TV News LIES

For two decades, Muhammad Abdulrahman, 58, lived with his wife and his beehives on a remote hillside in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

But in May, Israeli settlers set up camp about 200 yards away and took control of the road leading to Mr. Abdulrahman’s home, blocking him from returning, he said. Israeli soldiers then evicted him and his wife, Suha Abdulrahman, the couple said.

The Israeli military said that Mr. Abdulrahman left voluntarily, but he said that he has still been unable to return home. Last month, a video shared by an Israeli lawmaker on social media showed his house had been turned into a space for religious study by the settlers.

Abdulrahman said by phone last month from his brother’s house in the nearby town of Betunia, where he is now staying. “They are not only stealing our land but also trying to cut the roots that connect us to it.”

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The U.S. is preparing to announce a transition into the second phase of its Gaza 20-point peace plan in the coming weeks, according to a U.S. official, as the U.S. and its allies seek to maintain a fragile ceasefire brokered between Hamas and Israel in October.

The announcement would include the unveiling of a new governance structure in Gaza led by a Board of Peace, along with the launching of an International Stabilization Force to help secure the area.

President Donald Trump is expected to soon reveal the individuals and countries involved in those mechanisms as part of his announcement.

Ahead of the planned announcement, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz will head to the Middle East on Saturday. He is expected to travel to Jordan and Israel.

The 20-point Gaza peace plan was bolstered by a mandate secured by the United Nations Security Council in November, after member-countries voted in support of a resolution approving the plan.

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International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said on Friday that an IAEA team is “crisscrossing” Ukraine to assess the security of the country’s nuclear substations, as Russia continues to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The visit, which began on Dec. 1, will last until Dec. 12 and focus on more than 10 substations (essential nodes in the electrical grid related to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants) across the country – assessing damage, reviewing repair efforts, and making recommendations to strengthen energy resilience.

“These substations are essential for nuclear safety and security. They are absolutely indispensable for providing the electricity all nuclear power plants need for reactor cooling and other safety systems. They are also needed to distribute the electricity that they produce to households and industry,” Grossi said in Friday’s statement.

The IAEA said that it had made several such expert missions to Ukraine since September 2024, when the substations became “increasingly affected by the military conflict.”

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since its full-scale invasion, particularly in the cold season – regularly plunging thousands of people into freezing darkness.

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In this rural town just across the Massachusetts line, the Leavitt family runs a used-car dealership, with hulking work trucks lined up in the front lot. Inside the lobby, a giant TV blares Fox News, and a framed photo features President Donald Trump, posing with owners Bob and Erin Leavitt.

A New Hampshire family once best known for selling cars and ice cream, the Leavitts were thrust into the national spotlight this year when their 27-year-old daughter, Karoline, was named White House press secretary. Ten months later, the administration’s war on illegal immigration landed in the Leavitts’ backyard.

Bruna Ferreira — a Brazilian immigrant who shares an 11-year-old child with Karoline’s brother Michael Leavitt — was arrested by ICE in mid-November. Ferreira, 33, remains in custody in Louisiana. The boy lives with his father in New Hampshire.

Ferreira’s sister and lawyer had claimed there was no animosity between Ferreira and the Leavitts. But court records, police reports and family text chains reviewed by WBUR tell a vastly different story — one of a bitter custody battle, years-old allegations of a threat to call immigration authorities, and concerns for the well-being of the child when his mother was staying in a vacant mansion in Cohasset.

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The US Department of Justice has moved to eliminate rules protecting LGBTQ+ people from sexual abuse in prisons, a shift advocates say is “reckless and dangerous” and will lead to increased assaults behind bars.

A justice department memo issued on Tuesday said “effective immediately”, prisons and jails will no longer be held responsible for violations of standards meant to shield LGBTQ+ people from harassment, abuse and rape. It also directed inspectors to stop auditing facilities for compliance with those protections. The justice department is in the process of seeking formal updates to the rules, the memo said.

The directive relates to regulations under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), a longstanding federal law which says incarcerated people should be screened for their risk of facing sexual assault when officials place them in housing and that assessments must consider LGBTQ+ status.

Prea, passed unanimously by Congress in 2003, includes standards aimed at addressing the high levels of violence that transgender, gender-nonconforming and queer people face in jails and prisons across the US. Prea applies to all correctional facilities.

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The judge presiding over California’s lawsuit against the Trump administration challenged the federal government’s authority and rationale for continuing to maintain command over the national guard troops it deployed to Los Angeles earlier this year.

The Trump administration federalized the state’s national guard in June, dispatching about 4,000 troops in response to protests in the city over immigration raids, despite opposition from the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom. The state quickly filed a lawsuit, with Newsom calling the move unprecedented and illegal, and the case has been unfolding in the courts for months.

During a hearing in San Francisco on Friday, Judge Charles Breyer appeared skeptical of the federal government’s case, according to a report from the Associated Press. He argued the situation in Los Angeles had changed since the troops were first deployed, and questioned whether the administration could command the state’s national guard indefinitely.

“No crisis lasts forever,” he said. “I think experience teaches us that crises come and crises go. That’s the way it works.”

He pressed an attorney for the government for any evidence that state authorities were either unable or unwilling to help keep federal personnel and property in the area safe and noted Donald Trump had access to tens of thousands of active-duty troops in California.

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As you walk down a particular hallway on the seventh floor of the Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., you'll find a line of photographic portraits of all the people from years past who have led the Public Health Corps at the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Only one of those portraits is of a transgender person: Adm. Rachel Levine, who served for four years as President Biden's assistant secretary for health. She was the first transgender person to win Senate confirmation, and her portrait has been displayed in the hallway since soon after she was confirmed in 2021. The role is a four-star admiral position in charge of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service.

Levine's official portrait was recently altered, a spokesperson for HHS confirmed to NPR. A digital photograph of the portrait in the hallway obtained by NPR shows that Levine's previous name is now typed below the portrait, under the glass of the frame.

"During the federal shutdown, the current leadership of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health changed Admiral Levine's photo to remove her current legal name and use a prior name," says Adrian Shanker, former deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Biden administration who worked with Levine and is now her spokesperson. He called the move an act "of bigotry against her."

Levine told NPR that it was an honor to serve the American people as the assistant secretary for health "and I'm not going to comment on this type of petty action."

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The Biden administration withheld data from the public on the risks of myocarditis from the Covid vaccine, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary claimed Thursday — a bold accusation that clashes with years of public statements from federal health officials.

“We have done more to study myocarditis and to go back and look at deaths of people, of children from the Covid vaccine,” Makary told NBC News in an interview. “Internal data submitted on myocarditis, we found that the Biden administration was sitting on data on myocarditis in young people, and it was not made public.”

Makary’s claim comes less than a week after Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, told agency staff in a memo that an internal review found that at least 10 children died “after and because of receiving” the Covid shot. Prasad suggested — without evidence to support his claim — that the child deaths were tied to myocarditis.

Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, is a known — but small — risk of the mRNA Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, information that federal agencies have discussed openly since 2021.

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