TV News LIES

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued a statement to its members on Friday apologizing for not adequately expressing its support of the Palestinian Oscar-winning filmmaker Hamdan Ballal.

Ballal, who won this year's feature-length documentary Academy Award for co-directing the film No Other Land about the difficulties of life under Israeli occupation, said he was attacked on Monday by Israeli settlers. He was then arrested by the Israeli army. Israeli authorities released the director the following day, saying Ballal had been detained for hurling stones. The filmmaker and witnesses deny this accusation.

The Academy's initial statement in response to the alleged attack, sent out on Wednesday to its roughly 11,000 members, did not include Ballal's name or the title of his film.

The wife of the US defense secretary Pete Hegseth attended two meetings with foreign defense officials during which sensitive information was discussed, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal’s report on Hegseth arrived late on Friday as he faced scrutiny for detailing plans of a military strike in a group chat on Signal, made public by a journalist at the Atlantic who had been added to the chat. Multiple Democrats have called for his resignation while a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to the defense department calling for an inquiry into the group chat.

Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer Hegseth, has been present at two meetings where sensitive information was discussed, according to the Journal, citing multiple people who were present at the meetings or have knowledge of her presence at them.

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Most employees at the US Institute of Peace, a congressionally created and funded thinktank now taken over by Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency”, received email notices of their mass firing late Friday, the latest step in the Trump administration’s government downsizing.

The emails, sent to personal accounts because most staff members had lost access to the organization’s system, began going out about 9pm, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.

One former senior official at the institute said that among those spared were several in the human resources department and a handful of overseas staffers who had until 9 April to return to the United States. The organization employs about 300 people.

“Mr. President! You talked about some of the violence that’s been going on at dealerships,” a reporter yelled to President Trump as he stood next to Elon Musk and a Tesla parked near the White House lawn earlier this month.

“Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists.” 

“I’ll do that,” Trump interjected. “We’re going to stop it if we catch anybody doing it because they’re harming a great American company.”

Days later, Trump’s FBI would launch a task force dedicated to investigating and referring for prosecution suspects in a string of incidents protesting Musk at Tesla dealerships across the country. 

It was one of several instances during the first three months of Trump’s second term in which a shouted question or suggestion from a media member has resulted in direct action from the president.

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No one aboard a small plane traveling from Iowa survived after it crashed in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, on Saturday, police said.

The SOCATA TBM7 plane crashed around 12:20 p.m. in a residential area in Brooklyn Park, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told USA TODAY. The aircraft departed from Des Moines International Airport and was headed to Anoka County-Blaine Airport in Minneapolis before the incident, according to the federal government agency.

According to FlightAware, the single-prop plane began its journey in Naples, Florida, and stopped in Des Moines at around 10:30 a.m. The plane took off 45 minutes later. It crashed six minutes before its scheduled landing time.

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