Foreign ministers from the G7 group of major industrialised countries condemned the staging of what they called “sham elections” by Russia in occupied Ukrainian territories.

“We … unequivocally condemn the staging of sham ‘elections’ held by Russia on sovereign Ukrainian territory in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia oblasts and Crimea,” the G7 statement said in a statement, published by the UK’s Foreign Office, on Tuesday.

“These sham “elections” are a further violation of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and of the UN Charter.

The Center for Reproductive Rights sued on behalf of eight women and four doctors in Idaho, Tennessee and Oklahoma, three states that have passed some of the strictest abortion bans since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted federal abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The lawsuits follow a similar case brought by the center in Texas, where a judge last month sided with five women who were denied abortions and exempted women experiencing pregnancy complications from Texas' stringent abortion ban.

The lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee ask the state courts to clarify those states' legal exceptions for abortions in cases of medical emergencies, so that doctors may perform abortions when they deem them necessary without fear of prosecution.

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Republicans in Wisconsin are threatening to remove from office the newly elected state supreme court justice Janet Protasiewicz if she refuses to recuse herself from cases involving gerrymandering. The effort comes on the heels of Republicans in the state senate advancing a move to oust the state’s top elections official.

The efforts to remove Protasiewicz and the Wisconsin elections commission administrator, Meagan Wolfe, from office have been decried by Democrats and government watchdog groups as undemocratic and could affect the administration of elections in 2024.

• The temperature in Phoenix, Arizona continues to rise as the city broke its previous record of the most consecutive days at or above 110F (43C).

A Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed a driver who was sitting in his car turned himself in Friday morning to face criminal charges.

Officer Mark Dial surrendered on a criminal warrant, according to his attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr, who said he has not yet been made aware of the specific charges against the officer.

The district attorney’s office also released police body-cam footage of the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry.

It showed Dial firing his weapon through the driver’s side window of Irizarry’s sedan during a vehicle stop on 14 August. Dial shot Irizarry about seven seconds after getting out of a police SUV and striding over to Irizarry’s car, according to the video. Six shots were fired.

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State prosecutors in New Orleans obtained an indictment charging Lawrence Hecker, 91, on Thursday with aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crime against nature and theft.

The crimes allegedly occurred at a church attached to a Catholic high school where Hecker worked in 1975, when the accuser was a 15- or 16-year-old child, according to the alleged victim’s civil attorney, Richard Trahant.

The accuser recalls that Hecker approached him under the guise of showing him a wrestling move, choked him unconscious, and “sodomized” him, Trahant said. Trahant said his client and the victim’s mother reported it to the school at the time, but nothing was done.

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