TV News LIES

California law enforcement officials have worked for seven years to keep secret a death in police custody, labeling the case an “accident” and refusing to disclose basic information to journalists and the family of the victim, an investigation published on Monday reveals.

Darryl Mefferd, 49, died on 8 December 2016 while he was detained by police in Vallejo, a city of 125,000 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The case was uncovered by Open Vallejo, a local non-profit news organization, which shared its records with the Guardian.

The afternoon before he died, Mefferd had seemed disoriented and dehydrated and was making paranoid remarks, so his niece, Courtney Mefferd, took him to a local hospital. He was treated with vitamins and a sedative and declared “stable”, medical records show. By around 11pm, he was anxious to be discharged and left the hospital against doctors’ recommendations.

An appellate court has ruled that Texas cannot ban books from libraries simply because they mention “butt and fart” and other content which some state officials may dislike.

The fifth US circuit court of appeals issued its decision on Thursday in a 76-page majority opinion, which was written by Judge Jacques Wiener Jr and opened with a quote from American poet Walt Whitman: “The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book.”

In its decision, the appellate court declared that “government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree”.

It added: “This court has declared that officials may not ‘remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the idea contained in those books and seek by their removal to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.’”

More...

New York state took novel legislative steps on Friday to limit children’s exposure to computer algorithmic social media feeds, passing two laws to protect children from addictive social media content and to protect their privacy.

The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (Safe) for Kids Act requires social media companies to restrict addictive feeds on their platforms for users under 18 unless parental consent is granted, and prohibits companies from sending notifications regarding addictive feeds to minors from 12.00am to 6.00am.

The second law, the New York Child Data Protection Act, prohibits online sites from collecting, using, sharing or selling personal data of anyone under the age of 18, unless they receive informed consent or unless doing so is necessary for the purpose of the website.

The laws authorize the state attorney general to impose civil penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.

More...

A Pride flag that hung in the window of an Oregon library was the apparent target of BB gun fire amid Pride month and a growing wave of anti-LGBTQ+ measures from US legislatures.

In a Facebook statement on Wednesday, the Newberg public library in Newberg, Oregon, said that around 7.10pm, a BB gun was fired at a window on the south-east corner of the library. A picture showed a shattered window, behind which a Pride flag hung.

“The original 1912 glass is still intact. The new protective glass installed with grant funds in January 2024 has been shattered. It is likely the shot was fired from 99W,” the library said.

Following the incident, the Newberg-Dundee police department said that in addition to vandalism, there were “concerns that the suspect(s) possibly had a biased intent because a Pride flag was displayed directly behind the vandalized window”.

More...

At least four people have died crossing the US-Mexico border near El Paso, Texas, amid the searing heatwave gripping the south-west.

Temperatures in El Paso peaked at 106F (41C) on Thursday, and some 34 million people – from the southern tip of Texas across Arizona and up into California and Nevada – were under heat alerts.

The US border patrol in El Paso said it had identified four people who died last weekend from “heatstroke and dehydration”. At least two others who are presumed to be migrants died this week, US Customs and Border Protection told the Guardian – though the individuals’ identities and causes of death have yet to be confirmed by the local coroner’s office.

Divers in Key West, Florida, have discovered more than a dozen packages of suspected cocaine in the Atlantic Ocean.

On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office in Monroe county announced the discovery, saying that divers found 25kg of individually wrapped packages of suspected cocaine that were located approximately 100ft underwater.

“The sheriffs responded to the Rainbow Reef Dive Center in Key Largo at approximately 12.25pm where divers stated they were removing what they thought was trash when the discovery was made,” the sheriff’s office said.

A photo posted on Facebook showed a ripped black garbage bag next to the gray packages of suspected cocaine. Each of the packages was wrapped in clear plastic and marked with a blue “Nike SB” sign and the Nike swoosh logo.

More...