TV News LIES

Actress Lori Loughlin and more than a dozen other parents have been indicted on fraud and money laundering charges by a federal grand jury for their alleged roles in the massive college admission scandal, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The 16 parents were charged in a second superseding indictment on Tuesday with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, honest services mail and wire fraud, and a new count of conspiracy to commit money laundering in what authorities have called the “largest college admissions scam prosecuted by the Justice Department.”

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A teenage boy who was found by police in Newport said he is Timmothy Pitzen, who disappeared in Illinois seven years ago.

Police are working to confirm the boy's identity and have not publicly named him.  Sharonville police, who assisted in the investigation, released a report Wednesday afternoon.

The Sharonville report states the teen identified himself as Timmothy Pitzen, who went missing in May 2011, when he was 6 years old.  He is 14 years old today.

His mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, was later found dead in Rockford, Illinois.

Police initially responded Wednesday to the 740 block of Columbia St. in Newport, according to police audio of the incident.

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Attorneys general from six states and Washington D.C., filed a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture on Wednesday, saying it weakened nutritional standards in school meals.

The suit, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, states that the Trump administration weakened federal nutritional standards for breakfasts and lunches served to schoolchildren by rolling back sodium limits and whole grain requirements for school meals and did so without a legally-mandated scientific basis and without giving the public proper notice or opportunity to comment.

"The Trump administration has undermined key health benefits for our children -- standards for salt and whole grains in school meals -- with deliberate disregard for science, expert opinion, and the law," James said in a statement.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested 280 people Wednesday in a raid on a North Texas cellphone repair business, the largest such one-site raid in a decade.

Agents with ICE and Homeland Security Investigations handcuffed and loaded the workers onto large buses on charges they are immigrants unlawfully working in the United States.

ICE said it received tips the company, CVE Technology Group Inc., knowingly hired undocumented immigrants using fraudulent identification. An audit of the company's I-9 forms allegedly found hiring irregularities.

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Texas officials on Wednesday banned any chaplain from entering the state's execution chambers less than one week after the Supreme Court stayed the lethal injection of an inmate prevented from having a Buddhist spiritual adviser with him.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said changed its execution protocol directly in response to the high court ruling. Only security personnel may enter the execution chamber in future executions, TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel said in an email to UPI.

Under the new protocols, TDCJ chaplains will be available to the inmates until they are transferred to the execution chamber. Ministers and spiritual advisers also may observe executions from the witness rooms.

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House Democratic leaders are calling for Attorney General William Barr to immediately appear for a hearing to explain his decision last month to release a top-line summary of Robert Mueller’s investigation without unveiling the full report.

It's a move that has given President Donald Trump a potent — and at times misleading — talking point about the conclusions of the nearly two-year Russia probe and left Democrats frustrated with Barr.

Barr's four-page memo said the special counsel did not find a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential election, but it also said that Mueller did not exonerate the president on obstruction of justice. However, Barr added that he would not charge the president with obstruction of justice. Trump has touted the letter as a complete vindication.

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A group of American hackers who once worked for U.S. intelligence agencies helped the United Arab Emirates spy on a BBC host, the chairman of Al Jazeera and other prominent Arab media figures during a tense 2017 confrontation pitting the UAE and its allies against the Gulf state of Qatar.

Immigration checkpoints on highways leading from the Mexican border into the United States have been closed because the U.S Border Patrol has reassigned agents to El Paso, Texas, to process a massive influx of migrant families, agency officials said.

"To process and ensure appropriate care for those in custody, resources including personnel have been diverted from other border security priorities," U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Monday. "Currently, El Paso sector has shut down immigration checkpoints and moved agents to assist with the processing of these aliens."