TV News LIES

Five years after her nephew’s murder, what Angela Harrelson misses most is hearing her phone buzz and knowing he was calling.

“He would call me and say, ‘What's up, auntie? Just calling to check on you,’ ” Harrelson said. “And it made me feel so good.”

Harrelson affectionately refers to her nephew by his middle name, Perry, but the world knows him as George Floyd.

In 2020, millions watched in horror as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd beneath his knee for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. The murder sparked a massive outpouring of grief and anger as protesters took to the streets with handcrafted signs echoing some of his last words, "I can't breathe." Amid violent clashes with police, they pressed on. Artists adorned their cities with his image, a sign of resolve and the impact of his death.

The intersection where Floyd took his last breaths was transformed from a gas station and corner store into a living memorial. Now that the chaos and media frenzy have settled, Harrelson visits the area − known as George Floyd Square − several times a week.

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Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, was not allowed to hold his newborn son after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials refused to allow a contact visit between him and his family, his lawyers said on Wednesday.

Instead, Khalil, 30, was forced to meet his month-old baby for the first time behind glass, after his wife, Noor Abdalla, traveled from New York to the Louisiana detention facility where he has been detained since March, his legal team said.

Ice officials and a private prison contractor denied the family’s request for a contact visit, citing the detention center’s no-contact visitation policy and unspecified “security concerns”, lawyers said.

In the past six months, two babies in Louisiana have died of pertussis, the disease commonly known as whooping cough.

Washington state recently announced its first confirmed death from pertussis in more than a decade.

Idaho and South Dakota each reported a death this year, and Oregon last year reported two as well as its highest number of cases since 1950.

While much of the country is focused on the spiraling measles outbreak concentrated in the small, dusty towns of West Texas, cases of pertussis have skyrocketed by more than 1,500% nationwide since hitting a recent low in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaths tied to the disease are also up, hitting 10 last year, compared with about two to four in previous years. Cases are on track to exceed that total this year.

Doctors, researchers and public health experts warn that the measles outbreak, which has grown to more than 600 cases, may just be the beginning. They say outbreaks of preventable diseases could get much worse with falling vaccination rates and the Trump administration slashing spending on the country’s public health infrastructure.

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Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed for the first time on Monday that Ukrainian troops have been active in Russia's Belgorod region as they seek to protect Ukrainian towns near the border.

Ukrainian troops remain in parts of the neighbouring Russian region of Kursk eight months after a cross-border incursion, though Russian forces have recaptured much lost territory.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, had presented a report "on the front line, our presence in the Kursk region and our presence in the Belgorod region."

"We continue active operations in the enemy's border areas and this is absolutely justified. The war must return to where it came from.

"Our main objective remains the same: to protect our land and our communities in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions from Russian occupiers."

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Los Angeles county has reached a $4bn agreement to settle nearly 7,000 claims of sexual abuse in juvenile facilities since 1959, officials said Friday.

The agreement, which still needs approval from the Los Angeles county board of supervisors, would be the largest of its kind and have long-lasting financial effects for the county, officials said.

“On behalf of the county, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts,” Fesia Davenport, the county’s chief executive, said in a statement.

A small plane crashed while taking off from the Honduran island of Roatan on Monday, leaving 12 people dead. Among the victims was prominent musician and Honduran politician Aurelio Martinez.

The civil aeronautics agency of Honduras said in a statement that the accident occurred on March 17 shortly after 6 p.m. local time at the Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport when a Jetstream 32 carrying 15 passengers and two crew members attempted to depart for La Ceiba, a port city on the northern coast of Honduras.

Moments after takeoff, said the statement translated from Spanish, the aircraft plunged into the Caribbean Sea. Authorities have not yet confirmed what caused the crash.

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