TV News LIES

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ended more than 60 years of federal oversight of a Louisiana school system that had been ordered to eradicate all vestiges of segregation.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a decades-old desegregation mandate for the Concordia Parish School Board, handing a victory to President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pushed to end the court-ordered plans. The school system has been a focal point in the administration’s attempt to end legal cases dating back to the Civil Rights era.

The U.S. Justice Department spent decades fighting for such cases but reversed course under Trump. Officials in his administration have framed the remaining orders as federal intrusion into local school systems. Louisiana officials agree they’re no longer needed and describe them as relics of a time when Black students were once forbidden from attending some schools.

“The good people of Concordia Parish elected their school board to govern their schools — not unelected federal judges,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in announcing the ruling. “Today’s decision puts that authority back where it belongs.”

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Two teenagers were charged with murder Tuesday in the killings of five members of an Illinois family who were shot at three different locations.

A 16-year-old boy will be prosecuted as an adult, while the case against a 15-year-old girl will start in juvenile court before a possible transfer to the St Clair county criminal court, the county prosecutor’s office said.

Five people were killed and two more were wounded, primarily on Sunday, in a “targeted mass shooting” in East St Louis, an Illinois city across the Mississippi river from St Louis, police said. Troopers stopped a vehicle and arrested the teens Sunday in a state park, the Illinois state police director, Brendan Kelly, said.

Court documents don’t reveal a motive. But Marcus May, the father of the 15-year-old, told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that the girl was upset with family members and plotted the attacks with Ja’ymeir Davis, her boyfriend.

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The US House of Representatives on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill that would end the practice of changing clocks twice a year and make daylight saving time permanent.

The bid to end clock-changing, dubbed the Sunshine Protection Act, has bipartisan support, including the backing of Donald Trump and some Democratic co-sponsors. Following the 308-117 tally in the House, the bill next goes to the Senate.

A House rules committee approved the rule to advance the bill on a 6-4 vote on Monday.

Most US states change clocks twice a year, springing forward in the spring and falling back in the fall with the goal of extending daylight hours. Hawaii and most of Arizona don’t participate in the clock-changing.

The bill, sponsored by Vern Buchanan, a Florida Republican representative, would make daylight saving time the new permanent standard time. It would lead to later sunrises and sunsets, giving more daylight in the evening hours during darker times of year. Under the proposal, states would have the option to opt out and remain on permanent standard time.

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A mother on Friday pleaded for anyone to come forward with information about what happened to ⁠her son, Nolan Wells, a young Black man whose body was found on an island off the coast of Mississippi after he traveled there over the Fourth of July weekend with three white friends.

“We just want ⁠to know what happened and ⁠why our baby ​didn’t come home,” Christine Wonsley, choking back tears, said at a news conference about her son.

The death of Wells has become a social media flashpoint, fueled by questions about race in the US.

The body ⁠of Wells, 18, was found on 6 July on the north-western tip of Horn Island, a long, thin barrier island with a beach along Mississippi’s Gulf coast. He had visited the island and went missing on the ⁠Independence Day holiday of 4 July with a group of friends from his high school in nearby Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

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A federal appeals court reversed a lower court’s order requiring the National Park Service (NPS) to restore signs and exhibits that were removed by the Trump administration.

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday halted the ruling, which would have restored park materials that the administration says were purged as part of the administration’s effort to get rid of materials that “disparage” Americans.

The judges determined that the Trump administration “made a strong showing that the harms that the district court relied on” to order the restoration of the materials did not meet the standards for an injunction.

Judges David Barron, Gustavo Gelpí and Julie Rikelman also found that the groups suing the government “cannot show that a stay of the district court’s order … would cause them substantial injury.”

Barron was appointed by former President Obama, while Gelpí and Rikelman are appointees of former President Biden.

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Two people were arrested following an apparent marriage proposal atop the Empire State Building’s spire on Wednesday, after they climbed to the very pinnacle of the New York City landmark – well above the level open to the public.

The two people were identified as Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, two Russian “rooftoppers” who have conducted similar stunts in other cities including Tianjin, China, and Los Angeles. They were both wearing black clothing and appeared to be masked as they unfurled a large, black banner at the top of the skyscraper with the words: “When the power of love beats the love of power the ‌world knows peace.”

It remained unclear how the pair made their way up the final stages of the building, which towers above midtown Manhattan at a height of 1,454ft (443 metres). Local media outlets reported a New York police department (NYPD) drone in the air, in addition to an NYPD helicopter near the scene monitoring the breathtaking stunt.

Shortly after 12.30pm, the two climbed down to a slightly lower platform on the structure that holds the antenna atop the building. One person then got down on one knee, and after what appeared to be a proposal from a man to a woman, the two people hugged and kissed.

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