TV News LIES

Late on Friday evening, the trustees of Columbia University announced that its interim president, Katrina Armstrong, was leaving her post.

Six days earlier, she had convened an emergency meeting with 75 faculty members after the university had cravenly surrendered to the demands of the Trump administration in the hopes of recovering $400m in federal grants and contracts. The president and her staff called their predicament “heartbreaking” and sought to reassure faculty that academic freedom and departmental autonomy remained intact.

A transcript of the meeting was leaked. Two days later, the president was “returning to lead” the university’s medical center. She was replaced by a trustee.

Richard Chamberlain, the award-winning actor who played TV's "Dr. Kildare" and starred in popular miniseries including "The Thorn Birds" and "Shōgun," has died at 90.

Harlan Boll, Chamberlain's representative, confirmed to USA TODAY on Sunday that the actor died Saturday from complications following a stroke. He would have celebrated his 91st birthday Monday.

Born in Los Angeles in 1934, Chamberlain was a U.S Army veteran who served in Korea before he began to pursue acting, getting his start in a 1959 episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." After popping up on episodes of shows like "Gunsmoke" and "Riverboat," Chamberlain landed his breakthrough role as Dr. Kildare, a young medical intern, on the medical drama of the same name, which ran on NBC from 1961 to 1966. He won a Golden Globe Award for the role.

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No one aboard a small plane traveling from Iowa survived after it crashed in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, on Saturday, police said.

The SOCATA TBM7 plane crashed around 12:20 p.m. in a residential area in Brooklyn Park, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told USA TODAY. The aircraft departed from Des Moines International Airport and was headed to Anoka County-Blaine Airport in Minneapolis before the incident, according to the federal government agency.

According to FlightAware, the single-prop plane began its journey in Naples, Florida, and stopped in Des Moines at around 10:30 a.m. The plane took off 45 minutes later. It crashed six minutes before its scheduled landing time.

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Columbia University’s interim president has stepped down, the latest leadership shakeup at the Ivy League school, which has been aggressively targeted by the Trump administration over pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Katrina Armstrong is being replaced by Claire Shipman, co-chair of its board of trustees, who is stepping up as acting president effective immediately, the university said on Friday evening. Shipman is the university’s third president since August, when Minouche Shafik resigned amid intense scrutiny of her handling of demonstrations.

Armstrong’s abrupt departure comes just one week after the university gave in to pressure from the Trump administration after it pulled $400m in federal funding. The president and other critics have accused Columbia of failing to prevent antisemitism on campus, saying the institution did not do enough to clamp down on protests, even though the university last year facilitated arrests of demonstrators and suspended pro-Palestinian student groups.

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A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from effectively dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an early target of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson barred the administration from stopping work and firing employees at the CFPB and ordered the reinstatement of previously terminated workers. She also blocked the destruction of any CFPB records and ordered the recission of any “wholesale” contract cancellations issued on or after Feb. 11.

Jackson opened her decision quoting Musk’s post to the social platform X spelling doom for the agency: “RIP CFPB.”

Federal agents have been sweeping up Venezuelan migrants and sending them to a Salvadoran prison based in large part on tattoos depicting stopwatches, Michael Jordan logos and other ink art they claim betrays an allegiance to the Tren de Aragua street gang.

But internal U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI documents obtained by USA TODAY reveal federal authorities for years have questioned the effectiveness of using tattoos to identify members of Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA.

“Gang Unit collections determined that the Chicago Bulls attire, clocks, and rose tattoos are typically related to the Venezuelan culture and not a definite (indicator) of being a member or associate of the (TdA),” reads a 2023 "Situational Awareness" bulletin on the criminal gang written by the U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s El Paso Sector Intelligence Unit.

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