TV News LIES

President Joe Biden will announce Thursday that he is tapping Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., a history-making fighter pilot with deep knowledge of China, to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Brown’s confirmation would mean that, for the first time, both the Pentagon’s top military and civilian positions would be held by African Americans. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the first Black Pentagon chief, has been in the job since the beginning of the administration. The only other Black person to serve as Joint Chiefs chairman was Army Gen. Colin Powell.

The nomination has been long expected. If confirmed by the Senate, Brown would replace Army Gen. Mark Milley, whose term ends in October, as the nation’s next top military officer. The president plans to unveil Brown as his pick during a Rose Garden event Thursday afternoon.

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New York City’s Chief Housing Officer Jessica Katz is set to leave her post in the Adams administration by early July, she told Gothamist, leaving open a critical role tasked with overseeing the city’s response to its growing housing and homelessness crises.

Mayor Eric Adams appointed Katz — a former city housing official, supportive housing administrator and policy expert — to the role at the beginning of his first-term in January 2022.

The newly created position was a partial response to calls for a deputy mayor to coordinate the various agencies that handle housing, including the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, NYCHA and the Department of Social Services.

In an exclusive interview, Katz said she did not yet know where she’ll go next, but plans to take the summer off.

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The floods that sent rivers of mud tearing through towns in Italy’s northeast are another drenching dose of climate change’s all-or-nothing weather extremes, something that has been happening around the globe, scientists say.

In a changing climate, more rain is coming, but it’s falling on fewer days in less useful and more dangerous downpours.

One person was killed and a curfew was imposed after a powerful tornado tore through a community near the southern tip of Texas before dawn Saturday, damaging dozens of residences and knocking down power lines, authorities said.

At least 10 others were hospitalized, including two people who were listed in critical condition, said Tom Hushen, the emergency management coordinator for Cameron County. Many residents also suffered cuts and bruises.

A nighttime curfew for those 17 and under was issued by Eddie Treviño Jr., the Cameron County judge, and is expected to end May 16 to “mitigate the effects of this public health and safety emergency.” The order also forbids non-residents of Laguna Heights from entering its residential areas.

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An unaccompanied 17-year-old migrant from Honduras died in a shelter in Florida on Wednesday, according to authorities.

Investigators on Friday were still trying to determine a cause for the teen’s death, which came as the US lifted immigration restrictions stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Honduran officials identified the dead child as Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza. The statement said the US government informed Honduras of Maradiaga’s death on Thursday.

Espinoza was admitted into the Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services shelter in Safe Harbor, Florida, on 5 May without being accompanied by a parent or guardian. Five days later, he was taken to a nearby hospital after being found unconscious and was declared dead after an hour of CPR attempts.

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The governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, said it was “embarrassing” that Republican voters from his state laughed and applauded when Donald Trump mocked E Jean Carroll during a CNN town hall this week.

Sununu may yet have to court such voters in a presidential run of his own.

Nonetheless, the governor said, the town hall audience’s behavior “doesn’t shine a positive light on New Hampshire”.

In New York on Tuesday, a jury in a civil case found Trump liable for sexual battery and defamation regarding a 1996 assault in a New York department store changing room which Carroll described in a book in 2019. The former president was ordered to pay about $5m in damages.

Regardless, at Wednesday’s CNN event in Manchester, New Hampshire, Trump said he had “no idea who the hell” Carroll was and called her a “whack job”.

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An FDA advisory panel on Wednesday recommended the agency allow a birth control pill to be available over the counter in the U.S. for the first time.

The panel came to the decision after a two-day public meeting.

The advisors' vote is not binding, and the FDA is expected to make a final decision this summer.

If the application is approved, Opill will be the first contraceptive pill to be sold over the counter in the United States. It would join emergency contraceptives like Plan B on pharmacy shelves.

"For a product that has been available for the last 50 years, that has been used safely by millions of women, we thought it was time to make it more available," Frederique Welgryn, chief strategy officer of HRA Pharma, a French drugmaker owned by the pharmaceutical company Perrigo, when the company announced the application for over-the-counter use.

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