TV News LIES

Outgoing President Joe Biden said Thursday he had commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others, in what the White House called the largest single-day act of clemency in US history.

The move comes just over a week after the 82-year-old Biden pardoned his troubled son Hunter, something he had previously promised not to do, prompting anger from both sides of the political divide.

"America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances," Biden said in a statement announcing the action. "As President, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation."

Democrat Biden -- who hands over power to Republican Donald Trump on January 20 -- is following in the footsteps of many lame-duck presidents who have issued a flurry of acts of clemency in their final days in the Oval Office.

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The Islamist rebel commander responsible for the downfall of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has said that those responsible for torture and killing in Syria’s notorious prison system will not evade justice, after the opening of detention centres revealed the extent of the regime’s crimes against its own people.

Pardons or amnesties would not be granted for implicated regime officials, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said in a statement published on the state broadcaster’s Telegram channel. “We will pursue them in Syria, and we ask countries to hand over those who fled so we can achieve justice,” he said.

Assad’s commanders have been hunted down across the country in the two weeks since Jolani’s group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a surprise offensive on the northern city of Aleppo that led to the swift collapse of one of the most oppressive police states in the world and ended almost 14 years of brutal civil war. Many high-ranking officials have fled abroad, and some are believed to be in hiding on the coast, where the regime’s support was traditionally strongest.

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A general manager and two other employees were dismissed from a Cracker Barrel in Waldorf, Maryland, after the restaurant sparked outrage over its treatment of special education students who were visiting on a field trip.

Charles County Public Schools District Superintendent Maria Navarro said in a statement last week that a group of 11 students and seven staff members were "refused service" at Cracker Barrel. The group was told the restaurant couldn't accommodate them and was asked to remove the location from an approved list of places for such field trips, special education teacher Katie Schneider told parents in an email.

A U.S.-based charity, the World Central Kitchen, fired dozens of Palestinians working for the charity in the Gaza Strip, at least three workers told Reuters, after Israel said at least 62 staff were linked to militant groups.