TV News LIES

Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the war is still being fought far away from the frontlines – behind locked doors, in windowless cells, and in silence.

Thousands of Ukrainians remain in Russian captivity. Others have returned carrying memories they struggle to put into words.

One of them is Oleksii, a Ukrainian serviceman of the 13th Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard, Khartiia, who spent nearly two years in Russian detention.

Speaking exclusively to Kyiv Post, he described torture, psychological pressure, and what he says was a systematic attempt to erase prisoners as individuals – while clinging to a single reason to survive: his newborn daughter.

“I’m not hiding,” Oleksii said. “You can use my name.”

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One glossy insert stuck out from the orientation packet handed to hundreds of Ohio State University freshmen last August. It advertised a tempting offer: students could earn a $4,000 scholarship – close to a third off in-state tuition – if they enrolled in one civics-oriented course and attended three events each semester outside of class.

It seemed straightforward, but missing in the fine print was the controversial nature of the center giving the scholarships, sponsoring the lectures and crafting the new courses. It was the Salmon P Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, created by Ohio’s Republican-dominated legislature with the explicit goal of enticing students to take courses taught by a newly hired group of conservative philosophers, political scientists and historians.

Housed in one of Ohio State’s sturdy brick buildings, the center has 20 faculty members teaching nine credit-bearing courses this academic year. Most of its lectures and other events have a decidedly right-leaning bent. In 2023, Ohio state legislators allocated $24m in tax dollars to create the Chase Center and four others like it on Ohio campuses and to influence the details of university operations in a manner that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

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On February 26, 2025, a NASA probe called Lunar Trailblazer lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its mission was to map the water on the moon. But a day after launch, mission managers lost contact with the spacecraft, and it was never heard from again.

One year later, NPR has learned exactly why the $72 million dollar mission failed.

A report by a review panel convened by NASA to explore what went wrong contains the explanation. Software that was supposed to point the spacecraft solar panels toward the sun instead pointed them 180 degrees away from the sun.

In addition, the panel found "many erroneous on-board fault management actions" that, taken together with the solar panel pointing error, "caused the Lunar Trailblazer failure."

NASA provided the report in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

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The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee plans to look into NPR's investigation revealing Epstein files related to President Trump are missing from the public record.

Asked if he is concerned about a possible Justice Department cover-up after NPR discovered documents related to an accusation of sexual abuse against President Trump weren't included in the database, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said Oversight Republicans plan to investigate.

"We're looking into the accusation made by the NPR," Comer told reporters during a Thursday press conference ahead of the committee's deposition of former first lady Hillary Clinton. "We don't know the answer to that. We know what the administration says. We're still looking to get a definitive answer on that."

NPR's previous reporting found internal FBI and Justice Department outline documents related to allegations from a woman who, according to documents within the database, claimed that around 1983, when she was around 13 years old, Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to Trump, "who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out."

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Zohran Mamdani met with Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, during an unannounced trip to the nation’s capital.

On social media, the New York mayor said he had a “productive” meeting with the US president and he was “looking forward to building more housing in New York City”.

Mamdani also said he spoke to the president on the phone after the meeting to discuss the arrest of Elmina Aghayeva, a Columbia University student who was detained by federal immigration agents on Thursday.

“He has just informed me that she will be released imminently,” Mamdani said. The White House did not reply to the Guardian’s request for comment.

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Transgender Kansas residents have begun receiving letters from the state’s department of motor vehicles notifying them that their driver’s licenses will be invalid beginning Thursday, as a new law goes into effect that demands that forms of identification must now reflect the credential holder’s “sex at birth”.

The bill, known as SB 244, also bans transgender people from using bathrooms in public buildings that match their gender identity, and creates a sort of bounty hunter system, in which citizens can sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for $1,000 in damages.

The state law was rushed through the state legislature using an expedited procedure known as “gut and go”. This means the text of one bill can be taken out and substituted for entirely new language or provisions, bypassing standard committee vetting and speeding through the voting process, which is legal in Kansas.

Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, arguing that SB 244 was “poorly drafted legislation”, but her veto was overridden by the state legislature’s Republican supermajority.

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The Pentagon this week removed a senior military official who had served on the Joint Staff for about 90 days, returning him to a role in the U.S. Navy. 

Vice Adm. Fred Kacher, who became the director of the Joint Staff in December, was yanked from the post and will “return to service” with the Navy, a spokesperson told The Hill on Thursday morning.

“A distinguished and highly experienced surface warfare leader, Vice Adm. Fred Kacher will return to service with the United States Navy, after most recently serving as the Director of the Joint Staff,” a Joint Staff spokesperson told The Hill Thursday morning.

It is unclear why Kacher was removed from the position. One source told Reuters, which first reported on the removal, that Kacher was not the right fit.

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The family of a sanctioned United Nations human rights investigator on Wednesday sued the Trump administration for sanctioning her over her criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, arguing that the sanctions violate her First Amendment rights.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s husband, Massimiliano Cali, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Washington. They argued that Albanese’s work surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with her work with the International Criminal Court (ICC), “is core First Amendment activity.”

“At its heart, this case concerns whether Defendants can sanction a person — ruining their life and the lives of their loved ones, including their citizen daughter — because Defendants disagree with their recommendations or fear their persuasiveness,” according to the filing.

Cali, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself, Albanese and their child, also argued that the sanctions have negatively impacted their ability to access their home in Washington, D.C. Cali said his wife also lost access to her bank account and the ability to travel to the U.S.

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