TV News LIES

China on Monday accused the U.S. of violating international law in seizing oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela, appearing to take the side of Caracas as Washington looks to take a third oil tanker this month.

“The U.S. practice of arbitrarily seizing other countries’ vessels grossly violates international law,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters, according to Bloomberg, adding that Beijing opposes anything that “infringes upon other countries’ sovereignty and security, and all acts of unilateralism or bullying.”

Lin added that Venezuela “has the right to independently develop mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries,” and Beijing supports Caracas in “defending its own legitimate rights and interests.”

The comments come as the U.S. on Sunday sought to seize a third oil tanker in an effort to cut off funding for the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

But the effort in the Caribbean Sea by the U.S. Coast Guard was thwarted when the tanker, the Bella 1, refused to submit and sailed away. Washington last year placed sanctions on the ship for transporting Iranian oil.

More...

CBS pulled a "60 Minutes" segment hours before it was set to air on Dec. 21, a move that has apparently sparked backlash from its correspondent.

The segment was set to feature the notorious El Salvador prison CECOT.

The news program announced the programming update in a statement around 4:30 p.m. ET on Dec. 21, adding that the piece "will air in a future broadcast."

"We determined it needed additional reporting," CBS News said in a statement to USA TODAY.

Sharyn Alfonsi, a correspondent who has worked at the network for more than two decades, reported the piece. Multiple outlets, including The New York Times, NPR and CNN, obtained an email Alfonsi sent to colleagues in which she said the decision to pull the segment "is not an editorial decision, it is a political one." USA TODAY has not been able to reach Alfonsi.

"60 Minutes," instead, aired a segment on a family of classical musicians, the programming update said. The show's social media comments have since been flooded with viewers calling on the network to release the original clip.

More,,,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will present plans for a possible fresh attack on Iran to US President Donald Trump during his upcoming visit to Washington, NBC News reported Saturday, citing several unnamed officials.

According to the report, Israel is growing increasingly concerned that Iran is rebuilding and even expanding its ballistic missile production in the wake of the nations’ 12-day war in June.

Israel is also worried that Iran is rebuilding its nuclear enrichment program, which was heavily damaged by Israeli and American strikes, the report added.

Netanyahu and Trump are expected to meet at the US president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida at the end of the month.

While Israel has publicly called Iran’s nuclear program an existential threat, officials quoted in the report said that the ballistic missiles were seen by Jerusalem as a more pressing concern.

TVNL Comment: Bibi needs a new war to stay out of prison.  Why not with Iran?

More...

The Ukrainian army was battling an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it said on Sunday, following reports that Moscow forcibly moved 50 people from a border village there.

This marks a renewed Russian advance in the part of the region previously largely spared from intense ground fighting since Ukraine regained land there in a swift 2022 counter-offensive.

“Fighting is currently ongoing in the village of Hrabovske,” Ukraine’s joint task force said, adding the troops were “making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory.”

It has also refuted media reports saying that the Moscow troops were in the neighboring Ryasne village.

Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian rights ombudsman said the enemy’s troops forcibly moved about 50 people from Hrabovske to Russia.

On Thursday, Russian soldiers “illegally detained about 50 civilians -- residents of the village of Hrabovske in the Sumy region,” ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said.

He added that they were held incommunicado in poor conditions, before the Russians “forcibly took them to the territory of the Russian Federation” on Saturday.

AFP is unable to verify the claims, and there was no official Russian comment on the matter.

However, on Saturday, the Russian army said it had captured the village of Vysoke, a few miles from Grabovske.

Sumy military administration said on Saturday it evacuated residents from the border communities in the area, who previously refused to leave, in armored vehicles.

More...

The Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, admitted at a Senate hearing on Wednesday that there had been a political “sea change” and he no longer viewed the FCC as an independent agency. Commissioners, he says, serve at the pleasure of the president.

In his case, that president is Donald Trump, whose face Carr wears as a lapel pin, whose agenda he loudly embraces, and who often publicly demands that Carr censor his critics, including revoking their broadcast licenses.

Soon after Carr’s about-face, the agency quietly scrubbed references to its independence from its website.

Perhaps Carr believes in the unitary executive theory, under which agency heads essentially function like cabinet members. That’s fine. We’re not here to argue with him about administrative law. But he can’t have it both ways. You’re either an umpire calling balls and strikes or a political hack – you can’t be both.

If Carr believes the FCC is subservient to the president, then he is the last person who should be claiming the power to regulate journalists’ editorial decisions under the FCC’s “public interest” standard. By his own admission, he has every incentive to define the “public interest” in whatever manner pleases his boss.

The evidence bears this out. Data from Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Press Freedom Tracker shows that every single investigation or social media tirade Carr has launched against licensees’ speech – be it 60 Minutes’ editing of its Kamala Harris interview, Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk’s death, or Comcast’s accurate reporting that contradicted Trump’s lies about the Kilmar Abrego García’s immigration case – has involved content that upset Trump.

More...

While Donald Trump’s justice department did not deliver on a legal requirement to disclose all Jeffrey Epstein-related files by Friday, one document in an otherwise underwhelming disclosure lifted the veil on authorities’ inaction – and its dire consequences for dozens of teen girls.

That document is an FBI report from Maria Farmer, a painter who worked for Epstein around 1996.

Farmer, whose sister Annie Farmer was abused by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell at age 16, told authorities in 1996 that the late financier “stole” nude images of her siblings.

Farmer reported Epstein’s behavior with these photographs, but the FBI has never openly recognized that she made such a report, according to the New York Times. The newspaper also noted how an internal investigation into the justice department’s handling of Epstein’s case did not mention this report.

The police report states that “Complainant [Maria Farmer] stated that she is a professional artist and took pictures of her sisters 12 and 16 yrs for her own [personal] Art Work”.

“Epstein Stole the photos and Negatives and is believed to have sold the pictures to potential buyers,” it adds.

The report also stated that Epstein requested “pictures of young girls at swimming pools” and threatened Farmer, saying “that if she tells anyone about the photos he will burn her house down”.

More...

The Trump administration is recalling nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial and other senior embassy posts as it moves to reshape the US diplomatic posture abroad with personnel deemed fully supportive of Donald Trump’s “America first” priorities.

The chiefs of mission in at least 29 countries were informed last week that their tenures would end in January, according to two state department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel moves.

All of them had taken up their posts in the Biden administration but had survived an initial purge in the early months of Trump’s second term that targeted mainly political appointees. That changed on Wednesday when they began to receive notices from officials in Washington DC about their imminent departures.

Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, although they typically remain at their posts for between three and four years. Those affected by the shakeup are not losing their foreign service jobs but will be returning to Washington for other assignments should they wish to take them, the officials said.

More...

The gaffe didn’t go unnoticed by critics of Kirk, who have been accusing her of capitalizing on her husband’s death in the wake of his high-profile assassination in September.

“This is the greatest Freudian slip of all time,” author Richard Hanania noted on X.

“Erika Kirk, a grift that keeps grifting,” Canadian comedian Deven Green, who portrays Mrs. Betty Bowers (America’s Best Christian) online, wrote on BlueSky.

“Erika Kirk for the win. Closes out the year as the queen of one of the all time worst Freudian slips,” attorney and documentarian Gary Douglas wrote on Threads.

Following Charlie Kirk’s death, Erika Kirk became the face of Turning Point USA, and embarked on a marathon of media appearances where she vowed to continue her late husband’s mission of promoting a nativist, fundamentalist Christian view of society.

More...