TV News LIES

President Biden on Wednesday awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry to two Union soldiers who stole a locomotive deep in Confederate territory during the Civil War and drove it north for 87 miles as they destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines.

U.S. Army Pvts. Philip G. Shadrach and George D. Wilson were captured by Confederates and executed by hanging. Biden recognized their courage 162 years later with the country's highest military decoration, calling the operation they joined “one of the most dangerous missions of the entire Civil War.”

“Every soldier who joined that mission was awarded the Medal of Honor except for two. Two soldiers who died because of that operation and never received this recognition," Biden said. “Today, we right that wrong.”

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He came from one of America’s wealthiest landowning families, and was ranked the fourth richest US president in a recent study. But Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president, harbored a secret during his time in the White House: he was almost constantly in penury, and struggled to pay his food bills, servants and other household expenses.

The revelation comes in a previously unpublished letter that Jefferson, who was president from 1801 to 1809, wrote to a friend who acted as his financial agent in October 1802.

The document, valued at $40,000, is for sale by Pennsylvania dealer the Raab Collection to commemorate the Fourth of July holiday, also the 198th anniversary of Jefferson’s death.

That Jefferson, a founder and primary author of the Declaration of Independence, died broke is not new. Like many plantation owners of the period, he struggled to balance the books, and left a debt of $107,000 (more than $1m today) that led heirs to sell his possessions, including slaves and his beloved Monticello estate in Virginia.

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A proposal to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution of Arizona, a key battleground state in the upcoming US elections, has inched closer to becoming an official ballot measure.

On Wednesday, Arizona for Abortion Access, the coalition behind the measure, announced that it had turned in more than 800,000 signatures – more than double the needed amount to get the measure on the ballot come November.

That’s more signatures than have ever been submitted for a citizen-led ballot measure in Arizona, according to Chris Love, a spokesperson for Arizona for Abortion Access.

“It represents one in five Arizona voters,” Love said. “It’s an amazing feat for us. I think it’s a demonstration of the strength of our campaign and the excitement of Arizona voters to really settle the issue of abortion rights on the ballot in November.”

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Britain's center-left Labour Party was set to comfortably win a historic general election, an exit poll showed, ousting the Conservative Party by a huge margin in a vote that means the staunch U.S. ally will get its sixth prime minister in eight politically turbulent years.

The exit poll projected that Labour will win 410 seats to the Conservatives' 131 in Britain's 650-seat Parliament, a majority of 170. The exit poll was carried out by polling company Ipsos, jointly for British broadcasters BBC News, ITV News and Sky News.

If the exit poll is accurate, Labour's leader Keir Starmer, 61, a former lawyer, will take over as prime minister from Rishi Sunak, who ascended to the role in 2022. Britain elects a party, not a specific leader, to rule the country − of the past five Conservative prime ministers, only three were directly elected.

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A more complete picture emerged Wednesday of the extensive damage wrought by Hurricane Beryl's trek across the Windward Islands, revealing destruction and at least seven deaths.

At least three islands report more than 90% of the homes and buildings either destroyed or severely damaged, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency reported Wednesday. All three are within the chain of Grenadine Islands, where Beryl roared into the Caribbean on the southern end of the Windwards, between St. Vincent and Grenada.

With 19 participating states across the Caribbean, the agency was helping coordinate disaster response on Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines even as it continued to track Beryl’s movements across Jamaica, Cayman Islands and Belize. The eye of Beryl, still a Category 4 storm, raked Jamaica's coast Wednesday afternoon and was expected to pass near the Cayman Islands Thursday morning, before making landfall in the Yucatan on Friday morning.

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If forecasters are correct, and the summer's heatwave continues, Eastern California's Death Valley may soon break a world record.

The temperature in Death Valley National Park could skyrocket to 130 degrees next week, the National Weather Service is reporting.

If it does, it will set the record for the hottest temperature ever "reliably measured on earth", according to Scientific American.

Chris Outler, a forecaster with the weather service's Las Vegas office, which predicts weather in Death Valley, said there's a 20% chance the park will hit 130 degrees Monday and Tuesday.

"The threshold is certainly not out of the realm of possibility," Outler told USA TODAY.

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South Carolina will soon have a notable gender disparity in the state's legislature, after the chamber's only three Republican women defended abortion access and then lost their seats.

State Sens. Penry Gustafson, Sandy Senn and Katrina Shealy went against the rest of their majority party and helped block a near-total abortion ban that excluded exemptions for rape or incest.

Now, none of these women will return after 2024.