TV News LIES

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got an unexpected Christmas gift from President Donald Trump this year: Hegseth’s embattled chief of staff — who’d been doing the job in an acting capacity for eight months — will take the role permanently, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

Hegseth reportedly tried to make Ricky Buria his official chief of staff beginning in the spring but was blocked by the White House presidential personnel office. Buria was a former junior military aide for Biden-era Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and donated to a Democrat in 2023, according to FEC records.

Pinch hitter: Buria replaced former Hegseth chief of staff Joe Kasper who left in the spring shortly after a wave of firings of Hegseth senior aides that Pentagon officials attributed to a leak investigation. Several of the aides contested the investigation and their subsequent dismissals. Besides being very close to Hegseth, Buria has also reportedly won over Hegseth’s wife Jennifer.

More...

Venture capitalist Finn Murphy believes world leaders could soon resort to deflecting sunlight into space if the Earth gets unbearably hot.

That’s why he’s invested more than $1 million in Stardust Solutions, a leading solar geoengineering firm that’s developing a system to reduce warming by enveloping the globe in reflective particles.

Murphy isn’t rooting for climate catastrophe. But with global temperatures soaring and the political will to limit climate change waning, Stardust “can be worth tens of billions of dollars,” he said.

“It would be definitely better if we lost all our money and this wasn’t necessary,” said Murphy, the 33-year-old founder of Nebular, a New York investment fund named for a vast cloud of space dust and gas.

Murphy is among a new wave of investors who are putting millions of dollars into emerging companies that aim to limit the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth — while also potentially destabilizing weather patterns, food supplies and global politics. He has a degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering and views global warming not just as a human and political tragedy, but as a technical challenge with profitable solutions.

More...

The president of the Kennedy Center has demanded $1m in damages and fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden decision to cancel a Christmas Eve performance at the venue days after the White House announced that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment – explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure – is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with the Associated Press.

In the letter, Grenell said he would seek $1m in damages “for this political stunt”.

Redd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A drummer and vibraphone player, Redd has presided over holiday Jazz Jams at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist William “Keter” Betts. In an email Wednesday to the Associated Press, Redd said he pulled out of the concert in the wake of the renaming.

“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd said. He added on Wednesday that the event has been a “very popular holiday tradition” and that he often featured at least one student musician.

More...

Somali officials and the African Union on Saturday blasted Israel for recognizing Somaliland as an independent state and allegedly undermining Somalia’s sovereignty.

“The federal government of Somalia warns that illegitimate actions of this nature seriously undermine regional peace and stability, exacerbate political and security tensions in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the Middle East and the wider region,” Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre’s office posted on social platform X, alongside a video statement.

Barre’s office called the recognition a “deliberate attack” on Somalia’s autonomy.

“Somalia makes it clear that it will not permit the establishment of any foreign military bases or arrangements on its territory that will throw Somalia into proxy conflicts or import regional and international hostilities into this region,” an official said in the video.

African Union Commission Chair  also rejected Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “with deep concern” and cited the Constitutive Act of the African Union in calling for Somali unity.

More...

Jaber al-Attar, a 51-year-old doctor living in northern Gaza, was elated when the news arrived of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, bringing an end to two years of relentless bombardment.

But just four weeks after it was announced, he received a phone call on his way to work at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat to say that his daughter, Maysaa, had been killed by Israeli drone fire as she sheltered in a tent.

“There is absolutely no safety; there is no hope for us to have any security,” he tells The Independent from the same tent in the Al-Atatra area of Beit Lahia, where he is living after being displaced. “I spent my life in hardship and misery.”

Jaber’s daughter is one of at least 410 Palestinians to be killed since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

During a victory lap speech in the Knesset, US president Donald Trump had promised “peace for all eternity”. But for Gazans, the nightmare has not ended: it is a ceasefire in name only.

In addition to the more than 400 Palestinians who have been killed, the health ministry says that 1,134 have been injured by Israeli shelling and gunfire. At least three Israeli troops have also been killed by Palestinian militants, while two people were killed on Friday in what police called a "rolling terror attack" in northern Israel.

More...

President Donald Trump on Friday cast himself as the ultimate arbiter of any peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, in an exclusive conversation with POLITICO.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to meet with Trump in Florida on Sunday and told reporters he’s bringing with him a new 20-point plan for peace. The framework includes a proposed demilitarized zone and the meeting is expected to focus on U.S. security guarantees.

But in an interview, Trump appeared lukewarm to Zelenskyy’s latest overture and in no rush to endorse the Ukrainian president’s proposal.

“He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump said. “So we’ll see what he’s got.”

The president’s comments underscore the degree to which Ukraine’s fate rests on convincing Trump that it is conceding enough to satisfy a president who, at times, has appeared inclined to lean toward Russia if it means an end to the war. Russia has moved very little from its maximalist position and has not reacted to the latest proposal. The U.S., meanwhile, has pushed Zelenskyy to move off his original demands and Trump has often seemed to lose patience with the haggling.

Still, Trump believed he could have a productive meeting this weekend.

More...

President Donald Trump urged the Justice Department to release the names of any Democrats in the Epstein files, saying the agency should “embarrass them,” even as he questioned the amount of time being spent on the issue.

Trump signed legislation Nov. 19 requiring the release of the federal government’s records related to Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The legislation set a 30-day deadline for the records to be released, and the Justice Department began making them public on Dec. 19. Hundreds of thousands of documents have been made available, but many more have yet to come out, prompting some lawmakers to accuse the Trump administration of violating the law.

The Justice Department said on Dec. 24 that the FBI and federal prosecutors found more than a million additional Epstein-related documents and that it would take weeks to review them.

“Now 1,000,000 more pages on Epstein are found,” Trump said in a Dec. 26 social media post. “DOJ is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat inspired Hoax. When do they say NO MORE.”

More...

A new year means a new parade of classic characters and works entering the public domain.

Under U.S. law, the copyright on thousands of creations from 1930 — including films, books, musical compositions and more — will expire at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2026, meaning they will be free to use, share and adapt after nearly a century.

"I think this is my favorite crop of works yet, which is saying a lot," says Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke University Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, who has compiled an annual list of public domain entrants for over a decade.

This year's treasure trove features famous faces like the original Betty Boop — whose iconic hoop earrings originally took the form of floppy dog ears — and the initial version of Disney's Pluto, who first went by the name Rover.

"That's not only exciting in itself, but it's really an opportunity to look back at the history of these two incredible animation studios, Fleischer and Disney, and how their styles are imprinted in the DNA of today's cartoons," Jenkins says. "That's just a fun rabbit hole."

More...