Monika Silva Koniuszek died from a blow to the head and strangulation, a postmortem found, despite government claim of suicide

Campaigners in Ecuador say a Polish anti-corruption activist who investigated allegations against the family business of the country’s rightwing president was murdered to silence her.

Monika Silva Koniuszek, 41, was found dead in her home in Montañita, a coastal town in Ecuador’s Santa Elena province. The single mother of daughters aged four and nine, was found on the floor with a noose around her neck on 8 June.

A day after her death, and before autopsy results had been released, Ecuador’s interior minister John Reimberg said that the initial hypothesis was that it was a suicide: “The necessary evidence to reach that conclusion was found at the scene,” he told local media.

However, on Friday, a postmortem in Guayaquil found that the cause of death was a blow to the head and strangulation.

City hails victory after US officials sued over ordinance that limits LA’s cooperation with immigration authorities

A California court has dismissed a lawsuit filed ⁠by Donald Trump’s administration against Los Angeles over a city ordinance limiting ⁠its cooperation with federal ⁠immigration ​authorities.

Fernando Olguin, a judge in the central California US district court rejected the administration’s argument that the city’s policy was unconstitutional. ⁠He gave the administration permission to file an amended complaint.

The White House did not ⁠immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on the ​decision on Monday.

Los Angeles ‌city attorney Hydee ‌Feldstein Soto said in a statement on Monday that ‌the ruling was a legal victory for the city, which saw a profusion of immigration raids by ICE and border patrol agents last summer.

New photos of the Kennedy Center show Donald Trump’s name has been taken down from the building’s facade after a monthslong court battle and the recent addition of a tarp blocking public viewing of the removed signage.

Scaffolding and a tarp erected June 13, a day after a federal judge’s deadline to remove Trump’s name from the iconic performing arts center, have hidden the removal from the public.

Mallory Miller, a former Kennedy Center employee and a co-founder of the activist group Hands Off the Arts, which provided the photos to NBC News, said she thinks the tarp’s continued presence is an intentional act to spare Trump’s ego.

“What is clear to me is the Trump administration does not want to see that building without Trump’s name on the facade before they could go through all their appeals,” Miller said Monday night.

The US did not want to use the term "climate change" at a major Antarctic meeting, instead preferring to focus on "specific" environmental changes.

Its stance was rebuked by other countries, including France, which described it as a "worrying development" that risks undermining credible science.

Conservationists say "editing words" out of a report won't alter the real impact of climate change.

Democrat Ro Khanna cited a 2025 study that estimated more than 14 million people could die without USAID resources by 2030

Elon Musk, the trillionaire CEO and former temporary government employee, threatened to sue Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna after the lawmaker accused Musk of “possibly” sentencing 4.5 million children to death by cutting funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Monday morning, Musk took to his social media platform, X, to lash out at Khanna for suggesting Musk’s deep cuts to USAID’s funding and workforce, while overseeing DOGE last year, may have led to millions of children dying.

“You know they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires, but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID,” Khanna said on the “I’ve Had It” podcast over the weekend.

Longtime conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said on a podcast that “there’s no chance I would support the Republican Party” ahead of the November midterm elections, dismissing the political affiliation he’s defended as a pundit for decades, including as one of Fox News Channel’s most popular hosts.

No deaths have been reported after a United States Coast Guard helicopter crashed during a training flight in Alaska, the Coast Guard said Monday.

A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter carrying four people crashed near Harbor Mountain in Sitka, near Juneau, according to the U.S. Coast Guard Arctic District. The incident was reported shortly after 10 a.m. local time.

The four crew members were transported to an area hospital, according to the Coast Guard, which did not release any details on their condition.

The bipartisan legislation was crafted in both chambers and must now pass the House. It seeks to build more homes and prevent large investors from out-bidding families.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Monday to pass a sweeping housing affordability bill aimed at lowering costs, putting Congress on the brink of a rare bipartisan victory in Donald Trump’s second term.

The vote was 85-5.

The legislation, which makes it easier to build homes and slaps limits on Wall Street investors from buying up houses, now goes to the House, which hopes to vote on it in the next few days. Then, it would go to Trump’s desk to be signed into law.

Just 10 days after the company’s blockbuster IPO, buyers of its initial public shares are in the red.

Shares of Elon Musk’s SpaceX tech conglomerate plunged 16% Monday to close below their price on June 12, the date of the company’s massive initial public offering.

It was its third-straight trading day of declines for a company that just 10 days ago orchestrated the largest IPO ever.

At Monday’s closing price of $154.60, the average investor who bought SpaceX shares on the open market after its debut has now seen most of their gains disappear, market data shows.

At least 18 people died in France, including two children left in a hot car, as a heat wave gripped Europe and smashed temperature records in several cities Monday.

As schools in France closed ‌or modified their schedules, forecasters in Britain predicted temperatures could break June records this week.

The temperature in Bordeaux in France's western wine country rose to 41.9 C, breaking a record set last August. In Poitiers, in central France, it reached 41.2 C, surpassing a previous high set in 1947.

Federal judge rules subpoenas linked to Trump’s immigration operation were ‘issued for unlawful reasons’

A federal judge agreed to quash the US federal government’s subpoenas of leaders in Minnesota issued during the Trump administration’s controversial immigration crackdown on the state earlier this year.

The US Department of Justice issued subpoenas to the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the attorney general, Keith Ellison; the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey; and other local officials in the Twin Cities in January.

The department said it was investigating the officials for obstructing federal immigration enforcement. Local and state officials largely did not support the federal enforcement surge, during which federal agents killed two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in the streets.

A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s election integrity strategy is unlawful and can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in an order explaining the decision. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”