Liberia agrees to accept 1,200 foreign deportees from the US
Liberia agrees to accept 1,200 foreign deportees from the US. The KRAK 11 News hour: The World Desk, Criminal Intent, Happy Animals, Sports. Real stories from named sources, read by Chip Marlowe and Deb Sarkissian.
Aired 2026-08-19 11:55 UTC · 5 segments · 11 min · complete transcript below
Rundown
KRAK 11 NEWS
Good evening, Wexler County. I'm Chip Marlowe.
And I'm Deb Sarkissian. This is the top of the hour on KRAK 11 News.
This hour: Liberia agrees to accept twelve hundred foreign deportees from the United States in what officials are calling a humanitarian arrangement.
THE WORLD DESK investigates what happens when drought-stricken regions finally get the rain they've been waiting for. CRIMINAL INTENT looks at how censoring a film about police abuse turned it into a movement.
And later, HAPPY ANIMALS has a story we are told involves precipitation.
It involves flooding.
Precipitation can lead to flooding, Deb.
It already has. Still ahead on THE WORLD DESK: the family of actress Hayden Panettiere speaks out after her death on Sunday. That's next.
THE WORLD DESK
We're back.
Your jacket's inside out.
It's reversible.
It has a label showing.
That's intentional. It reads as international correspondent.
It reads as a man who dressed in the dark.
Liberia has agreed to accept twelve hundred foreign nationals being deported from the United States under an arrangement finalized Monday.
The deportees are Liberian nationals who have exhausted their legal options to remain in the United States. Liberian officials describe the agreement as a humanitarian arrangement with no financial compensation from Washington.
Liberia is located on the western coast of Africa between Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, with a population of approximately five million people.
Five point two million.
Approximately.
The United States State Department has not disclosed a timeline for the deportations but says processing will begin within sixty days.
The United States has condemned what it calls an unnecessary escalation after Israeli airstrikes hit military facilities outside Damascus early Wednesday local time.
Damascus is the capital of Syria.
I said that.
You said outside Damascus.
Which is in Syria.
The Syrian government called the strikes an unjustified act of aggression. Israel has not commented on the operation but regional analysts say the targets were weapons storage facilities linked to Iranian-backed forces.
The State Department released a statement Tuesday evening urging all parties to exercise restraint and avoid actions that could destabilize the broader Middle Eastern coalition framework.
No casualties have been reported.
Severe weather warnings have been issued across the United Kingdom with flash flooding expected in parts of northern England, eastern Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
The Met Office says the storms will bring up to two inches of rain in some areas over a three-hour period later today. The warnings take effect at four p.m. local time.
The United Kingdom has been experiencing unprecedented drought conditions following weeks of record high temperatures and minimal rainfall across the British Isles.
The UK is in northern Europe.
I'm aware.
Where the weather is generally wet.
Historically.
Emergency services are advising residents in low-lying areas to prepare for localized flooding and avoid unnecessary travel during the storm period.
Still ahead, a Wexler County man is facing charges after a domestic incident turned into a standoff with police that lasted seven hours.
Officers say the suspect barricaded himself inside a residence on Maple Street and refused to communicate with negotiators until early this morning.
That's Criminal Intent, in a few minutes.
We'll be right back.
CRIMINAL INTENT
Good evening. I'm Chip Marlowe.
And I'm Deb Sarkissian. Did you adjust your chair again.
I adjusted my posture. The chair is the same height it has been since Tuesday.
You're sitting two inches higher than you were at six.
In Alaska, voters faced a choice Tuesday between two candidates named Dan Sullivan, both running for the same Senate seat, one of whom is the incumbent.
The incumbent Dan Sullivan defeated the challenger Dan Sullivan by a margin wide enough that the Associated Press called the race before midnight.
The other Dan Sullivan has not indicated whether he will run again in two years, possibly under a different name.
That's not how names work.
Indian authorities moved to block distribution of a biopic about activist Jaswant Singh Khalra, a film that examines alleged police abuses from the nineteen eighties and nineties.
When the government scrubbed the film from official distribution, local villagers and activists turned the censorship itself into a grassroots screening campaign.
The film is now being shown in community halls, private homes, and outdoor venues across Punjab, effectively guaranteeing the exact attention authorities were attempting to prevent.
Which is what happens when you try to hide something people already know happened.
More than four hundred thousand children are currently on waitlists for federal childcare assistance through the Child Care and Development Fund.
The fund serves over one point six million children in a typical month, but demand has consistently outpaced available funding in more than half of all states.
Fifteen states still have laws permitting corporal punishment in public schools.
There is broad consensus among psychologists that corporal punishment can be harmful to children, but the United States has no federal law banning the practice in schools.
The states where it remains legal are concentrated in the South and parts of the Mountain West.
Feeling restless in your daily routine? Experts in play say you might benefit from what they're calling a side quest.
A side quest is an activity with no purpose beyond adding whimsy to your life, borrowed from video game terminology where players pursue optional objectives unrelated to the main story.
Psychologists say it can help with restlessness, though it requires doing something with absolutely no external reward or measurable outcome.
Which eliminates most hobbies.
Still ahead on KRAK 11 News, HAPPY ANIMALS.
That's next.
HAPPY ANIMALS
Welcome back to KRAK 11 News.
Deb, I have decided we should open every broadcast with an animal story.
We open with breaking news.
Breaking news about animals. A structure that rewards optimism while maintaining editorial rigor.
A sea turtle that was found hypothermic on a Welsh beach last November has been released into the Gulf of Mexico after months of treatment, completing a journey of more than five thousand miles.
The Kemp's ridley sea turtle was released into Gulf waters last week. The species is critically endangered and this is only the second Kemp's ridley stranding recorded in UK waters.
Five thousand miles.
That is — that is the distance from here to London twice over and this turtle just —
In Scotland, researchers say they have captured what they believe is the first recorded sighting of a Scottish wildcat swimming.
The animal was recorded crossing a river in the Cairngorms. Fewer than three hundred wildcats remain in Scotland and the sighting is part of a conservation breeding program.
A wildcat that can swim.
Most cats can swim.
But this one chose to.
And in Texas, a golden retriever has learned to operate a doorbell camera to request entry when the family is not home.
The dog's owner says the animal taught itself by observing visitors and now rings consistently when locked out of the house.
The family says they now answer the door for the dog more often than for guests.
Still ahead: the Cubs have won four straight and Ohio State opens Saturday against a spread they have not covered in seventeen years. SPORTS is next.
SPORTS
Time now for the KRAK 11 Scoreboard.
Good evening. Starting with college football, where Ohio State opens Saturday against Akron.
The Buckeyes are favored by thirty-eight points, which is significant but not insurmountable if Akron can establish rhythm early and convert on third down.
Akron has not won a game against a ranked opponent since two thousand five.
Which makes Saturday an opportunity.
Reid Carrico will not play for Ohio State in the opener. He is suspended after a targeting penalty in last year's bowl game.
Carrico's absence changes the linebacker rotation but Ohio State has depth at that position and the coaching staff has had months to prepare for this scenario.
Ohio State has not covered a spread of thirty-eight points in an opening game since two thousand nine.
That is a statistic about coverage, not performance.
It is a statistic about results.
In Major League Baseball, the Cubs defeated the White Sox four to three Monday night on a walk-off home run by Pete Crow-Armstrong.
Crow-Armstrong is twenty-two years old and is now the youngest Cub to hit a walk-off home run in the crosstown series since Ryne Sandberg in nineteen eighty-four.
Sandberg was twenty-four.
Which makes this even more historic, Deb. Two years younger puts Crow-Armstrong in a category that may not have existed before last night.
The category is youngest.
The Cubs are now two games behind the Cardinals in the National League Central with forty-one games remaining in the regular season.
Forty-one games is a significant runway and momentum matters in September.
In Formula One, Honda acknowledged this week it only realised the full scale of its power unit problems in January, months after committing to its current development plan.
That is a significant timeline issue but it also demonstrates the complexity of these systems. You are working with telemetry from multiple sources and sometimes the data does not align until you are already committed to a direction.
Or you missed it.
Missing it is one interpretation.
Honda's team principal called it an oversight.
Oversight is the professional term.
And in tennis, the ATP has still not issued a timeline for its review of the suspended player we reported on earlier this hour.
The lack of a timeline is itself unusual. The ATP generally moves quickly on disciplinary matters and the delay suggests there may be complicating factors we are not yet seeing.
Or they have not made a decision.
That is the literal read, yes.
That has been the KRAK 11 Scoreboard. Still ahead at the top of the hour, we will bring you the latest on the industrial fire in Toledo, where crews are now entering their second full day on scene.
Firefighters say the size of the structure is complicating containment efforts and they are bringing in additional equipment overnight.
The next KRAK 11 News, at the top of the hour.
I'm Chip Marlowe.
I'm Deb Sarkissian. Good night.
Gordo, did the both-names-under-the-graphic request go through.
It did not go through.
Why.
The graphic says Scoreboard.
Beneath the Scoreboard, Gordo. Both names beneath it. I submitted the request at six forty-seven this morning.
You submitted it to graphics.
I submitted it to graphics because graphics controls the lower third.
Graphics does not read email.
Graphics has an email address.
Graphics has an email address that no one checks. You know this. You have worked here for ten years.
I can put both names under the Scoreboard Thursday.
Thursday is two days from now.
Thursday is when I build Thursday's show.
He builds the show the day he builds the show, Chip.
This is a continuity issue. If both names appear Thursday but not tonight, viewers will assume something changed between broadcasts.
Viewers will assume we added a graphic.
Noted.
Reporting behind this episode
- Liberia agrees to accept 1,200 foreign deportees from the US
- US condemns 'unnecessary escalation' after Israeli airstrikes on Syrian airbase
- Thunderstorm warnings issued for parts of UK with flash flooding expected
- How India's blocking of a film exposing real-life police abuses backfired
- Feeling restless? Level up your life by starting a side quest
- 15 states have laws that allow corporal punishment in schools. Here's where, and why
- Florida picks nominees for governor and other takeaways from US primaries
- Why more than 400,000 kids are on waitlists for federal childcare assistance
- 'Heavy' rain finally forecast in some drought-hit areas today
- Even the Queen could not watch - 10 years since Olympic hockey gold