Chained, tortured and pushed to starvation, 12 labourers from India narrate their ordeal.

A federal judge in Kentucky has issued a preliminary injunction that partially blocks a sweeping state law banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth, joining several other federal court decisions that have temporarily blocked or struck down a wave of similar laws. The decision from US District Judge David J Hale on 28 June – one day before the law was set to go into effect – follows a legal challenge from a group of seven trans children and their families arguing that the law unconstitutionally singles out trans kids from the healthcare they can receive. They also argued that the law unconstitutionally restricts a parent’s right to make medical decisions for their children. Senate Bill 150 prohibits doctors from providing hormone therapies and puberty blockers to trans minors – treatments that Judge Hale notes “are medically appropriate and necessary for some transgender children under the evidence-based standard of care accepted by all major medical organizations in the United States.” “These drugs have a long history of safe use in minors for various conditions. It is undisputed that puberty-blockers and hormones are not given to prepubertal children with gender dysphoria,” he wrote. Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said the decision is a “huge relief” for the families at the centre of the lawsuit. “We are grateful that the court carefully considered all of the evidence and recognized that there is no support for this dangerous and unprecedented law,” she added. The law, denounced as one of the most far-reaching state-level measures targeting LGBT+ people amid an explosion of similar proposals across the US, was initially struck down by Democratic Governor Andy Beshear. A week later, lawmakers in the state’s Republican-controlled legislature voted to override his veto. The law also determines which bathrooms and locker rooms students can use and prohibits students from using pronouns and names other than those assigned at birth. It also prohibits discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, adopting elements of what critics have called “Don’t Say Gay” language introduced in similar legislation across the US. Those elements of the law are preserved; the lawsuit solely focused on provisions of the law impacting healthcare. State senator Karen Berg – whose trans son died by suicide weeks before this year’s legislative session – drove opposition to the bill over the last several months. During legislative debate, she denounced the “absolute willful, intentional hate for a small group of people, who are the weakest and the most vulnerable among us.” By the end of May, state lawmakers this year had introduced more than 500 bills impacting LGBT+ people, including 220 bills specifically targeting trans and nonbinary Americans, according to an analysis from the Human Rights Campaign. More than a dozen states have enacted laws or policies banning affirming healthcare for young trans people. But federal judges in several states have struck down or temporarily blocked similar laws with a series of rulings that refute evidence from Republican officials and their arguments against widely accepted medical guidance. Last week, a federal judge in Arkansas permanently struck down the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, finding that the law violates the constitutional rights of trans patients, their families and health providers. Read More She lost her transgender son to suicide. She isn’t giving up fighting for him Transgender teen defends trans rights in Senate testimony: ‘These are human rights hanging in the balance’

A Rhode Island state senator was arrested in Cranston last week for allegedly keying a car with a “Biden sucks” bumper sticker, local police said in a statement. State Sen Joshua Miller, a Democrat who has served in the state senate for nearly two decades, was captured on surveillance footage allegedly keying the vehicle in the parking lot of the Garden City Center. According to the police statement, the vehicle’s passenger said he heard a scratching noise and saw Miller with his keys in his hands while walking back to their car. When police caught up with Mr Miller several hours after the incident, he denied keying the car and he believed the vehicle owner was a conservative activist who had been stalking him at the statehouse for his role in promoting gun safety legislation. Mr Miller in February sponsored a bill to ban the purchase, sale, and transfer of assault weapons in the state. “Is this maniac who yelled at me in the car next to me?” Mr Miller asked the police officer who detained him in a body camera footage released by the Cranston Police Department. Mr Miller then offered his explanation of events, telling the officer that the vehicle owner called out his name. “He was blocking my way, saying that I scratched his car, I didn’t scratch his car,” Mr Miller said. “I’m a state senator, I think he recognized me. I think he’s one of the gun nuts.” Mr Miller then told the officer that Colonel Michael Winquist was aware that he has been stalked in recent months by people opposed to his political activities. In a statement on the incident, however, the Cranston Police Department wrote that “Mr Miller never reported any threats to Colonel Winquist or any member of the Cranston Police Department.” After police officers viewed the surveillance footage, Mr Miller was arrested for vandalism/malicious injury to property and charged with a misdemeanor. When questioned again, the police statement said, Mr Miller said the vehicle owner was “daring me” to key the car. He was later arraigned and released on a $1,000 bond. He is due back in court on July 18 for a rearraignment. “Nobody is above the law, including those who make and enforce the laws,” Mr Winquist said in a statement. “The Officers who handled this investigation did so with fairness, integrity, and without preferential treatment. I would expect no less from the fine men and women of the Cranston Police Department.” The Independent has reached out to Mr Miller’s office for comment. Read More Man's death awaiting trial on charges he killed his mother at sea was not suspicious, autopsy says The Great Grift: More than $200 billion in COVID-19 aid may have been stolen, federal watchdog says LOCALIZE IT: E-cigarettes are pouring into the US despite FDA crackdown

Grieving relatives joined current and former staff of the Capital Gazette newspaper at a wreath-laying ceremony in Annapolis, Maryland

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered a setback on Tuesday as a federal judge commented that his argument for moving a trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records out of state court was “far-fetched”. The comments from Judge Alvin Hellerstein were reported by NBC 4; the criminal prosecution is one of two the former president is now embroiled in as his legal entanglements continue to worsen. Mr Trump is accused in New York of falsifying business records dozens of times with the purpose of hiding a well-reported hush money scheme in which he supposedly paid his former attorney to recompense payments that the attorney, Michael Cohen, made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and other women with tales of alleged extramarital affairs with his boss. The former president has denied both the allegations of extramarital affairs as well as his own supposed role in covering them up; his ex-attorney Cohen, however, has explained his boss’s role in the scheme. Mr Trump’s attorneys had sought to see the case moved from court in New York state to a federal jurisdiction, as part of an effort to see the case dismissed on grounds that he supposedly made the payments in 2017 as part of his work as president. On Tuesday, Mr Hellerstein appeared to scoff at that argument. “It sounds a little far fetched, but that's the argument,” Mr Hellerstein reportedly said. He is set to make a final ruling on this matter within two weeks. He also added that as of yet, the Trump attorneys had provided “no reason to believe that an equal measure of justice could not be rendered by the state court”, and given no convincing evidence or arguments to support the idea that there was a “relationship to any official act of the president” and the payments. Mr Trump’s attorneys are defending him from more than 60 felony counts over two indictments; the ex-president is also accused of illegally retaining classified materials and other presidential documents at his resort at Mar-a-Lago. The ex-president continues to insist that the prosecutions are part of a political effort against him even as that argument appears to be losing traction among some establishment Republicans. Read More Biden touts his economic record in fiery speech: ‘Guess what – Bidenomics is working’ Trump’s latest defence in the classified documents case: ‘Bravado’ Chris Christie attacks Trump for diverting campaign funds to legal battles: ‘Cheapest SOB I’ve ever met’ DeSantis supporter blames Trump camp for leaking racist and antisemitic messages ‘Any Republican not named Trump’: Paul Ryan says former president is only candidate who would lose to Biden Liz Cheney lays out damning problem with US politics: ‘We’re electing idiots’

A Russian missile attack on a pizza restaurant in the eastern city of Kramatorsk has killed at least 11 people, including three teenagers, and left more than 60 people injured. Authorities in the city have named 14-year-old twins, Yuliya and Anna Aksenchenko, as being among the dead. In a Telegram post, the city's council extended its condolences to the parents of the girls, saying that "a Russian rocket stopped the beating of the hearts of two angels". Another girl, aged 17, was also killed "We share the grief of your family and together with you we bow our heads in deep sorrow," the city council said. What happened in the attack? The Pizza RIA restaurant was popular with both locals, as well as aid workers and journalists – and was said to be crowded when it was hit on Tuesday evening. "I ran here after the explosion because I rented a cafe here.... Everything has been blown out there," said Valentyna, a 64-year-old woman who declined to give her surname. "None of the glass, windows or doors are left. All I see is destruction, fear and horror. This is the 21st century," she told Reuters. Police said around 60 people were injured in the strike, which turned the restaurant into a pile of twisted beams. Emergency services posted pictures online of rescue teams sifting through the site with cranes and other equipment. The Donetsk regional governor – the area where Kramatorsk is located – Pavlo Kyrylenko told national television that people were visible under the rubble. Their condition was unknown, he said, but "we are experienced in removing rubble". Video footage on military Telegram channels showed one man, his head bleeding, receiving first aid on the pavement. Eight people had been rescued alive from the rubble and at least three more were believed to be trapped, Veronika Bakha, the spokeswoman for the Donetsk region emergency services said. The attack also damaged 18 multi-story buildings, 65 houses, five schools, two kindergartens, a shopping center, an administrative building and a recreational building, the regional governor, Mr Kyrylenko, said. Why Kramatorsk? Russia has been keeping up an aerial assault across Ukraine for months. Kramatorsk is a major city west of the frontlines in Donetsk province, a key logistics hub. It would likely be a key objective in any Russian advance westward seeking to capture all of the region. The city has been a frequent target of Russian attacks, including a strike on the town's railway station in April 2022 that killed dozens. It was one of the worst single air strikes of the war. There were at least two strikes on apartment buildings and other civilian sites earlier this year. Officials initially blamed the strike in Kramatorsk on an S-300 missile, a surface-to-air weapon that Russia's forces have repurposed for loosely targeted strikes on cities, but the National Police later said Iskander short-range ballistic missiles were used. Russia denies targeting civilian sites in its invasion of Ukraine – which began in February 2022 – a claim rubbished by Ukrainian officials and Western allies of Kyiv. Kramatorsk's position in the Donetsk region, one of four Ukrainian provinces that Russia claimed to annex last September but does not fully control. Russia annexed the region of Crimea almost a decade ago. Ukrainian-held parts of the partially occupied provinces have been hit especially hard by Russian bombardment. The Kremlin demands that Kyiv recognize the annexations, while Kyiv has ruled out any talks with Russia until its troops pull back from all occupied territories. Kyiv recently launched a much-anticipated counteroffensive to take back occupied territory. What other strikes have there been in the last 24 hours? A second missile hit a village on the fringes of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, injuring five. A Russian missile also hit a cluster of buildings in Kremenchuk, about 230 miles west in central Ukraine, exactly a year after an attack on a shopping mall there that killed at least 20. No casualties were reported in the latest attack. On Wednesday morning, the head of the Kharkiv region said three civilians have been killed in Russian shelling. "Unfortunately, as a result of this shelling, three civilians in the village of Vovchanski Khutory were killed near their homes," governor Oleh Synehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app. What has been the Ukrainian response? On Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities arrested Wednesday a man they accused of helping Russia direct the missile strike. The Security Service of Ukraine alleged in a message on Telegram that the man had filmed the restaurant for the Russians and informed them about its popularity. Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said in a statement: “The agent of the Russian Federation will definitely answer to the Ukrainian court. But his detention is also a signal to all other adjusters and traitors who work for the enemy. Remember – the punishment is inevitable!” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video message on Tuesday that the attacks showed that Russia "deserved only one thing as a consequence of what it has done – defeat and a tribunal". Ukraine has been pushing for a war crimes tribunal to deal with Russia's actions in Ukraine, and have been gathering evidence. Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Cambodian leader Hun Sen, a huge Facebook fan, says he is jumping ship to Telegram Footage shows scale of destruction after Russian strike on Kramatorsk restaurant Joe Biden says Putin is ‘clearly losing the war in Iraq’

A man tore up and burned a copy of the Quran outside a mosque in Sweden on the first day of Eid – after police granted permission for the demonstration Police later charged the man with agitation against an ethnic or national group. While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Koran demonstrations, courts have overruled those decisions, saying they infringed on freedom of speech. "It's legal but not appropriate," Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said. The protest risks sparking a fresh diplomatic row with Turkey, who have been holding up Sweden’s bid to join Nato – an application made in the wake of Russia’s invasion of UKraine – over such protests, as well as accusations from Ankara that Stockholm is harbouring people it considers terrorists. Turkey has asked for a number of extraditions and for Sweden to address its security concerns. At the protest, some 200 onlookers witnessed one of the two organisers tearing up pages of a copy and wiping them on his shoe – before eventually setting the book on fire. After the burning, police charged the man who set fire to the Koran with agitation against an ethnic or national group and with a violation of a ban on fires that has been in place in Stockholm since mid-June. Some of those present shouted ‘God is great’ in Arabic to protest against the burning, and one man was detained by police after he attempted to throw a rock. Representatives of the mosque were disappointed by the police decision to grant permission for the latest protest on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, mosque director and Imam Mahmoud Khalfi said on Wednesday. "The mosque suggested to the police to at least divert the demonstration to another location, which is possible by law, but they chose not to do so," Mr Khalfi said in a statement. Sweden applied to joint the alliance in the wake of the Kremlin launching its invasion of Ukraine last year, alongside neighbour Finland. The pair decided to drop their long-held stance of military neutrality in the face of Moscow’s aggression. Finalnd were welcomed into the bloc in April, and there were hopes that Sweden could follow suit at a summit in Lithuania in July. But that requires sign-off from all the blocs members. Beyond Turkey, Hungary has also been dragging out ratifying the move, despite officials suggesting they were behind the move. The Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, announced on Wednesday that he has called a meeting of senior officials from Turkey, Sweden and Finland on 6 July, ahead of the summit later in the month, to try to overcome Turkish objections. "The time is now to welcome Sweden as a full member of Nato," Mr Stoltenberg told reporters as he announced his last-ditch effort. Foreign ministers, intelligence chiefs and security advisers from Turkey, Sweden and Finland, which joined Nato in April, will be taking part in the talks in Brussels. But the chance of membership being granted in July now look increasingly remote. The Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, condemned the protest as “vile” in a tweet. He added that it was unacceptable to allow anti-Islam protests in the name of freedom of expression. In late January, Turkey suspended talks with Sweden on its Nato application after a Danish far-right politician burned a copy of the Quaran near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. In a phone call – that took place on Wednesday seemingly before the latest burning – Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, that while Sweden had taken steps in the right direction, there were still aspects of their behaviour that were “unacceptable” to Ankara. Meanwhile, Hungary’s parliament postponed ratifying Sweden's Nato accession to its autumn legislative session. The postponement, the latest in a long succession of delays that have gone on for a year, there was no suggestion in the announcement that the protest in Stockholm had played a part. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More NATO chief convenes July 6 talks hoping to convince Turkey to let Sweden join NATO warns not to underestimate Russian forces, and tells Moscow it has increased preparedness Cleverly to renew UK backing for Sweden’s Nato bid during visit

By Marc Jones LONDON A total of 130 countries representing 98% of the global economy are now exploring

A Newsmax host put up a bizarre defence of former President Donald Trump over the leaked audio in which he speaks about classified documents with guests at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club two years ago. On the tape, obtained by CNN on Monday, Mr Trump says that the document, reportedly outlining plans of attack against Iran, was “highly confidential” and “secret information”. “See, as president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t,” Mr Trump said. The recording lines up with a previously reported transcript of the conversation with biographers working on a book about Mr Trump’s last White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Newsmax host Lidia Curanaj argued on Tuesday that Mr Trump could have been lying at the time. Mr Trump was indicted in Miami, Florida earlier in June on 37 counts for willful retention of national defence information, in addition to six other federal violations. “So you know you have some people that say, ‘You know what? We don’t know one hundred per cent for sure that what Trump was holding up was actually a classified document. Was he just kind of being hyperbolic?’” Ms Curanaj said. She later held up a document on the programme American Agenda, adding, “I could say, ‘This is a classified document’—doesn’t make it true”. “You know how Trump is. We don’t know,” she said. Last week, Mr Trump appeared on Fox News for an interview with host Brett Baier, claiming that he had simply been discussing “newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles”. “There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Mr Trump told Mr Baier. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles.” On Tuesday while campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr Trump was asked about the tape on Fox News. “I said it very clearly, I had a whole desk full of lots of papers, mostly newspaper articles, copies of magazines, copies of different plans, copies of stories, having to do with many, many subjects, and what was said was absolutely fine,” Mr Trump said. “We did nothing wrong. This is a whole hoax.” “My voice was fine. What did I say wrong on those recordings? I didn’t even see the recording. All I know is I did nothing wrong,” he added. “We had a lot of papers, a lot of papers stacked up,” he said. “In fact, you hear the rustle of the paper. And nobody said that I did anything wrong other than the fake news, which is Fox, too.” On Monday, Mr Trump appeared on Newsmax, complaining about the Baier interview. “When I did the interview with Bret, I thought it was fine. I thought it was okay,” he said. “But there was nothing friendly about it. You know, it was nasty, and I thought I did a good job. I’ve been getting credit for doing a good job.” “Everything was unfriendly,” he said, adding that there was “no smiling”. Read More Trump news – live: Trump gives ‘bravado’ defence for classified documents tape as he sues E Jean Carroll Chris Christie attacks Trump for diverting campaign funds to legal battles: ‘Cheapest SOB I’ve ever met’ Kevin McCarthy walks back Trump criticism following backlash from Magaworld

Debris from the lost submersible Titan has been returned to land after a fatal implosion during its voyage to the wreck of the Titanic captured the world’s attention last week

Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has flown into exile in Belarus under a deal that ended a brief mutiny

An exonerated member of the Central Park Five, Yusef Salaam, is poised to win a Democratic primary race for a New York City council seat in Harlem.