TV News LIES

First, New Yorkers saw the elimination of subway token, which lasted for half a century. Now, its successor – the swipeable MetroCard, which lasted barely more than three decades – has seen its demise.

At midnight on 1 January, the flexible credit card-sized pass used by millions of New Yorkers to get through subway turnstiles is being terminated from sale just as a new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, takes office.

The transit system will fully transition to Omny, a contactless payment system that allows riders to tap their credit card, phone or other smart device to pay fares, much as they do for other purchases.

But the end of the MetroCard has brought mixed feelings. The unlimited ride, 30-day option made More....travelers feel like kings or queens of the city, swiping around at will, seemingly free to travel the length and breadth of the metro system, surfacing on a whim.

There were drawbacks – the MetroCard’s notoriously sensitive magnetic strip could fail to read, abruptly halting the progress of the rider into the turnstile gate, forcing them to reverse to try again.

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A gay California man assaulted in what authorities say was a hate crime on Halloween night has died of his injuries. Now his accused attacker is facing a homicide charge.

Sean Wesley Payton Jr., 25, has been held in jail for about two months following the attack in Sacramento around 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 1. Alvin Prasad, the 58-year-old man he's accused of targeting, died of his injuries in the hospital on Sunday, Dec. 28. His daughter, Andrea Prasad, has identified him as gay on the GoFundMe page she created, and Prasad was proudly open in hundreds of social media posts.

Now Payton will be booked on a homicide charge, Sacramento police announced on Monday, Dec. 29.

Prosecutors had not charged Payton with homicide as of Wednesday, Dec. 31, but were "evaluating" doing so in light of Prasad's death, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office told USA TODAY on Wednesday.

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A nonprofit group that advocates for law clerks has taken the rare step of filing a misconduct complaint against a federal appeals court judge, alleging that she bullies and mistreats law clerks and that the courts' process for fielding such claims is broken.

The complaint from the Legal Accountability Project against Judge Sarah Merriam of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit states that it is based on conversations with multiple former law clerks who fear retaliation if they come forward themselves.

"She is a bully, in all the ways one might bully their employees: yelling, berating clerks, sending all-caps unhinged emails," said Aliza Shatzman, president and founder of the Legal Accountability Project.

The Legal Accountability Project complaint, which has not been previously reported, was filed earlier this month and reviewed by NPR. The group says it marks the second publicly known complaint in four years about Merriam. Such complaints are not usually made public. Instead, they tend to be handled internally, by courts that police themselves, in part to protect the judiciary's independence and balance of power.

In a nearly yearlong investigation, NPR found a culture of fear about reporting judges and concluded that the courts' internal system often fails to result in meaningful change.

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Uncle Sam wants you to dress up when heading to the airport, but are people heeding the call?

The request for sartorial seriousness in the skies is part of the "The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You" campaign, which the Department of Transportation says aims to "restore courtesy and class to air travel."

When the campaign launched in November, the DOT cited trends that have festered among travelers for years, including 13,800 unruly passenger incidents since 2021, a 400% increase in inflight outbursts since 2019, and one in five flight attendants experiencing "physical incidents" in 2021.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a BlazeTV interview published Nov. 25 that not dressing "respectfully" can lead to "people not treating each other respectfully."

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Tatiana Schlossberg, the environmental journalist, author and granddaughter of President John F. Kennedy, has died. She was 35. 

Her death was confirmed Dec. 30 by the The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the nonprofit organization that provides financial support and staffing for the former president's library.

"She will always be in our hearts," her parents, siblings, husband and children said in an Instagram post.

Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and designer Edwin Schlossberg, disclosed her terminal cancer diagnosis in a Nov. 22 essay for the New Yorker.

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After T’Roya Jackson discovered the paint in her apartment gave her daughter lead poisoning, she and her children moved out.

They couch-surfed for a while before moving into a homeless shelter over the summer. The hair stylist began looking for a rental that will accept her hard-won housing voucher – all while caring for her five children, including a newborn.

“It’s been extremely difficult,” she told USA TODAY, recounting how she’s tried to keep her oldest children – ages 14, 9 and 8 – in school, paying for taxis to take them to class and ensuring they have some quiet study time, a challenge in their cramped one-bedroom unit.

Jackson and her family are not alone: Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of homeless students are in hotels, doubled up in apartments or living in shelters. Most of them are with at least one parent or guardian, though many are unaccompanied.

The number of students grappling with unstable housing has jumped in recent years, a continuation of a decadeslong trend, and a troubling sign that a deepening housing crisis is hurting the country’s youngest and most vulnerable people.

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