TV News LIES

With giant pincers and rough, spider-like legs, Caribbean king crabs don’t look like your typical heroes. Yet these crustaceans may be key to solving one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: the decline of coral reefs.

In recent decades, warming seas, diseases, and other threats have wiped out half of the world’s corals and 90 percent of those in Florida. And this past summer, the problem accelerated. A devastating heat wave struck the Caribbean, pushing the reef in the Florida Keys — the largest in the continental US — closer to the brink of collapse.

The decline of coral reefs is an enormous problem for wildlife and human communities. Reefs not only provide habitat for as much as a quarter of all marine life, including commercial fish, but they also help safeguard coastal communities during severe storms. Simply put, we need coral reefs.

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A listener-supported radio station in North Carolina, WCPE, is planning to withhold the broadcast of six contemporary operas this season from New York's Metropolitan Opera, because of the station management's objections to the operas' content. It is a classical music controversy that echoes larger, nationwide culture war debates.

WCPE's protest comes at a time when the Metropolitan Opera is eager to showcase its commitment to recently written operas and works from outside the traditional canon of music written by white men. Three of the operas that WCPE plans to reject in the 2023-24 season were written by Black or Mexican composers. This past April, WCPE also refused to broadcast another Met-produced opera written by a Black composer that included LGBTQ themes.

Scott Hall, one of 18 co-defendants of former President Donald Trump in the Georgia election interference case, pleaded guilty Friday to the charges against him.

Hall, a bail bondsman, is the first defendant in the case to plead guilty in the case.

Scott pleaded guilty to five counts in the deal, which were considered misdemeanors due to his status as a first-time offender.

The Texas Supreme Court has sided with four former staff members of Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), making way for their whistleblower lawsuit to commence.

The Republican court rejected Paxton’s request to dismiss the lawsuit on Friday after the case was put on pause for a possible settlement. The whistleblowers, Blake Brickman, Mark Penley, David Maxwell and Ryan Vassar, asked the court to reinstate the case, just days after Paxton was acquitted on 16 articles of impeachment.

With Paxton’s dismissal request denied, the case will return to Travis County trial court, the Texas Tribune reported.

In a press conference on Monday, Brickman, the former Texas deputy attorney general for policy and strategy, said he and the other whistleblowers are “not going away.”

“For us, this case has always been about more than money. It’s about truth. It’s about justice,” Brickman said.

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An arrest on gun possession charges in Queens, New York, in November 2021 has led the Federal Bureau of Investigation to a pedophilic, Satanist extortion cult that has victimized dozens if not hundreds of minors, according to law enforcement documents, court records and sources with knowledge of the investigation.

Law enforcement discovered the organization, known as 764 and a range of aliases, while investigating alarming social media posts made by Angel Almeida, a 23-year-old resident of Astoria, Queens.

On 12 September 2023, the FBI issued a public warning about 764, noting the group is “deliberately targeting minor victims on publicly available messaging platforms to extort them into recording or livestreaming acts of self-harm and producing child sexual abuse material”. The advisory is the first formal mention of 764 by any American law enforcement agency.

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Parts of New York City were swamped with dangerous flash flooding on Friday as intense rainfall continued across the city after torrenting all night, and a state of emergency was declared amid warnings from officials that the deluge could turn deadly.

About 8.5 million people were under flash flood warnings in the New York City area, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). The city’s concrete and pavement exacerbates flooding, as overwhelmed sewers fail to adequately drain rain water during heavy and sustained downpours.

Parts of New Jersey were under similar weather advisories.

The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, declared a state of emergency on Friday because of the “extreme rainfall”. The declaration covers New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley, Hochul posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a centrist Democrat and champion of liberal causes who was elected to the Senate in 1992 and broke gender barriers throughout her long career in local and national politics, has died. She was 90.

Feinstein died on Thursday night at her home in Washington, D.C., her office said on Friday. Opening the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that “earlier this morning, we lost a giant in the Senate.”

“Dianne Feinstein was one of the most amazing people who ever graced the Senate, who ever graced the country,” Schumer said, his voice cracking. “As the nation mourns this tremendous loss, we know how many lives she impacted and how many glass ceilings she shattered along the way.”

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