TV News LIES

Less than a year after the Palisades fire destroyed nearly 7,000 structures in Los Angeles, the first completed rebuilt home is being celebrated in Pacific Palisades.

In a statement, mayor Karen Bass confirmed that the Los Angeles department of building and safety had issued the certificate on Friday, certifying that the home had passed inspection and was ready for occupancy.

“The Palisades community has been through an unimaginable year, and my heart breaks for every family that won’t be able to be home this holiday season. But today is an important moment of hope,” said Bass.

“With more and more projects nearing completion across Pacific Palisades, the City of Los Angeles remains committed to expediting every aspect of the rebuilding process, until every family is back home,” Bass added.

The Pacific Palisades home features four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms spread across nearly 4,000 sq ft. It replaces a 1,600 sq ft ranch-style home destroyed in January. Across the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, nearly 2,000 rebuilding permits have been issued, according to the LA Times.

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European leaders on Saturday praised President Trump’s reported 28-point plan to end the war between Ukraine and Russia for including “important elements,” but added that the plan needs “additional work” for peace to last.

The proposal would reportedly require Ukraine to relinquish the eastern territory of the Donbas region to Russia and cut its armed forces by half. In a joint statement released by the Council of the European Union, leaders signaled the plan is a good start — but merely a draft.

“We believe therefore that the draft is a basis which will require additional work,” they added. “We are ready to engage in order to ensure that a future peace is sustainable. We are clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force.”

They added, “We are also concerned by the proposed limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack.”

The coalition expressed their continued support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding that they “will continue to coordinate closely with Ukraine and the U.S. over the coming days.”

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GOP lawmakers think Bondi fueled the firestorm — which Democrats have delighted in stoking — by telling Fox News anchor John Roberts in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting right now on my desk to review.”

Months later, the Justice Department and FBI released an unsigned memo asserting there was “no incriminating ‘client list’” and that federal investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” That memo provoked widespread skepticism and accusations that the Trump administration wasn’t being fully transparent.

“There’s a https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5617816-senate-republicans-criticize-bondi-justice-department/lot of frustration with the Epstein stuff. People thought the DOJ really mishandled that in general, and unnecessarily elevated that,” one GOP senator, who requested anonymity to discuss frustration with Bondi, told The Hill.

The senator called Bondi’s statement to Fox News in February and the conflicting July memo an “unforced error.”

Bondi has since explained that she wasn’t talking about an actual client list but instead a stack of Epstein-related files and that it was Roberts, the interviewer, who used the words “list of Jeffrey Epstein clients.”

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At least 67 Palestinian children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since a United States-brokered ceasefire agreement came into effect last month, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says.

Speaking during a news conference in Geneva on Friday, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said the death toll includes a baby girl who was killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday.

It also includes seven other children killed a day earlier, as Israel carried out a wave of attacks across the enclave.

“This is during an agreed ceasefire. The pattern is staggering,” Pires told reporters of the death toll since October 11, the first full day of the truce between Israel and Hamas.

“As we have repeated many times, these are not statistics: Each was a child with a family, a dream, a life – suddenly cut short by continued violence.”

Palestinian children have borne the brunt of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, with UNICEF estimating last month that 64,000 children have been killed and injured in Israeli attacks since the war began in October 2023.

Save the Children reported this week that, in 2024, an average of 475 Palestinian children “suffered lifelong disabilities” each month as a result of the war, including traumatic brain injuries and burns.

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Several high-ranking Army officials, including Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, are in Ukraine to help with peace talks, U.S. officials said Wednesday, as Trump administration efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine have stalled.

Driscoll had been planning a trip to Ukraine for some time to discuss the country’s drone warfare innovations and tactics, but last week President Donald Trump decided to identify him as a kind of “special representative” to kick-start peace negotiations and conduct a fact-finding mission, one of the officials said.

That official confirmed Driscoll is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week as well as top Ukrainian government, military and defense industry officials.

Driscoll is accompanied by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the service’s most senior officer; Gen. Chris Donahue, U.S. Army Europe and Africa commanding general; and Sgt. Maj. Michael Weimer, the Army’s top enlisted official, an Army official said.

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A federal judge ruled Friday that the IRS appears to have broken the law when it reached an agreement to share secret taxpayer data with ICE, and ordered a pause to the practice.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee to the court in the District of Columbia, called the sharing “unlawful conduct” that broke procedural and tax law.

“Plaintiffs have shown that the IRS’s implementation of the Address-Sharing Policy was arbitrary and capricious because the IRS failed to recognize that it was departing from its prior policy of strict confidentiality, failed to consider the reliance interests that were engendered by its prior policy of strict confidentiality, and failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the new policy,” she wrote.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had sought access to IRS data to help track down illegal immigrant targets.

According to documents revealed in the case, ICE initially sought information on more than 7 million IRS taxpayers, then settled on 1.28 million “immigrant taxpayers,” the judge said.

At least 47,000 records were provided, the judge said.

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The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in October brought initial relief to its inhabitants. Yet officials there said Israeli strikes killed 33 people, including 12 children, on Wednesday; Israel said its troops had come under fire. Another five Palestinians were killed on Thursday. Hundreds have died since the ceasefire was declared. Even if the shelling stops, the destruction of Palestinian life will carry on as Israel continues to throttle aid, and the consequences of two years of war unfold.

The World Health Organization warned last month that the health catastrophe would last for generations.

Food remains in short supply. While displaced families shiver in flooded makeshift shelters, with many facing a third winter of homelessness, aid organisations say they cannot deliver stockpiles of tents and tarpaulins. Israel, which denies blocking aid, has designated tent poles as “dual-use” items that could potentially be used for a military purpose. Save the Children reports children sleeping on bare ground in sewage-soaked clothing.

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Senator Mark Kelly – whose wife, Gabrielle Giffords, narrowly survived an attempted assassination while she was in Congress in 2011 – says he is worried about “increased threats” to his family’s safety after Donald Trump accused him and other Democratic lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”.

“This kind of language is dangerous, and it’s wrong,” Kelly said on Friday on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, with political violence one of the top topics in the US’s public discourse. He continued: “I’m not going to get into my specific security arrangements, but it would be irresponsible for me not to consider that [Trump’s] words result in increased threats to myself, even to my staff, to my family.

“It would be a rather irresponsible thing for us not to consider this seriously.”

The Arizona senator’s remarks came after he appeared in a video on Tuesday alongside five other federal Democratic lawmakers who have previously served in the military or in intelligence roles – and who all told active US service members that they should refuse illegal orders.

“Our laws are clear,” the senators and US House members in question say in the video. “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.”

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