TV News LIES

The U.S. Senate passed legislation on Tuesday that would allow survivors and relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks to file lawsuits seeking damages against the government of Saudi Arabia.

The legislation, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, passed in the Senate by unanimous voice vote.

If it passes the House of Representatives and is signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama, JASTA would allow lawsuits to proceed in federal court in New York as lawyers try to prove that the Saudis were involved in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

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Sound like something you’ve heard before? It’s probably because you have.

Based on NASA data, April was the seventh month in a row that global temperatures set a new record high. It was also the third consecutive month that the record was broken by the largest margin ever.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has yet to reveal its analysis of April temperatures, but if their findings line up with NASA’s, that’ll mean one full year of record-hot months. (The two agencies use slightly different dates to determine the long-term temperature average.)

The Supreme Court has rejected Philip Morris USA's appeal of a $25 million punitive damages award to the family of a dead smoker in Oregon.

The justices on Monday are leaving in place a state appeals court ruling that likened the cigarette maker's role in smoker Michelle Schwarz's death to manslaughter under Oregon law, had the case been pursued in criminal court.

TVNL Comment:  Reminder: this is the only product that - if used as directed - will kill you.  The product has no purpose other than to addict the user.  And yet, it is freely available to all the youngsters who are the primary target to replace the nearly half million Americans who die of smoking-related illnesses every year.

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Beyoncé’s new range of women’s sportswear is made using sweat shop labourers who earn as little as £4.30 a day, it has been reported.

The American pop star’s Ivy Park gym gear is sold by Top Shop, the high street fashion retailer owned by Sir Philip Green, who is already facing criticism over the collapse of department store BHS.

The Sun on Sunday reported the clothing range – which Beyoncé said she hopes will “support and inspire women” – is made by Sri Lankan seamstresses some of whom earn £4.30 a day.

Workers are paid more than the legal minimum but campaigners described the labour as a “form of sweat shop slavery”.

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A record fire-storm in Canada fueled by record warmth. Record ice-melt in Greenland and the Arctic sea, driven by off-the-charts warmth in the far north. And, NASA reported Friday, we’ve just been through the hottest April and the hottest January-April on record — by far.

How big a jump was April 2016 compared to the historical record? In an email, Stefan Rahmstorf, Head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, notes that “The margin by which April beats the previous record April is three times larger (0.24 °C) than the margin of any previous record April (biggest was 0.08 °C).”

Also, this has easily been the hottest January-April on record, which isn’t a surprise given that last month’s record was hot on the heels of the hottest March on record by far, which followed the hottest February on record by far, and hottest January on record by far.

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Donald Trump and women: The words evoke a familiar cascade of casual insults, hurled from the safe distance of a Twitter account, a radio show or a campaign podium. This is the public treatment of some women by Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president: degrading, impersonal, performed.

“That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees,” he told a female contestant on “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Rosie O’Donnell, he said, had a “fat, ugly face.” A lawyer who needed to pump milk for a newborn? “Disgusting,” he said.

But the 1990 episode at Mar-a-Lago that Ms. Brewer Lane described was different: a debasing face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and a young woman he hardly knew. This is the private treatment of some women by Mr. Trump, the up-close and more intimate encounters.

The New York Times interviewed dozens of women who had worked with or for Mr. Trump over the past four decades, in the worlds of real estate, modeling and pageants; women who had dated him or interacted with him socially; and women and men who had closely observed his conduct since his adolescence. In all, more than 50 interviews were conducted over the course of six weeks.

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An ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) attack on a state-run gas plant in Baghdad's northern outskirts on Sunday killed at least 11 people, including policemen, and forced two power stations to suspend electricity production.

A suicide car bomb went off at the entrance of the facility in Taji at around 0600 local time (0300 GMT), allowing another vehicle carrying at least six attackers with explosive vests to enter and clash with security forces, police sources said. Twenty-one people were also wounded.

The massive bleaching hitting the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia is likely that country's "biggest ever environmental disaster," says Dr. Justin Marshall, who has studied the reef for three decades.

Only 7 percent of the reef has escaped bleaching, according to researchers at the ARC Center of Excellence. Marshall, a professor at the University of Queensland, says the destructive phenomenon is happening in an area the size of Scotland.