TV News LIES

A new COVID-19 variant, BA.3.2, has been detected in 25 states, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new variant was first found in South Africa in November 2024 and has since spread to at least 23 countries; it accounts for 30% of current COVID-19 cases in certain parts of Europe.

BA.3.2 was first identified in the United States in January 2026 and currently makes up less than 1% of cases in the country, according to Dr. Abraar Karan, an instructor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

“In the U.S., it has been detected in wastewater across multiple states which suggests low-level spread, but it has not emerged as the dominant variant,” Dr. Syra Madad, an epidemiologist and author of the Substack Critical Health Voices, told HuffPost via email. (The current dominant variant in the U.S. is XFG, according to CDC data.)

While COVID-19 levels are low throughout most of the country, this variant is capturing researchers’ attention for a reason. Here’s what to know:

“BA.3.2 is a newer SARS-CoV-2 variant that public health officials are watching closely because it has a large number of spike protein mutations, which may help it partially evade immunity from prior infection or vaccination,” said Madad.

“It does have more mutations than some other variants ... in the spike protein, which is particularly relevant for various proxies of whether this could cause more problems to humans,” Karan said.

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A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk to national security and cutting off the AI company’s work with federal agencies.

Anthropic sued the Defense Department and other federal agencies this month after the Pentagon labeled it a "supply-chain risk to national security." President Donald Trump said he would also ban the use of Anthropic’s products across other federal agencies.

“Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a 'supply chain risk' is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” U.S. District Judge Rita Lin of Northern California wrote in her order Thursday night. “The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.”

Lin paused her order for a week to allow the administration time to appeal.

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A Democratic lawmaker has asked a federal judge to stop the Kennedy Center from sticking President Trump’s name on its building and other branding.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the performing arts center’s board of trustees, argued in a motion filed Wednesday that Congress plainly established former President Kennedy as the center’s eponym.

“There is no clearer or more significant breach of fiduciary duty than the Board flouting the central purpose of the institution it is charged with protecting and which Congress enshrined into law: to maintain the Center as a memorial to John F. Kennedy — and to no one else,” her lawyers wrote in a motion for partial summary judgment.

Beatty sued Trump and other board members in December over efforts to “rename, shutter and gut” the Kennedy Center. Her lawsuit came days after the board, hand-picked by Trump, voted to change the institution’s name to include Trump’s, and the building’s signage was updated.

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The U.S., Israel and Argentina on Wednesday voted against a United Nations resolution led by Ghana to label the international slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and call for reparations.

The resolution received 123 votes from the U.N. General Assembly in favor and 52 countries abstained, including all 27 European Union members, the United Kingdom, Australia, Oman and Japan.

The resolution also focused on the need to address historic wrongs toward Africans and people of the diaspora, and it placed emphasis on claims for reparations.

Diplomats cheered and some danced over the resolution’s adoption.

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dan Negrea called the resolution’s text “highly problematic in countless respects.” Negrea said in a statement that the U.S. “does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.”

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Transgender women are banned from competing at the Olympics, beginning with the Los Angeles Summer Games in 2028.

International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry announced the change Thursday, March 26, reversing its 2004 decision to allow the participation of transgender athletes. To date, only one openly transgender woman has competed at the Olympics in 2021, a weightlifter from New Zealand who did not make it past her opening round of competition at the Tokyo Games.

Women who want to compete at the Olympics will have to do a one-time genetic test.

The IOC began examining the issue of transgender participation in September 2024 after several sport federations, including World Athletics and World Aquatics, took steps to limit or ban transgender athletes. A year later, Coventry announced the creation of a working group that looked at "scientific, medical and legal developments since 2021."

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Iran has rejected a US proposal to end the war with the Islamic Republic, setting out its own conditions for peace according to state media, even as Iran's foreign minister said Tehran does not plan to negotiate with the US.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Wednesday that Iran intended to keep fighting, after US President Donald Trump said Washington had proposed a peace plan.

"At present, our policy is the continuation of resistance," Araghchi said on state TV.

"We do not intend to negotiate. So far, no negotiations have taken place, and I believe our position is completely principled," adding that Iran is sending messages through mediators but has not spoken to the US.

Araghchi, however, added that Iran demands a permanent end to the war and compensation for destruction. He also taunted the US, saying it had failed to protect Gulf states despite its bases in the region.

His statements came after a report detailing Iran's response to a US proposal to end the war. 

"Iran has responded negatively" to the American proposal, an unidentified official told Iran’s Press TV on Wednesday, referring to a 15-point ceasefire deal floated by the Trump administration and delivered to the Iranians by Pakistan.

"The end of the war will occur when Iran decides it should end, not when Trump envisions its conclusion," the Iranian official added.

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Israeli forces have entered the neighbourhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem to evict 11 Palestinians families from their homes.

According to locals and rights groups, 13 Palestinian apartments were seized in Silwan on Wednesday.

Police escorted Israeli settlers from the Ateret Cohanim organisation - who advocate settlement in Palestinian neighbourhoods of Jerusalem - into the Batn al-Hawa area of Silwan.

Video footage showed settlers throwing furniture out of apartment windows and raising the Israeli flag above the buildings.

According to Israeli rights group B'tselem, around 2,200 people in Silwan are facing the imminent threat of forced displacement.

"The ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem is happening now! Large Israeli forces entered the Silwan neighborhood today, 25 March, to evict 11 Palestinian families from their homes," the group wrote on Instagram.

They said the Israeli government was using the distraction of the war on Iran to relocate more settlers into territory in Palestinian areas captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

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A Palestinian toddler was returned from a 10-hour detention by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip with apparent cigarette burns on his thighs, according to medical reports.

Jawad Abu Nassar, aged 21 months, was detained alongside his father, Osama Abu Nassar, 25, in central Gaza on 19 March.

According to the family, Osama had taken his son out at around 10am to buy sweets ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

Osama - who had been grappling with severe trauma after losing his home, his unborn child, and his livelihood during the war - never returned.

“When he left, he seemed to head east instead of west,” Osama’s father, Muhammed Husni Abu Nassar, told Middle East Eye.

“Neighbours called me and said, ‘Hurry, your son is carrying his child on his shoulders and going east.’”

Around 200 metres from the family home in Maghazi refugee camp, Israeli forces are stationed along the so-called “Yellow Line”, a military demarcation established under the Gaza ceasefire that marks the boundary of Israeli control and a no-go zone where civilians risk being shot.

When Muhammed rushed to follow his son, neighbours told him that Osama had already reached the area.

Osama, whose home had been destroyed in an Israeli bombardment, had been living with his wife and their only child in his family’s house. In recent months, his wife had become pregnant but lost the baby amid the hardships of the war.

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