TV News LIES

• Israeli forces fired on a crowd of Palestinians waiting for aid in Gaza City. At least 100 people were killed and hundreds more were injured, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the enclave’s Health Ministry, said today. NBC News has not independently verified the reported death toll, and it’s not clear how many people were killed from gunfire or the ensuing panic

• The Israeli military said that civilians surrounded an aid truck, causing pushing and trampling, and that it was reviewing the incident. An Israeli government source said Israel Defense Forces troops responded with “live fire” after people surrounded trucks carrying humanitarian aid.

• President Joe Biden said he knew the incident would complicate cease-fire talks. Meanwhile, Biden held calls this morning with the emir of Qatar and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.

The health care crisis in Gaza is unthinkably grim, even by the standards of war-ravaged regions. Infectious diseases from chickenpox to cholera are sweeping through the population; crucial medical supplies are blocked at the border; and hospitals are overrun with critically wounded patients.

Four months into Israel’s brutal war on Hamas, the situation looks set to get worse.

Israel is poised to launch an invasion into Rafah, endangering more than a million Palestinians who have sought refuge in the southern city, largely women and children. Hope for a humanitarian respite are fading as U.S.-brokered cease-fire talks broke down in Cairo this week. And the U.S. has frozen funding to the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza, further endangering the already tenuous efforts to provide medical aid.

The Israel-Gaza war has taken a severe toll on journalists since Hamas launched its unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 and Israel declared war on the militant Palestinian group, launching strikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip.

CPJ is investigating all reports of journalists and media workers killed, injured, or missing in the war, which has led to the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

A spree of swatting incidents at nearly 200 Jewish synagogues and schools last week is believed to be a connected effort by foreign actors, according to a confidential FBI memo.

“Swatting,” named for the elite police groups specializing in high-risk operations, is when an individual or group of people make a misleading or false report to emergency services in an attempt to draw numerous armed authorities to a specific place.

The memo, obtained by ABC News and reportedly sent to partner law enforcement agencies, said more than 30 of the FBI’s 56 field offices are working to investigate the string of false reports.

Air Canada has been forced to apologize after a man with spastic cerebral palsy was forced to drag himself off a plane when the flagship carrier failed to provide a wheelchair for him.

Rodney Hodgins, 49, a hardware salesman from British Columbia who requires the use of a motorized wheelchair, flew to Las Vegas with his wife, Deanna, to celebrate their anniversary in August.

But when the plane landed, the flight attendant told the couple there wasn’t time to get a wheelchair on board before the plane had to prepare for takeoff again, Deanna Hodgins wrote in a recent Facebook post.

When the attendant said Hodgins would have to pull himself off the plane alone, the couple at first thought she was joking – but then she repeated the request.

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A Black journalism professor who was hired by Texas A&M University before objections in some quarters over her history of promoting diversity foiled the job offer has secured a $1m settlement from the institution.

Kathleen McElroy also received an apology from officials at Texas A&M, the largest public school in the US, who in a statement Thursday acknowledged “mistakes … made during the process”.

In her own statement, McElroy said she would remain in a tenured teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin, and hoped the settlement would “reinforce A&M’s allegiance to excellence in higher education and its commitment to academic freedom and journalism”.

“I will never forget that … students, members, former students and staff voiced support for me from many sectors,” McElroy’s statement also said.

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