TV News LIES

The United States on Thursday hit a new record for a single-day increase in coronavirus infections with nearly 90,000 new cases reported, according to data collected from Johns Hopkins University.

On Thursday, the U.S. had 88,521 new coronavirus cases, an increase of 9,540 from the number of new infections recorded Wednesday.

The Johns Hopkins University data shows that since the pandemic first hit the U.S., there have been a total of 8,948,099 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country and at least 228,696 deaths.

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Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking.

In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services.”

The cyberattacks involve ransomware, which scrambles data into gibberish that can only be unlocked with software keys provided once targets pay up. Independent security experts say it has already hobbled at least five U.S. hospitals this week, and could potentially impact hundreds more.

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A federal judge Tuesday blocked the Justice Department's effort to intervene in a defamation case against President Donald Trump brought by E. Jean Carroll who claimed the president disparaged her when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected the government's central argument that Trump was acting in his official duties as president last year when he denied magazine writer Carroll's allegation that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in New York City.

The Justice Department's intervention was seen as an effort to shield the president from the potentially damaging legal action in the midst of a re-election campaign. The judge's ruling effectively keeps Carroll's claim alive.

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In its 38 years of existence, the USA TODAY Editorial Board has never endorsed a candidate for president. The nonpartisan board hasn’t recommended a nominee. Until now.

Today, the USA TODAY Editorial Board, which is separate from the news department, endorsed Joe Biden for president.

"We don't do this eagerly," said editorial page editor Bill Sternberg. "We hope we don't have to do it again, but it seems like one of those break-glass moments where there's a clear and present danger and there's a clear choice."

Endorsements, all editorials, aren't meant to lecture. They're meant to put forth a well-considered viewpoint, grounded in the facts, to spur conversation. The closest the board ever came to an endorsement was in 2016, when it urged voters to reject Donald Trump, but did not endorse any other candidate.

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Former CIA Director John Brennan isn’t worried about the Trump administration trying to prosecute him. Nor is he all that concerned about a peaceful transfer of power if President Donald Trump loses the election – particularly if it’s a resounding defeat, as Brennan hopes.

What really has the ex-CIA chief on edge? The social and political havoc Trump may unleash between Election Day and the possible inauguration of his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

Trump could provoke civil unrest. He could try to declare martial law. He could pardon himself and a rogue’s gallery of his supporters, Brennan said.

He’s so nervous about some of the possibilities – given the president’s powers – that he didn’t even want to say them out loud.

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A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a Kentucky law that requires abortion clinics to have written agreements with a hospital and ambulance service in case of medical emergencies.

The 2-1 ruling from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a 2018 district court ruling that found the law, first passed in 1998, violated constitutionally protected due process rights.

Twitter has suspended a network of accounts claiming to be owned by Black supporters of Donald Trump and his re-election campaign due to spam and platform manipulation, it said Tuesday.

The company is investigating the activity and may suspend additional similar accounts if they are found to be violating its policies, a spokesperson said.

The Washington Post first reported on the investigation, citing more than a dozen accounts using identical, inauthentic language including the phrase: “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!”

A review of some of the suspended accounts shows they often used stolen images to appear real. The accounts sometimes claimed to be owned by military veterans or members of law enforcement.

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US-Russian arms control talks have sunk into confusion after the top American negotiator claimed there was “an agreement in principle” between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, a claim Moscow quickly rejected as a “delusion”.

Marshall Billingslea, the US special envoy for arms control, said he had flown to Helsinki on Monday to meet the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, on the understanding that there could be an imminent breakthrough in discussions on whether to extend the 2010 New Start treaty, which limits the number of deployed strategic warheads on either side, and which expires in February.

“We believe that there is an agreement in principle at the highest levels of our two governments. That’s why I cut short my trip to Asia and made a beeline for Helsinki when the Russians called and wanted to sit down,” Billingslea told a Washington thinktank, in an apparent suggestion that there had been an informal verbal agreement between Trump and Putin.

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