TV News LIES

A metro Detroit attorney who has helped lead multiple humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza says she was abused and detained by Israeli forces after the ships were intercepted on October 8.

Huwaida Arraf, a human rights lawyer long involved in pro-Palestinian activism, says she was zip-tied, beaten, and held for five days before being deported. She describes her experience as minor compared with the suffering of people inside Gaza, where shortages of food, water, and medicine persist amid leveled city blocks and decimated infrastructure.

Arraf spoke with Robyn Vincent on The Metro about the incident and her decision to keep leading these missions meant to draw attention to Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

The Israeli war in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, has killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians and over 1,200 Israelis. The latest flotilla voyage took place just before Israel and Hamas entered a fragile ceasefire agreement on Oct. 10. Days later, Israeli airstrikes resumed after reports of new clashes. Both Israel and Hamas have accused the other of breaking the truce.

The Israeli war in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, has killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians and over 1,200 Israelis. The latest flotilla voyage took place just before Israel and Hamas entered a fragile ceasefire agreement on Oct. 10. Days later, Israeli airstrikes resumed after reports of new clashes. Both Israel and Hamas have accused the other of breaking the truce.

Humanitarian agencies say residents of Gaza face worsening hunger, disease, and displacement as aid convoys continue to be delayed or blocked.

More...

Icelanders may be the last group of people on Earth to experience the pesky bite of a mosquito.

This week, Iceland recorded the presence of the insects within its borders for the first time in the Nordic nation's history.

The discovery of three Culiseta annulata mosquitoes was confirmed Monday by the Natural Science Institute of Iceland, which said the mosquitoes likely arrived by freight and appeared to be able to withstand Iceland's climate. (There have been previous reports of mosquitoes found in airplanes in Iceland.)

The institute noted that the mosquitoes were one of a number of new insect species discovered in Iceland in recent years due to a warming climate and the growth of international transportation.

More...

Ali Mokdad stands in the heart of Beirut. Cars and trucks and motorcycles rumble everywhere.

"If you look at a car passing by, you see smoke coming out of it — that's illegal in Lebanon. But nobody enforce[s] it," says Mokda, the chief strategy officer of population health at the University of Washington.

As a result, Beirut has terrible air quality and is often submerged under a blanket of exhaust. And it's not just in the big cities — vehicles belch pollution across the country.

It's one reason that cancer is surging in Lebanon. Mokdad co-authored a global survey that revealed that the tiny nation on the Mediterranean is experiencing the fastest increase in cancer incidence and mortality anywhere in the world. According to the study, published in The Lancet, the frequency of new cancer cases in Lebanon has increased by an astounding 162% from 1990 to 2023, with cancer-related deaths increasing by 80% over that same period. In 2023, for every 100,000 people in the country, there were 233.5 new cancer cases.

More...

Outrage mounted and questions remained unanswered after federal agents detained multiple people on Chinatown’s Canal Street in an aggressive immigration raid Tuesday.

U.S. Homeland Security officials say they arrested more than a dozen people during the operation, including nine undocumented immigrants, four people who allegedly assaulted a federal officer and another who allegedly obstructed law enforcement by blocking a driveway.

Immigrant advocates said they scrambled to respond as masked agents made arrests in the busy street ahead of rush hour.

“This chaos was created by these federal agents who seemingly wanted to start a fight,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “This was choreographed in the sense of them doing this to get New Yorkers to see that they're doing something, but they're not doing anything for our safety and security.”

More...

This brings our live coverage of the final New York mayoral debate to a close.

We will have analysis from our politics team shortly.

Overall, the 90-minute event seemed unlikely to have changed many minds, with the main focus being an extended argument between Zohan Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, and Andrew Cuomo, the former governor he defeated in the primary, now running as an independent.

Cuomo kept hammering the point that his experience should make him the right choice, given his long career in government at the state and federal level, as opposed to Mamdani, the state assemblyman who is almost exactly half his age.

Mamdani, for his part, cast himself as the candidate of change, focused on affordability and trying to reverse a situation in which New York is becoming “a museum of where working-class people used to be able to live”.

Sliwa is an engaging presence on television, but did little to change the perception that he remains more of a quirky cultural figure than a likely government administrator.

More...

After the recent departure of Pentagon reporters due to their refusal to agree to a new set of restrictive policies, the defense department has announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets, many of which have promoted conspiracy theories.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell posted the news on X but did not provide any names.

The Washington Post, however, obtained a draft of the announcement, which stated that the new reporters, who agreed to the department’s new policies, were from outlets such as Lindell TV, started by Trump ally Mike Lindell; the Gateway Pundit; the Post Millennial; Human Events; and the National Pulse.

The list also includes Turning Point USA’s media brand Frontlines, influencer Tim Pool’s Timcast and a Substack-based newsletter called Washington Reporter, the Post reported.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for the list of journalists.

Parnell described the group as a “broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists”.

More...

The University of Virginia (UVA) has become the latest institution to agree to the Trump administration’s demands concerning discrimination in admissions and hiring following significant pressure from the justice department.

The deal, which the department announced on Wednesday, comes after the president of the esteemed public university resigned in June to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

If the president, Jim Ryan, had stayed in the job, he was told “hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld”, according to Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia.

The deal means the justice department will end its investigation into the school, while the school agreed “not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in its university programming, admissions, hiring or other activities. UVA will provide relevant information and data to the Department of Justice on a quarterly basis through 2028,” the announcement states.

More...

Meta will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit as the company looks to reduce layers and operate more nimbly, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

The company announced the cuts in a memo from its chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR) and other product-related positions will be impacted.

However, the cuts did not impact employees within TBD Labs, which includes many of the top-tier AI hires brought into the social media company this summer, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. Those employees, overseen by Wang, were spared by the layoffs,underscoring Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s bet on his expensive hires versus the legacy employees, the people said.

Within Meta, the AI unit was considered to be bloated, with teams like FAIR and more product-oriented groups often vying for computing resources, the people said. When the company’s new hires joined the company to create Superintelligence Labs, it inherited the oversized Meta AI unit, they said. The layoffs are an attempt by Meta to continue trim the department and further cement Wang’s role in steering the company’s AI strategy.

More...