TV News LIES

Hundreds of doctors in the UK have signed a petition accusing the country's medical regulator of fostering an “environment of fear” by pursuing what they say is a politically motivated campaign against the prominent British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah.

The petition, organised by Health Workers 4 Palestine, calls on the leadership of the General Medical Council (GMC) to resign after the regulator said it would challenge the outcome of an independent tribunal which cleared Abu Sittah of wrongdoing following a complaint brought by a pro-Israel advocacy group over an article he had written for a Lebanese newspaper.

The petition also raised concerns about financial governance at the regulator, after noting that legal costs in the Abu Sittah case reportedly exceed £200,000 - an amount that requires approval from the GMC’s most senior leadership.

Last week a second medical regulatory body, the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA), said it had joined the GMC in challenging the tribunal's judgment in favour of Abu Sittah.

The United States and Israel expected a rapid internal uprising in Iran to help bring the war to a swift end, but the plan has failed to materialize, The New York Times reported on Sunday, March 23.

According to the report, Israeli and US officials believed that early strikes on Iran’s leadership and infrastructure could trigger mass protests and destabilize the government.

The plan, presented by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency ahead of the war, envisioned riots and internal unrest that could potentially lead to the collapse of Iran’s leadership.

Over three weeks into the war, no large-scale uprising has emerged, and Iran’s government remains in control, the report said.

US and Israeli intelligence assessments concluded that, while the government has been weakened, it remains intact – with security forces still deterring potential protests.

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In the latest battle over the future of Voice of America, a fresh group of veteran Voice of America journalists are suing Trump administration official Kari Lake, alleging that she is promoting pro-Trump propaganda on air. They also contend she has trampled the network's editorial independence in violation of federal law and First Amendment principles.

"The Voice of America has been breaching the Constitutional and statutory rules that require that outlet not to push propaganda or censorship," one of the lead attorneys on the lawsuit, Norm Eisen, tells NPR. "In a time of crisis and conflict, like what we have right now in Iran, people count on the U.S. government broadcasts, and in particular, the Voice of America, to tell the truth."

Lake did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees the network, put out an unsigned statement that it said came from "an agency official."

"American taxpayers fund USAGM and Voice of America, and those funds by law must support broadcasting that reflects U.S. policy and the interests of the American people," the statement read. "USAGM is responsible for oversight of its networks, including Voice of America, and for ensuring compliance with the VOA Charter, which requires authoritative, accurate journalism that is reflective of and clearly presents U.S. policies."

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A group of eight architecture and cultural organizations is suing President Trump and the board of the Kennedy Center over the planned renovations of the arts complex, which are set to begin in just over three months. The lawsuit seeks to have the White House and the Kennedy Center board comply with existing historic preservation laws and secure Congress' approval before moving ahead with the renovations.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the American Institute of Architects, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, the DC Preservation League, Docomomo US and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Collectively, these groups have over 1 million members.

In an email sent Monday to NPR, White House spokesperson Liz Huston wrote: "President Trump is committed to making the Trump-Kennedy Center the finest performing arts facility in the world. We look forward to ultimate victory on the issue." NPR also requested comment from the Kennedy Center, but did not receive a response.

In the lawsuit, the groups wrote that the Kennedy Center has stood since 1971 "as a living memorial to a slain president, a national gathering place for the arts and a defining landmark within the monumental core of the Nation's capital. Its Modernist design, grand public spaces and role as a premier cultural institution together form an irreplaceable legacy of history, architecture and civic purpose."

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A California jury found Bill Cosby guilty of sexual assault in a civil trial on Monday, awarding Donna Motsinger $59.25m in damages. Motsinger alleged in the case that while working as a restaurant server in 1972, she was drugged and raped by Cosby after he gave her a glass of wine in his limousine.

Motsinger sued Cosby after California amended its laws to change the statutes of limitations on when accusers can file sexual assault cases. In remarks after the jury’s verdict, she described the trial as a five-decade-long effort to get justice.

Cosby, once one of the most successful men in comedy and an entertainment icon, has largely disappeared from public view in the past decade amid widespread allegations of sexual misconduct. In addition to the dozens of women who have accused Cosby of drugging and sexual assault, he has faced a series of civil trials – including Los Angeles county jurors in 2022 finding that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl at the Playboy mansion in 1975.

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The US supreme court appeared poised on Monday to curtail how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, which would affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year.

The justices are considering Watson v Republican National Committee, a challenge over a Mississippi state law that was brought in 2024 by the Republican party. Mississippi allows mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of election day, so long as they were postmarked by election day. Mississippi changed its laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fourteen states, Washington DC and three US territories have similar laws that allow for late-arriving ballots to be counted. Based on the justices’ questions, it is clear the case is not focused narrowly on Mississippi’s grace period, but on other states’ rules, which in some cases allow for a longer grace period and don’t require postmarks.

Mississippi, a red state, is defending its ability to set its own procedures for elections against the challenge from the Republican party, which argues that the grace period violates federal laws that set election day for the first Tuesday of November.

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The union representing Transportation Security Administration officers has a message for President Donald Trump: Thanks, but no thanks.

On Monday morning, the president dispatched Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to several airports to supposedly alleviate long security lines created by the partial government shutdown. But union representatives for TSA officers say the president’s plan is unhelpful at best and could actually make things more dangerous.

“Our guys are going to be pissed,” said Joe Shuker, a regional vice president for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing TSA officers.

Shuker told HuffPost he received a text message Monday morning about ICE officers showing up at Philadelphia International Airport, one of 14 locations where the administration planned to send them. He wasn’t sure exactly what the ICE officers would be doing, but he knows they aren’t trained to do what TSA officers do: spot airport-specific security threats such as homemade bombs inside luggage and fake passports.

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The U.S. war in Iran is taking a mounting toll on America’s military, with rising casualties, dwindling munitions stockpiles, a sidelined aircraft carrier and numerous downed aircraft just three weeks into the conflict.

At least 13 U.S. service members have been killed, while another 232 have been injured since the U.S.-Israeli war against Tehran began on Feb. 28. In addition, some 16 American aircraft have been destroyed, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier was damaged in a laundry room fire earlier this month and American forces are quickly blowing through stocks of air defense and long-range munitions.

Now, with reports that Pentagon officials have made detailed preparations for deploying U.S. ground forces into Iran — a move that is almost sure to be met by fierce retaliation from Tehran — those losses could quickly increase. Experts say the developments in the Middle East threaten U.S. security in other areas of the world, namely the Indo-Pacific.

“The problem, I think, is several-fold,” said Seth Jones, a former Pentagon official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You’re taking an area that is not your top priority, and you’re now sort of blown through readiness and maintenance issues with aircraft and ships that will be important for a China contingency operation.”

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