TV News LIES

Photos of the crime scene shared on social media showed Mayor Alejandro Arcos’ severed head had been left on the roof of a pickup truck. Authorities did not immediately confirm the authenticity of the images, but at his funeral, there were signs his head had been reattached by forensic examiners or mortuary staff.

Arcos was sworn in last Monday as mayor of Chilpancingo, a city so violent that a drug gang openly staged a demonstration, hijacked a government armored car and took police hostage in 2023 to win the release of arrested suspects.

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• A Russian hypersonic missile struck the area of Ukraine’s major Starokostiantyniv airbase on Monday morning, Kyiv said. The latest strike on Starokostiantyniv in the western Khmelnytskyi region came a day after the Dutch defence minister said the Netherlands would supply Ukraine with more F-16 jets in the coming months. There were no civilian casualties and no damage to critical infrastructure, said Serhiy Tyurin, governor of Khmelnytskyi.

• Two Kinzhal missiles were shot down in the Kyiv region overnight into Monday, the air force said. Debris came down in three Kyiv districts, but no major damage or casualties were reported after air defences engaged incoming targets, city authorities said. Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian air force spokesperson, said: “Despite the fact that it’s getting harder, despite [Russia’s] improvements and the use of new tactics, today we have two shoot-downs … They are learning from their mistakes and from our mistakes. They are improving their technology so that we are able to shoot down fewer of them.” Ukrainian air defences also shot down 32 Russian drones and a further 37 were lost on military radars, suggesting they had been disabled by electronic warfare, the air force said.

• Kyiv said Russian attacks had killed three civilians overnight into Monday: two brothers aged 35 and 38 in the eastern region of Sumy and a 61-year-old woman in the southern Kherson region. In the city of Kherson, the governor said a Russian strike had wounded 19 people and damaged an educational facility and various residential buildings. Ukraine also said a Russian attack had killed one person and wounded seven – including children aged two and 13 – in the city of Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast.

A battleground county in north-eastern Pennsylvania will have ballot drop boxes this fall after its county manager faced pressure and reversed her decision to eliminate them.

The announcement on Friday came less than a month after Romilda Crocamo, the county manager in Luzerne county, said she was getting rid of the county’s four drop boxes over concerns the county could not secure them. “I cannot secure the drop boxes. And, you know, sometimes I have to make difficult decisions,” she said in an interview last month.

But voting rights groups sued Crocamo last week, saying she could not unilaterally get rid of the drop boxes.

A year after the Hamas attack, Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, while its operations in the occupied West Bank have expanded significantly.

For Palestinian civilians caught in the middle of the ongoing conflict between Israeli forces and the Hamas militant group, the consequences have been unremittingly difficult, and deadly.

The death toll from Israel's offensive in Gaza is now approaching 42,000 Palestinians, with another 39 deaths recorded Monday at local hospitals, according to Gaza's health authorities.

Just one week after a Georgia judge restored broad access to abortion in the state by blocking its six-week abortion ban, the Georgia supreme court ruled on Monday to reinstate the ban.

The ban will take effect at 5pm local time on Monday and remain in effect while litigation over it plays out.

Abortion rights supporters quickly condemned the decision, which also came down weeks after news broke that two Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died after being unable to access legal abortions.

“Every minute this harmful six-week abortion ban is in place, Georgians suffer,” Monica Simpson, executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, said in a statement. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective is a plaintiff in the legal battle over the ban.

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The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.

The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.

A Russian court sentenced American citizen Stephen Hubbard to almost seven years in prison after it convicted him in a closed-door trial of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.

Prosecutors accused Hubbard, 72, of receiving $1,000 per month in exchange for fighting with a territorial defense unit of Ukraine's military in the eastern city of Izyum since the war began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in Feb. of 2022. Hubbard was captured less than two months later, according to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti.

In a closed trial on Monday, Hubbard stood handcuffed inside a glass cell and removed a hat from his shaven head as a judge pronounced him guilty. He appeared emotionless, Reuters reported.

Hubbard pleaded guilty to the charges, the outlet reported. But his sister, Patricia Fox, and another relative told Reuters they doubted the truth of his confession.

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Israel bombed targets in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip on Sunday ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks that sparked its war, as Israel's defence minister declared all options were open for retaliation against arch-enemy Iran