TV News LIES

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin needed to see "certain dynamics" on the battlefield before agreeing to an extended ceasefire, insisting arms deliveries from Ukraine's allies must stop before there can be a pause in hostilities.

"Otherwise, it will be advantage for Ukraine. Ukraine will continue their total mobilization, bringing new troops to front line. Ukraine will use this period to train new military personnel and to give a rest to their existing ones," Peskov told ABC News' Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz. "So why should we grant such an advantage to Ukraine?"

Peskov also asserted that Ukraine is "not ready for immediate negotiations," denying that Putin was the one dragging his feet.

"President Putin is doing whatever is possible to solve the problem, to achieve a settlement through peaceful and diplomatic means. But having no peaceful and democratic means at hand, we have to continue military operation," he said.

More...

The former special counsel prosecutor Jay Bratt is scheduled to appear before the Republican-led House judiciary committee next week as it attempts to find instances of politicization in the federal criminal cases brought against Donald Trump, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The deposition of Bratt, who led the criminal case over Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents as a top deputy to the former special counsel Jack Smith, has been scheduled for 10am ET next Wednesday, according to a notice reviewed by the Guardian.

Exasperated by the turmoil that has dogged Pete Hegseth’s office in recent weeks, the White House will block the US defense secretary’s choice of chief of staff and select a candidate of its own, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Hegseth had suggested giving the chief of staff position to Marine Col Ricky Buria after the first person in the role, Joe Kasper, left last month in the wake of a contentious leak investigation that brought the ouster of three other senior aides.

But the White House has made clear to Hegseth that Buria will not be elevated to become his most senior aide at the Pentagon, the people said, casting Buria as a liability on account of his limited experience as a junior military assistant and his recurring role in internal office drama.

More...

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first at-home test for cervical cancer screening, its maker Teal Health said on Friday, offering an alternative to smear tests that need to be undertaken at a doctor’s office.

Pap smear tests have significantly reduced cancer incidence from when they were first introduced 80 years ago. But they can be uncomfortable and inconvenient owing to the requirement for an in-clinic exam.

Teal Health said the FDA’s decision was based on a study in more than 600 women that showed self-collected samples using its test had the same performance as clinician-collected samples.

Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student and Turkish national, was released from federal custody on Friday, hours after a judge in Vermont ordered the Trump administration to free her. Accompanied by her lawyer, Öztürk walked out of the immigration detention center in rural Louisiana where she's been detained for more than six weeks, since masked federal agents picked her up on a suburban Boston street as part of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian student activists.

At a bail hearing earlier in the day, Judge William K. Sessions of the U.S. District Court for Vermont said that her arrest and detention appeared likely to have been carried out solely in retaliation for an op-ed she wrote in a campus newspaper criticizing her school leaders' response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

"I suggested to the government that they produce any additional information which would suggest that she posed a substantial risk," Sessions said. "And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here."

More...

The United States will begin admitting the first group of White South African refugees next week, whom President Trump’s administration has argued have been victims of “racial discrimination.”

“The refugee program is not intended as a solution for global poverty. And historically it has been used that way…this is an example of the president returning the refugee program to what it’s intended to be used as,” White House’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Friday.

“What’s happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created…race based persecution,” Miller, Trump’s chief immigration policy architect, told reporters.