TV News LIES

The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to a trio of researchers Monday for their work on how cycles of technological innovation feed economic growth.

Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University, Peter Howitt of Brown University and Philippe Aghion of the College of France and the London School of Economics will split the prize money of 11 million Swedish kroner, or about $1.2 million.

All three men were born outside the United States, but each received his doctorate from a university in the U.S.

Mokyr pioneered a theory of how technological change and improvement has helped to fuel two centuries of growth and higher living standards. Howitt and Aghion followed up with a theory on how creative destruction allows one technological advance to give way to another, so what's a breakthrough in one generation is obsolete by the next.

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Two scenes from the past two weeks capture something unsettling – and familiar –about American public life. In San Francisco, a tech billionaire delivered a sold‑out, off‑the‑record lecture series on the antichrist. In Michigan, a man rammed his pickup truck into a Latter‑day Saints meetinghouse during Sunday worship, opened fire and set the building ablaze, apparently believing that Mormons are the antichrist.

The antichrist is clearly back. But perhaps he has never really left.

As a historian of American apocalypticism, I’ve traced how this symbol – a protean figure cobbled together from obscure biblical passages – has repeatedly migrated from pulpits to politics and back again.

Almost a century ago, fundamentalists mapped European dictators and New Deal bureaucrats on to biblical prophecy. During the cold war, evangelicals scanned Moscow and Jerusalem for signs of the Beast. In the first Gulf war, some Christians argued that Saddam Hussein was the antichrist who was rebuilding the Tower of Babel.

Whenever American power felt threatened or social change accelerated, antichrist talk surged. Today’s version arrives with AI, deepfakes and venture funding. And with bullets.

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US military veterans increasingly face arrest and injury amid protests over Donald Trump’s deportation campaign and his push to deploy national guard members to an ever-widening number of American cities.

The Guardian has identified eight instances where military veterans have been prosecuted or sought damages after being detained by federal agents.

The latest incident occurred in Broadview, outside Chicago, where 70-year old air force veteran Dana Briggs was charged with felony assault on a federal officer on 29 September.

A widely shared video on social media shows a masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent advance on and knock over the elderly veteran during a protest outside an Ice detention center.

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The firings of hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been reversed, according to several reports citing officials familiar with the matter, and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal workers.

On Friday, the White House budget office announced that as a result of the ongoing government shutdown, reductions in force (RIFs) across agencies have begun.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which houses the CDC, initially said that all employees that received layoff notices “were designated non-essential by their respective divisions”.

However, over the weekend, the administration rescinded more than half of the 1,300 termination notices it sent to public health officials at the CDC, according to Axios and Reuters, citing sources familiar. Around 600 people at the agency remain fired.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), informally known as “disease detectives”, as well as the team that compiles the widely respected scientific journal, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, were among the employees reinstated.

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News organizations including The New York Times, The Associated Press and the conservative Newsmax television network said Monday they will not sign a Defense Department document about its new press rules, making it likely the Trump administration will evict their ethreporters from the Pentagon.

Those outlets say the policy threatens to punish them for routine news gathering protected by the First Amendment. The Washington Post, The Atlantic and Reuters on Monday also publicly joined the group that says it will not be signing.

impartial and independent news,” the agency said in a statement. “We also steadfastly believe in the press prhttps://tse3.mm.bing.net/th/id/OIF.4fMuGRRVdY6PkT1jK5nmbQ?pid=Api&h=220&P=0otections afforded by the U.S. Constitution, the unrestricted flow of information and journalism that serves the public interest without fear or favor. The Pentagon’s new restrictions erode these fundamental values.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reacted by posting the Times’ statement on X and adding a hand-waving emoji. His team has said that reporters who don’t acknowledge the policy in writing by Tuesday must turn in badges admitting them to the Pentagon and clear out their workspaces the next day.

The new rules bar journalist access to large swaths of the Pentagon without an escort and say Hegseth can revoke press access to reporters who ask anyone in the Defense Department for information — classified or otherwise — that he has not approved for release.

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Cheers erupted among Palestinians on Monday as Israel released nearly 2,000 prisoners under a Gaza ceasefire agreement that saw them exchanged for Israeli hostages freed by Hamas.

Large crowds greeted the freed prisoners in Beitunia in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Khan Younis in Gaza, flashing V-for-victory signs as they descended from International Committee of the Red Cross buses. In Beitunia, they were given traditional keffiyeh scarves as a show of nationalist pride. Some were lifted onto people’s shoulders. Others sank into chairs, exhausted.

“It was an indescribable journey of suffering — hunger, unfair treatment, oppression, torture and curses — more than anything you could imagine,” said Kamal Abu Shanab, a 51-year-old Fatah member from the West Bank town of Tulkarem.

His face was gaunt. He said he lost 139 pounds (59 kilograms) in prison.

We don’t recognize him. He’s not the person we knew. Our uncle doesn’t look like our uncle,” said his niece, Farah Abu Shanab.

Those freed include around 1,700 of the several thousand Palestinians that Israeli troops seized from Gaza during the 2-year war and have held without charge.

Also among those released were 250 Palestinians sentenced to prison terms, most of them convicted for deadly attacks on Israelis dating back decades as well as others convicted on lesser charges, according to Israel’s Justice Ministry. Of those, Israel exiled 154, sending them to neighboring Egypt, where officials said they will be sent to third countries.

The rest were returning to homes in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

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Two of the West Coast’s most dangerous fault lines might be more in sync than scientists have realized. A new study found that the two sleeping giants, the Cascadia subduction zone and the northern San Andreas fault, have been moving in rhythm for millennia, shaking within hours of each other in a geological “dance” that can rattle the coastline from Oregon to California.

A team led by Oregon State University geologist Chris Goldfinger published its findings on Sept. 29 in the scientific journal Geosphere, demonstrating the first evidence that the two faults have interacted repeatedly over thousands of years.

Washington, up to southern British Columbia. The famous San Andreas fault runs along the California coast straight through San Francisco. 

By examining deep-sea sediment cores from the Cascadia megathrust — the deep undersea fault where the oceanic plate dives beneath North America — researchers found signs that major quakes on one fault may have helped trigger ruptures in the other.

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The world on Monday celebrated the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, as the first phase in the U.S.-brokered ceasefire plan held in the shaken region.

Twenty Israeli hostages in Gaza were transferred to the International Committee of the Red Cross and returned home, according to the Israeli military. Almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners were being released by Israel as part of the ceasefire deal.

Cheers, cries and Hebrew songs rang out in Tel Aviv's Hostage Square, where thousands of Israelis had gathered to celebrate the homecoming.

President Donald Trump traveled to the Middle East to greet the hostages as part of a whirlwind visit to Israel and Egypt while back home the U.S. government entered its 13th day in a shutdown. The ceasefire the United States helped broker continues to hold between Israel and Hamas.

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