TV News LIES

It's been less than a week since murder set their lives onto a new course, into roles they never wanted to take on and into a battle they never planned to fight.

But only five days in, Andy and Barbara Parker -- the parents of slain television journalist Alison Parker -- speak about gun control with a passion as if they'd spent their lifetimes fighting for it.

April Miller and Karen Roberts hugged as the news flashed across their television screen, and their hug turned into a brief slow dance across the living room rug.

A federal appeals court had just upheld a ruling ordering the clerk in their rural Kentucky county to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

For two months since the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country, Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis has refused to issue any marriage licenses, citing her Christian faith and constitutional right to religious freedom. On Thursday, her office refused to issue a marriage license to another couple, William Smith Jr. and James Yates. It was their third attempt to get a license.

An unarmed black 18-year-old was fatally shot in the face by a police officer from several feet away during their confrontation outside a supermarket in Virginia earlier this year, the findings of his autopsy indicate.

The typical signs of a close- or body-contact shooting were not found around the bullet wounds William Chapman sustained in the head and chest when he was killed by Officer Stephen Rankin in the parking lot of a Walmart in Portsmouth on 22 April. Chapman was the second unarmed man to be shot dead by Rankin.

The Obama administration doesn't plan to invite Cuban dissidents to Secretary of State John Kerry's historic flag-raising at the U.S. Embassy in Havana on Friday, vividly illustrating how U.S. policy is shifting focus from the island's opposition to its single-party government. Instead, Kerry intends to meet more quietly with prominent activists later in the day, officials said.

The Cuban opposition has occupied the center of U.S. policy toward the island since the nations cut diplomatic relations in 1961. The Cuban government labels its domestic opponents as traitorous U.S. mercenaries. As the two countries have moved to restore relations, Cuba has almost entirely stopped meeting with American politicians who visit dissidents during trips to Havana.

A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned.

Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly referred to him as “that nigger”, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in.

After facing months of intense scrutiny over a new Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) course outline that some conservatives perceived as containing anti-American biases, the College Board released a new framework for the class Thursday morning.

This structure places more of an emphasis on concepts surrounding American national identity, the country's founding leaders and documents and the effective role of free enterprise in U.S. history.