TV News LIES

Chevron has been ordered to pay more than $744m in damages for destroying parts of south-east Louisiana’s coastal wetlands over the years.

The ruling, which came in the form of a civil jury verdict on Friday, marks the conclusion of the first trial among 42 lawsuits filed about 12 years earlier which alleged that the company’s oil and gas projects have led to the degradation of the region’s wetlands. Among other things, the wetlands play a key role in offering the area a measure of protection from hurricanes.

The jury found that the oil brand Texaco, which is owned by Chevron, violated state regulations surrounding coastal resources by contributing to the disappearing coastline through dredging canals, drilling wells and dumping massive amounts of wastewater into the marsh.

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Violent storms and tornadoes have torn across the US south and midwest, killing at least seven people and downing power lines and trees, smashing homes and upturning cars across multiple states.

The outbreak of storms and tornadoes has resulted in at least seven deaths in Tennessee and Missouri, with further fatalities expected to be confirmed. One of the victims has been named: a 68-year-old man named Garry Moore who was a fire chief in Cape Girardeau county, Missouri. At least a dozen injuries have also been reported from the storms.

The reproductive health provider Planned Parenthood said the Trump administration would cut federal family planning funding as of Tuesday, affecting birth control, cancer screenings and other services for low-income people.

Planned Parenthood said that nine of its affiliates received notice that funding would be withheld under a program known as Title X, which has supported healthcare services for the poor since 1970.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week the US Department of Health and Human Services planned an immediate freeze of $27.5m in family planning grants for groups including Planned Parenthood.

On March 28, at around midday local time, tens of millions of people in Southeast Asia felt the earth below their feet violently rupture. A magnitude 7.7 earthquake, centered just 12 miles away from Mandalay, Myanmar, shook the region—causing streets to buckle, ancient pagodas to crumble, bridges to shatter and houses to collapse. Entire neighborhoods were devastated in a matter of seconds.

The earthquake’s energy release was comparable to that of several hundred nuclear weapon explosions. “The magnitude of this event was so high that it was felt in neighboring countries,” says Amilcar Carrera-Cevallos, an earthquake scientist at the Vicente Rocafuerte Secular University of Guayaquil in Ecuador. A 30-story skyscraper under construction in Bangkok—600 miles from the quake’s epicenter—disintegrated. According to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey, there will be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of casualties, as well as tens of billions of dollars of economic damage.

Weather will have its own version of March Madness this weekend as yet another outbreak of wild weather is forecast to slam a large section of the country.

"A severe weather threat is in place from the Mississippi and Ohio valleys into the Southeast starting this weekend, with possible damaging winds, large hail and tornadoes,' said Weather.com meteorologist Sara Tonks in an online forecast. Wintry weather will also plague portions of the northern tier this weekend, forecasters said.

Already this month, three separate severe weather outbreaks have led to more than 220 tornadoes and nearly 1,900 other reported incidents including high winds and hail, AccuWeather reported.

"Compared to March 2024, this is about double the amount of severe weather incidents, with nearly four times the number of tornadoes," said Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather senior meteorologist. "The storm spanning March 14-16 alone brought more tornadoes and overall severe weather incidents than all of March 2024."

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