TV News LIES

Nationally known author Michael Ruppert died Sunday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in Calistoga where he had lived for a few months on a friend’s property. He was 63.

A former Los Angeles Police Department officer who later became a political activist, Ruppert was found dead Sunday on a property in the 1100 block of Tubbs Lane, where he had been staying in a trailer for a few months, according to information from the Napa County Sheriff’s Office and business partner Wesley T. Miller of Lake Oswego, Ore.

An explosion and fire at a Tennessee plant where several ammunition and explosives businesses are based killed one person and left three others injured.

Rescue workers were called Wednesday afternoon to a blast at the plant in McEwen, about 55 miles west of Nashville.

The property where the plant is based is home to several businesses that have federal licenses for ammunition or explosives, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesman Michael Knight said. Knight said it was unclear which plant was involved, and he said agents were still trying to determine exactly what happened.

The city of Detroit reached a deal with a group of retired police officers and firefighters that would protect pensions but trim annual cost-of-living payments — the first major agreement with retirees in the bankruptcy case, mediators announced Tuesday.

The city retreated from an earlier proposed 6 percent cut in pensions and the elimination of the 2.25 percent cost-of-living payment. Leaders of the Retired Detroit Police and Fire Fighters Association, which has more than 6,000 members, endorsed the deal along with creation of a health plan.

Boylston Street was evacuated Tuesday night after two bags were left at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Both bags were detonated by the Bomb Squad.  At least one of the bags was being carried by a barefoot man who was wearing a long black veil and screaming “Boston Strong.”

A source tells WBZ-TV that when the suspect was stopped by police, he told them he had a rice cooker in his bag. That is when the Bomb Squad was called to the scene.

The NYPD has disbanded a controversial unit that spied on Muslim communities, the department’s top spokesman, Stephen Davis, said late Tuesday.

“In January, they started taking a review of it along the line of reviewing everything else that the department does,” Davis said, confirming a report in the New York Times.

The review found that a lot of the information developed by the unit “probably could have been just as readily obtained through other community outreach programs, precinct level, community level,” he said.

The Social Security Administration plans to stop intercepting tax refunds in order to settle debts more than 10 years old. It had been seizing state and federal tax funds from about 400,000 Americans whose relatives owed it money

The Social Security Administration plans to stop collecting taxpayer debt older than 10 years old, the Washington Post reports. The federal government has been reportedly seizing state and federal tax funds from about 400,000 Americans whose relatives owed money to Social Security.