TV News LIES

The Pentagon this week removed a senior military official who had served on the Joint Staff for about 90 days, returning him to a role in the U.S. Navy. 

Vice Adm. Fred Kacher, who became the director of the Joint Staff in December, was yanked from the post and will “return to service” with the Navy, a spokesperson told The Hill on Thursday morning.

“A distinguished and highly experienced surface warfare leader, Vice Adm. Fred Kacher will return to service with the United States Navy, after most recently serving as the Director of the Joint Staff,” a Joint Staff spokesperson told The Hill Thursday morning.

It is unclear why Kacher was removed from the position. One source told Reuters, which first reported on the removal, that Kacher was not the right fit.

More...

The family of a sanctioned United Nations human rights investigator on Wednesday sued the Trump administration for sanctioning her over her criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, arguing that the sanctions violate her First Amendment rights.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s husband, Massimiliano Cali, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Washington. They argued that Albanese’s work surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, along with her work with the International Criminal Court (ICC), “is core First Amendment activity.”

“At its heart, this case concerns whether Defendants can sanction a person — ruining their life and the lives of their loved ones, including their citizen daughter — because Defendants disagree with their recommendations or fear their persuasiveness,” according to the filing.

Cali, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself, Albanese and their child, also argued that the sanctions have negatively impacted their ability to access their home in Washington, D.C. Cali said his wife also lost access to her bank account and the ability to travel to the U.S.

More...

A man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in a head-on collision in western Texas that killed Laura Lynch, a founding member of a country music band now known as The Chicks, prosecutors said.

As part of a plea agreement, Domenick Chavez, 33, admitted that he was driving recklessly and caused the head-on crash that killed Lynch on Dec. 22, 2023, the El Paso District Attorney's Office said in a news release on Tuesday, Feb. 24. Lynch, 65, was killed instantly after Chavez attempted to pass four vehicles and collided into Lynch's truck.

The incident occurred on an undivided highway in Hudspeth County, about 50 miles east of El Paso. The El Paso District Attorney's Office also covers neighboring Hudspeth and Culberson counties.

"The death of Ms. Lynch caused profound sadness for her family, the Dell City community, and all those who appreciated her music. It is a loss made more acute by the fact that it happened just days before Christmas," El Paso District Attorney James Montoya said in a statement. "Our office will continue to hold accountable those defendants who choose to drive in an extremely dangerous manner."

More...

U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents detained a Columbia University student on campus the morning of Feb. 26 after allegedly misrepresenting themselves to enter a residence hall in search of a missing person, the school said.

In a morning update sent to the university community, Columbia's acting President Claire Shipman announced DHS agents entered a Columbia residential building about 6:30 a.m. local time and detained a student.

"Our understanding at this time is that the federal agents made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a 'missing person,'" Shipman wrote in the announcement. "We are working to gather more information, working to reach the family, and providing legal support."

The name of the student was not released by the school and it was not immediately known why agents detained the person.

Update: Student has been released from detention after intervention by NYC Mayor Mamdani.

More...

Almost 60 Palestinian journalists detained in Israeli prisons since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack have been beaten, starved and subjected to sexual violence, including rape, a report alleges.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reviewed dozens of testimonies, photographs and medical records documenting what it describes as serious abuses by Israeli soldiers and prison guards against Palestinian reporters. The report draws on in-depth interviews from 59 Palestinian journalists. Of those interviewed, 58 reported being subjected to what they described as torture while in Israeli custody.

“While conditions varied at different facilities, the methods those interviewed recounted – physical assaults, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation, sexual violence, and medical neglect – were strikingly consistent,” the report states.

The Israeli prison service and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have both strongly rejected the allegations.

Journalist Sami al-Sai, who has reported for the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera Mubasher and the local broadcaster Al-Fajer TV, said he was taken to a small cell in Megiddo prison, and soldiers removed his trousers and underwear, and penetrated him with batons and other objects.

“I did not speak to anyone inside the prison about what happened, except for two senior detainees who have been imprisoned for 25 years,” Sai said.

More...

A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed in the course of their work in 2025, two-thirds of them by Israeli forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

It was the second consecutive year in which killings of members of the press reached unprecedented levels, and the second year running in which Israel was responsible for roughly two-thirds of the total, the New York-based independent organisation, which documents attacks on journalists worldwide, said in its annual report published on Wednesday.

sraeli fire killed 86 journalists last year, the CPJ said, the majority of them Palestinians reporting from Gaza. The toll also included 31 media workers killed in a strike on a Houthi media centre in Yemen, described by the group as the second deadliest attack on journalists it had ever recorded.

Israel was responsible for 81% of the 47 killings that the CPJ classified as intentionally targeted, or “murder”. It said the actual figure was probably higher, owing to access restrictions that made verification difficult in Gaza.

More...

The confirmed count of Russian soldiers, officers, sailors and airmen confirmed killed in action or dead of combat injuries in Ukraine has passed 200,000, the research group Mediazona announced on Tuesday, citing new survey findings.

The group, working alongside BBC Russian Service and volunteers in and outside Russia, confirmed all of the Russian military losses, by name, using cross-referenced data from individual obituaries, civil death certificates, geo-located graves, unit rosters, social media updates, funeral announcements, cemetery records and obituaries.

A leak of confidential government data on some 23,000 security checks of individuals found to have been dead by police investigators was a key “breakthrough” for the group’s tracking work, a Mediazona statement said.

As of midday Wednesday, the total count of verified Russian dead in Ukraine stood at 200,186 men. The figure “remains a conservative floor, not a ceiling,” the statement said in part.

Mapping by the group identified 26,600 cities, towns or villages across all thirteen of Russia’s time zones as the homes of men losing their lives in Ukraine. All Russian cities, without exception, have received remains of soldiers sent to Ukraine who then died there, the report said.

More...

A North Dakota judge has said he will order Greenpeace to pay damages expected to total $345m in connection with protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline from nearly a decade ago, a figure the environmental group contends it cannot pay.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Judge James Gion said he would sign an order requiring several Greenpeace entities to pay the judgment to pipeline company Energy Transfer. He set that amount at $345m last year in a decision that reduced a jury’s damages by about half, but his latest filing did not specify a final amount.

The long-awaited order is expected to launch an appeal process in the North Dakota supreme court from both sides.

Last year, a nine-person jury found Netherlands-based Greenpeace International, Greenpeace USA and funding arm Greenpeace Fund Inc liable for defamation and other claims brought by Dallas-based Energy Transfer and subsidiary Dakota Access.

More...