a settlement of about 500 lawsuits accusing the church of enabling childhood sexual abuse by priests.

The filing in U.S. bankruptcy court in San Francisco will put the lawsuits on hold and buy time for settlement talks, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said in a statement.

"We believe the bankruptcy process is the best way to provide a compassionate and equitable solution for survivors of abuse while ensuring that we continue the vital ministries to the faithful and to the communities that rely on our services and charity," Cordileone said.

The "overwhelming majority" of the alleged abuse occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, involving priests who are deceased or no longer in ministry, Cordileone said.

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A record heat wave in the Pacific Northwest has prompted fire managers to bump the national preparedness level up a notch, from three to four on a five point scale. More than two dozen large fires are now burning in the region, many sparked by dry thunderstorms.

At the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, federal fire managers monitor giant screens in a NASA like control room, as they deploy air tankers, hot shot crews and other resources around the West right now.

Meagan Conry, the federal Bureau of Land Management's assistant deputy director for fire and aviation, tracks fires on live cameras in the Northwest. She says the area has become vulnerable to increased fire activity because of, "above average temperatures, dry conditions, and some expectations for gusty winds over the next few days."

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When I'laysia Vital got accepted to Texas Southern University, a historically Black university in Houston, she immediately began daydreaming about the sense of freedom that would come with living on her own, and the sense of belonging she would feel studying in a thriving Black community.

Then, a nurse at her high school's health clinic in Oakland, California explained the legal landscape of her new four-year home in Texas – where abortion is now banned completely.

Vital watched some TikTok videos of protestors harassing women outside clinics in other states. She realized her newfound freedoms would come at the expense of another.

That's when she added one more task to her off-to-college checklist: get a long-acting, reliable form of birth control before leaving California.

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Scientists have reconstructed Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall by eavesdropping on people’s brainwaves – the first time a recognisable song has been decoded from recordings of electrical brain activity.

The hope is that doing so could ultimately help to restore the musicality of natural speech in patients who struggle to communicate because of disabling neurological conditions such as stroke or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – the neurodegenerative disease that Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with.

Although members of the same laboratory had previously managed to decipher speech – and even silently imagined words – from brain recordings, “in general, all of these reconstruction attempts have had a robotic quality”, said Prof Robert Knight, a neurologist at the University of California in Berkeley, US, who conducted the study with the postdoctoral fellow Ludovic Bellier.

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Get ready for some shooting stars — this weekend is the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower, the beloved astronomical event that sends bright streaks of light streaming across the night sky.

This year's show should be a good one, "mainly because the moon isn't going to interfere," says Michelle Nichols, director of public observing with the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. "We can have different reasons why a meteor shower may be better one year versus the next, and a lot of times it's the phase of the moon."

Because the waning crescent moon will be just a little sliver that rises late, the sky will be dark, creating the ideal backdrop for the meteor shower's celestial fireworks.

Plus, the fact that the peak arrives on the weekend means that many folks can stay up late or get up before dawn without the usual worries about having to go to work after losing sleep.

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On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities, the United States  dropped a nuclear weapon nicknamed "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima , Japan.

This attack was followed on August 9 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. To date, these are the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.

*  *  *

When the bombs were dropped I was very happy. The war would be over now, they said, and I was very happy. The boys would be coming home very soon they said, and I was very happy. We showed ‘em, they said, and I was very happy. They told us that the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed, and I was very happy. But in August of 1945 I was only ten years old, and I was very, very happy.

The crew of the B-29 was so young and heroic, and in the photo they also looked very happy.  For some reason, I clearly remember the name of the pilot, Paul Tibbets. Of course I remember the name of the plane, the Enola Gay.  And oh yes, I remember the name of the bomb.  It was called Little Boy. That made me smile.

I was so proud to be an American that day because we had done something so remarkable. They said we were the first. We were Americans. We were powerful.  But they didn’t say that Little Boy had killed 66,000 people with its huge fireball that fateful day in August. They didn’t say that Hiroshima was not a military target, but a city filled with men and women and children and animals who had no idea they were about to die so horribly.  When you’re ten, they don’t always tell you everything.

I don’t think anyone made as big a fuss over the second plane, or its crew. Are they even in the Smithsonian?  Second best doesn’t count, I suppose, but I remember wondering why they had done it again. Wouldn’t the war be over anyway, like they said? Weren’t the boys coming home very soon? Hadn’t they already showed ‘em how strong we were in Hiroshima? So they told me that the second bomb was called Fat Man, and that made me smile.

So I was even prouder to be an American that second day. They said this would be the end for sure, and after all, these people were the enemy and you kill the enemy when you can. But they didn’t tell me that Fat Boy had killed 39,000 human beings with another fireball on another day in August. They didn’t tell me that Nagasaki was not a military target, but a city filled with…well, you know. They didn’t even tell me that there were horses trapped in the flames of Nagasaki, because I loved horses and that would have made me sad.

But when you’re ten, they don’t tell you everything.

Today I’m no longer ten, and I am no longer happy when bombs fall. And the names Fat Man and Little Boy no longer make me smile because I now know the devastation and horror of burned bodies and twisted metal that result from mushroom clouds. I am ashamed that on this day Americans don’t stop to remember what was done. And today I am horrified that my government has just killed hundreds of thousands of defenseless Iraqi men and women and children and animals who were not the enemy they were made out to be.

And  today I am angry and heartsick that my leaders waged years of war against people in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan for no earthly good reason at all - and that, once again, the silence of the people is deafening.

And today I am enraged at the drones that my government fires with impunity at 'suspected militants' in nations with whom we are not at war.  I am horrified that there is hardly a blink by the American public as these devastating computerized weapons kill hundreds of innocent people who are so easily dismissed as collateral damage. 

And today, I am so very sad that many young people don’t even know about the Enola Gay and the mission of its crew. But I am so terribly ashamed that the wars we continue to wage and finance are so coldly divorced from the reality of death and pain.

After all, those who make war know better than to tell us about the thousands of civilians who die at their hands.  They know better than to show us the devastation they cause every day.. They withhold the true numbers of our own military who die each day and hide the terrible wounds of those who survive.. War is surgical and sanitized, they tell us, and a very effective way to liberate people. They speak to us as if we all were ten.

Today, I am so painfully saddened by the many Americans continue to cheer the bombs of war. I cannot understand those who still buy into the mythical glory of killing and being killed in the name of democracy. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have all but been forgotten by so many. I know, - it was another war in another time, and it is far more patriotic to remember Pearl Harbor than to imagine the horror of the bombs of August.

Today, I am very far away from being ten, and trust me - I am not smiling. Today, I mourn new killing fields made bloody in my name. I mourn a nation brought to its knees by corporate greed and polarized by misinformation and political debauchery. I mourn for the millions who cannot rise above low paying jobs and for those whose future is held hostage by student loans. I mourn for the countless families who lost their homes to predatory bankers. And I mourn for a nation that once offered such hope to so many - and now struggles to survive at all.

How sad is that?