TV News LIES

The Biden administration has given its final injection of military support to Ukraine, unveiling a $500m weapons package just days before Donald Trump’s return to the White House threatens to upend western backing for Kyiv.

The aid bundle – including air defense missiles and F-16 fighter jet equipment – was announced on Thursday by outgoing US defense secretary Lloyd Austin during a summit at Germany’s Ramstein air base.

“Here is the fundamental truth: Ukraine’s fight matters to all of us,” Austin said. “Putin’s war is a challenge to free people everywhere.”

The announcement came as the White House scrambles to impose 11th-hour sanctions on Russia reportedly by week’s end, with Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, already promising a swift resolution to the conflict within his first 100 days in office.

More...

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that advocates for peace, said on Monday the group cancelled a planned advertisement in the New York Times in response to the paper refusing to allow it to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

“The refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth,” said Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary for the AFSC, in a press release. “Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalized in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability. It is only by challenging this reality that we can hope to forge a path toward a more just and equitable world.”

The group claimed a representative with the advertising team at the New York Times suggested they use the word “war” instead of “genocide”.

More...

A prominent Palestinian hospital director who was arrested by Israel in a raid that closed the last major functioning health facility in northern Gaza is being held at a controversial military base that doubles as a detention facility, recently released former detainees have told CNN.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has not been seen publicly since Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan hospital on Friday. Staff members accused Israeli forces of starting a fire in the hospital and said they were all rounded up outside and forced to remove their clothes, a process that took hours, before being forced to leave.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had detained Dr. Abu Safiya because he was “suspected of being a Hamas terrorist operative,” and claimed that the hospital was being used by Hamas as a “command and control center.” The military did not provide any evidence to support the claims.

More...

Respiratory viruses impact everyone differently. Some may miss a few days of work, while others face a long recovery. Certain risk factors can make you more vulnerable to getting very sick from COVID-19, flu and RSV.

To stay healthy, people at high risk and their loved ones should take precautions — whether they’re an active senior staying up to date on their shots or a pregnant person getting vaccinated to protect their unborn baby. Vaccines are your best defense against getting very sick.

Here are five key risk factors to know:

1.Age. Grandparents and grandkids share a special bond, but during respiratory virus season, older adults need to take extra care. People ages 65 and older are at a higher risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19 and flu, while those 75 and older are at a higher risk for severe RSV. Additionally, older adults who are 60 to 74 and live in nursing homes or have health conditions, such as heart and lung disease, obesity, diabetes, kidney disease and other chronic conditions, are at higher risk of complications and more severe illness from RSV

More...

President Joe Biden on Monday vetoed legislation to add 66 new judges to understaffed federal courts nationally, a once widely bipartisan measure that would have been the first major expansion of the federal judiciary since 1990.

The JUDGES Act, initially supported by many members of both parties, would have increased the number of trial court judges in 25 federal district courts in 13 states including California, Florida and Texas, in six waves every two years through 2035.

Hundreds of judges appointed by presidents of both parties took the rare step of publicly advocating for the bill, saying federal caseloads have increased by more than 30% since Congress last passed legislation to comprehensively expand the judiciary.

More...

Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI engineer and whistleblower who helped train the artificial intelligence systems behind ChatGPT and later said he believed those practices violated copyright law, has died, according to his parents and San Francisco officials. He was 26.

Balaji worked at OpenAI for nearly four years before quitting in August. He had been well-regarded by colleagues at the San Francisco company, where a co-founder this week called him one of OpenAI’s strongest contributors who was essential to developing some of its products.

Balaji was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on 26 November in what police said “appeared to be a suicide. No evidence of foul play was found during the initial investigation.” The city’s chief medical examiner’s office confirmed the manner of death to be suicide.

More...

The Russian security council deputy head, Dmitry Medvedev, has described the editors of the Times newspaper in Britain as “legitimate military targets” in response to the newspaper’s coverage of the assassination of a Russian general.

Medvedev’s vitriolic comments on Wednesday followed a Times editorial in which the newspaper described the assassination of Lt Gen Igor Kirillov as “a legitimate act of defence” by Ukraine, which has claimed responsibility for the killing.

Kirillov, head of the military’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit, was killed along with his assistant when a device attached to an escooter exploded as the two men left a building in a residential area in south-east Moscow on Tuesday morning. Kirillov is the most senior Russian military official to be killed in an assassination away from the frontlines since the start of the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine nearly three years ago.

More...