TV News LIES

Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt was busy with activity Sunday as Israel said that limited travel to and from the territory is set to resume after years of near-complete isolation. Reopening the border crossing is a key step as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire moves ahead.

Israel announced Sunday that the crossing has opened in a test. COGAT, the Israeli military agency that controls aid to Gaza, said in a statement that the crossing was actively being prepared for fuller operation, adding that residents of Gaza would begin to pass through the crossing once preparations were complete.

Palestinian security officers passed through the crossing's Egyptian gate and headed toward the Palestinian gate to join an EU mission that will be supervising exit and entry, said an Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the media. Ambulances also crossed through the Egyptian gate, the official added.

The head of the new Palestinian administrative committee governing Gaza's daily affairs has said travel in both directions would start Monday.

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A powerful winter weather system — including an intense low-pressure "bomb cyclone" along the East Coast — is affecting a large swath of the country and driving extremely cold air deep into the Southeast.

Temperatures in southern Florida fell into the 20s on Sunday morning — it's the coldest it's been since 1989, according to the National Weather Service. A statement on the agency's website warned of freezing temperatures and "bitterly cold air" surging down the Florida Peninsula.

"All of our climate sites set new record lows for the date this morning," read a social media statement from the NWS office in Melbourne, Fla., "and most even set new monthly record lows for February!"

Though not unusually cold for much of the country, Florida isn't well-equipped for such temperatures, said Brian McNoldy, who studies cyclones at the University of Miami. " It's just something that people aren't used to," he said, "I mean, not every house even has heat, a lot of people don't have heavy coats."

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The John F Kennedy Center, a world-class venue for the performing arts in Washington DC, will halt entertainment events for two years starting on 4 July during renovations, Donald Trump posted on Sunday on Truth Social.

The Kennedy Center, which has seen a wave of performers cancel events in recent months as well as the lowest ticket sales in years, has been in turmoil since the president orchestrated a leadership overhaul in the beginning of his term.

In his Truth Social post, Trump claimed he had been reviewing the venue for one year to decide between a full closure and reopening or partial closure during its reconstruction.

“Based on these findings, and totally subject to Board approval, I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything that has taken place with respect to such a Facility before,” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.

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The mayor of Portland, Oregon, demanded US Immigration and Customs Enforcement leave his city after federal agents launched teargas at a crowd of demonstrators – including young children – outside an ICE facility during a weekend protest that he and others characterized as peaceful.

Witnesses said agents deployed teargas, pepper balls and rubber bullets as thousands of marchers arrived at the South Waterfront facility on Saturday. Erin Hoover Barnett, a former OregonLive reporter who joined the protest, said she was about 100 yards (91 metres) from the building when “what looked like two guys with rocket launchers” started dousing the crowd with ga

“To be among parents frantically trying to tend to little children in strollers, people using motorized carts trying to navigate as the rest of us staggered in retreat, unsure of how to get to safety, was terrifying,” Barnett wrote in an email to OregonLive.

Portland mayor Keith Wilson said the daytime demonstration was peaceful, “where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat and posed no danger” to federal agents.

“To those who continue to work for ICE: resign. To those who control this facility: leave,” Wilson wrote in a statement on Saturday night. “Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame.”

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An 18-year-old Northern Arizona University student died after an off-campus "rush" event, and three members of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity were arrested on suspicion of hazing, according to Flagstaff police.

The name of the student who died was not released by authorities.

The death stunned the university, which has about 20,000 students on its Flagstaff campus. "This is a devastating loss, and our hearts are with his family, friends and all members of our community who are grieving," the university said in an unsigned statement.

Police were called at 8:44 a.m. Jan. 31 to a house on South Pinegrove Road, where the 18-year-old was found unresponsive. Police and later paramedics tried lifesaving efforts, but he was pronounced dead at the house, Flagstaff police spokesperson Sgt. Jerry Rintala said.

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A federal appeals court judge has dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint by U.S. Justice Department against a judge who clashed with President Donald Trump’s administration over its move to deport several Venezuelans to El Salvador.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi took the rare step in July of announcing the complaint against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., alleging he made improper comments about Trump during a meeting of the judiciary’s policymaking body, the Judicial Conference.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in a newly-released order dated December 19 said the alleged statements, even if true, would not violate judicial ethics rules.

The Justice Department did not respond on Saturday to requests for comment. Boasberg, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, declined to comment.

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Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said the American Revolution has been “sanitized,” calling the war “dark and bloody.”

More...“I think we have sanitized the war. And I — I think it’s out of an understandable fear that if somehow we reveal how dark and bloody it is, that it will somehow diminish those big ideas in Philadelphia in [1776] and then 11 years later in [1787], when they do the Constitution,” Burns told NBC News’s Kristen Welker in an interview that aired Sunday.

“It doesn’t. They’re made — those ideas are made even more impressive because of the improbability of the struggle, the odds against success, the time it took to do it, the — all of the problems, the winters at Valley Forge and Morristown in which people are dying of disease,” he added.

Burns’s comments come amid heated debates about how American history should be presented, with mMore...any pushing for American history’s darker aspects, including slavery and the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans, to be highlighted more often.

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Democrat Christian Menefee won a Texas U.S. House seat in a special election Saturday that will narrow Republicans' already-slim majority, telling President Trump that the Democratic district "topples corrupt presidencies." Menefee, the Harris County attorney, prevailed in a runoff against Amanda Edwards, a former Houston City Council member. He will replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner, a former Houston mayor, who died in March 2025.

In addition to the Houston-area race, there was a special election in North Texas' Tarrant County for a state senate seat. In a major political upset, Democrat Taylor Rehmet defehttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/democrat-christian-menefee-wins-special-election-u-s-house-in-texas/ated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in that race in Tarrant County, the largest Republican county in the nation, according to complete but unofficial returns. 

The seat representing the heavily Democratic Houston-based district has been vacant for nearly a year.

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