TV News LIES

John Hurt, the intense British actor who mesmerized audiences in starring roles in “The Elephant Man” and “1984,” and was the Alien’s very first victim, has died. He was 77.

Hurt, who announced he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015, died in London on Friday, his spokesman told The Associated Press.

Hurt was a man of many personas on screen and stage. But he was unrecognizable in his most memorable role as the star of 1980’s “The Elephant Man,” in which he portrayed with great dignity and pain the real-life John Merrick, who suffered from a disfiguring, debilitating disease.

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One of two Iraqi refugees being held at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York under President Donald Trump's new order barring refugees from several Muslim countries was released Saturday, though his future status in the United States remains unclear.

The man, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, worked for the U.S. military as an interpreter during the Iraq war. The U.S. government had approved his asylum request and issued him a green card to move to the United States prior to Trump's executive order, but he was detained upon arrival.

Here we go again.  After decades of non-stop war and death, the American public once again has fallen into the abyss of self delusion.  Tragically, just as we neared the brink of reversal under Barack Obama, we are about to abdicate any claim whatsoever to respect or honor anywhere.  We are now in the era of Donald Trump.

America consistently proclaims itself a nation of laws where justice is blind to privilege or class. And yet, as the world watches in disbelief, this country has once aagain become inextricably mired in debates about torture that defy reason.  And that is because we are being sucked into the mindless illogic and lies of Donald Trump.

The United States of America is now a more imperfect union.

The Democracy Index has downgraded the U.S. from a full democracy to a flawed one, marking the first time the nation has fallen into the lower ranking.

Other flawed democracies include Botswana, India, Japan and Ghana, while much of Western Europe stayed in the full democracy category.

Americans’ growing distrust in their government, elected officials and the media prompted the demotion, the Economist Intelligence Unit — the UK-based economic firm that produces the annual index — wrote in a Wednesday report.

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Up to 20 countries have indicated support for the Netherlands’ plan to set up an international safe abortion fund to plug a $600m funding gap caused by Donald Trump’s reinstatement of the “global gag rule”, the Dutch international development minister, Lilianne Ploumen, said on Wednesday.

Ploumen took soundings from a number of her colleagues around the world on Tuesday evening after the Netherlands said it would act to mitigate the impact on hundreds of charities around the world.

A liberal watchdog group plans to file a lawsuit Monday arguing that President Donald Trump is violating the Constitution's ban on officials accepting benefits from foreign governments.

The suit will claim that Trump's business dealings with foreign countries who rent space in his buildings or lend money to his real estate ventures run afoul of the foreign emoluments clause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in a statement Sunday evening.

WikiLeaks on Sunday took President Donald Trump to task for refusing to release his tax returns and offered to post them online, after a senior adviser said definitively that Trump would not be publicly disclosing the documents.

“Trump's breach of promise over the release of his tax returns is even more gratuitous than Clinton concealing her Goldman Sachs transcripts,” WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter.

Mexico's government extradited drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the United States where he is wanted on drug trafficking and other charges.

Guzman landed in New York late on Thursday to face federal narcotics trafficking and other charges.

A US law enforcement official told The Associated Press news agency that Guzman arrived following a flight from the Mexican border town Ciudad Juarez.

Guzman is expected to appear in a federal court in Brooklyn on Friday.

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