TV News LIES

Republicans are attempting to exempt some major polluters from paying for Pfas “forever chemical” cleanup. If successful, it could mark a major setback in US effort to rein in Pfas pollution.

The Republican-led House energy and commerce committee recently held a hearing at which it invited representatives from the water treatment and landfill industries, among others, to make the case about why they should be exempted from rules that hold polluters financially accountable for the cleanup of two types of dangerous Pfas.

Water treatment plants and landfills are major polluters and represent critical points in the effort to curb Pfas water pollution nationwide. Utilities already have to remove hundreds of chemicals, so it is unclear why they are so opposed to removing two types of Pfas, said Scott Faber, vice-president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group non-profit.

“The only real difference is Pfas are more toxic … so the fact that water utilities and landfills are being such crybabies about Pfas says something about how little regard for public health they have,” Faber said.

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A powerful winter storm swept across California on Wednesday, with heavy rain and gusty winds.

The storm led to evacuation warnings for mudslides in the south, near white-out snow conditions in the mountains and hazardous travel for millions of holiday drivers. In addition, a fallen tree killed a man in San Diego Wednesday morning.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday also declared a state of emergency in six counties, including San Diego, to allow state assistance in storm response.

Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned about flash flooding and mudslides. Areas scorched by January’s wildfires were under evacuation warnings, and Los Angeles County officials said Tuesday they were going door to door to about 380 especially vulnerable homes to order residents to evacuate.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department also issued an evacuation warning Wednesday morning for the community of Wrightwood, a mountain resort town in the San Gabriel Mountains about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, due to potential debris flows from the storm.

Debris and mud were seen rushing down the road leading into Wrightwood in a social media video posted by county fire officials. Crews were working to evacuate some homes, the post said. County officials didn’t immediately return questions about the evacuation.

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Israel’s offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than two-thirds of the 20,000 Palestinians killed have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

On Friday, Israeli airstrikes on two homes in Gaza killed 90 Palestinians, including dozens from an extended family, according to rescuers and hospital officials. One of the homes, located in Gaza City, became one of the deadliest airstrikes in the war after 76 people from the al-Mughrabi family were killed, said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defense department.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed in an Israeli drone attack while inside al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, a part of Gaza where Israel’s military believes Hamas leaders are hiding.

An Israeli strike overnight hit a house in a refugee camp west of the city of Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt. At least two men were killed, according to Associated Press journalists in the hospital where the bodies were taken.

At least two people were killed and six others wounded when a missile stuck a building in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

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A federal judge has rejected a lawsuit from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that opposed President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on visas for highly skilled foreign workers.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington ruled that Congress gave the president the authority to "impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."

"Congress could have, but did not, impose the limit on presidential authority that plaintiffs’ urge," Howell wrote in the 56-page opinion.

The chamber, which advocates for 300,000 businesses, and the Association of American Universities, which advocates for 69 research-based institutions, argued that Trump’s administration lacked the authority to impose the fee on new H-1B visa applications, which the president imposed in September.

Trump’s fees are part of a broader strategy to favor U.S. citizens over foreign workers. The higher visa fees came amid a broader crackdown on illegal immigration, which includes mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and an end to allowing asylum seekers into the country while their cases are pending.

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Since the so-called ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on October 10, Israel has been consolidating its control of over 50% of Gaza and—according to new research by Forensic Architecture—physically altering the geography of the land. Through a combination of the construction of military infrastructure alongside the destruction of existing buildings, Israel appears to be laying the groundwork to establish a permanent presence in the majority of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has constructed at least 13 new military outposts inside Gaza since the ceasefire—primarily located along the yellow line, in eastern Khan Younis, and near the border with Israel, according to analysis of satellite imagery by Forensic Architecture.

“Israel is doing what it always does, and what it historically has done best: establish ‘facts on the ground,’ incrementally rather than spectacularly, and make them permanent once those with influence to force it to reverse course either lose interest, decide that the cost of confronting Israel is not worth the price, or come out in open support of Israeli violations. Israel is in no rush and prepared to play the long game,” Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya and a former UN official who worked as a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Drop Site after reviewing a summary of the Forensic Architecture findings.

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A Russian strike could collapse the internal radiation shelter at the defunct Chornobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine, the plant’s director has told AFP.

Kyiv has accused Russia of repeatedly targeting the facility, the site of a 1986 meltdown that is still the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster, since Moscow invaded in February 2022.

In an interview with AFP, plant director Sergiy Tarakanov said fully restoring that shelter could take three to four years, and warned that another Russian hit could see the inner shell collapse.

“If a missile or drone hits it directly, or even falls somewhere nearby, for example, an Iskander, God forbid, it will cause a mini-earthquake in the area,” Tarakanov told AFP in an interview conducted last week.

The Iskander is Russia’s short-range ballistic missile system that can carry a variety of conventional warheads, including those to destroy bunkers.

“No one can guarantee that the shelter facility will remain standing after that. That is the main threat,” he added.

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The documents were released overnight on Tuesday and include a claim that Donald Trump was on a flight with Epstein and a 20-year-old woman in the 1990s. There is no indication that the woman was a victim of any crime and being included in the files does not indicate any criminal wrongdoing.

The files also include a series of emails between Ghislaine Maxwell and someone who signs himself as “A” and uses the alias “The Invisible Man”. In August 2001, “A” wrote to Maxwell: “I am up here at Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family”.

Emails show Maxwell discussing arranging “girls” and “two-legged sight seeing” for a man identified in the correspondence as “The Invisible Man”, who is widely believed to be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. In a February 2002 email exchange about a proposed trip to Peru, Maxwell forwards messages from Juan Estoban Ganoza outlining possible activities, including visiting the Nazca Lines.

The former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley and the ex-US Treasury secretary Larry Summers were appointed as executors of Epstein’s estate, according to a newly released tranche of documents linked to the now-deceased child sex offender.

Included in the batch of files was a now-deleted fake video that appeared to depict Epstein attempting to end his life. Also in the trove are photos of the fake Austrian passport uncovered from a safe during a 2019 FBI raid of Epstein’s home in Manhattan. There is also a 2021 subpoena to the Mar-a-Lago Club relating to the federal investigation into Maxwell. Also revealed was that the FBI sought to question Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor about his links to a second millionaire sex offender, Peter Nygard.

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