TV News LIES

More than 77,000 foreign banks have agreed to share information about U.S. account holders as part of a crackdown on offshore tax evasion, the Treasury Department said Monday.

The list includes 515 Russian financial institutions. Russian banks had to apply directly to the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service because the U.S. broke off negotiations with Russia over an information-sharing agreement after Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Nearly 800 people were killed in violence across Iraq in May, the United Nations said on Sunday, making it the deadliest month so far this year.

Of the total 799 people killed, 196 were members of the Iraqi security forces, and the rest were civilians - often victims of attacks by Sunni Islamist insurgents who have been regaining ground and momentum in Iraq over the past year.

The real toll is in fact higher because the UN figures do not include casualties in the western province of Anbar, where the Iraqi army has been fighting tribal and insurgent groups since they overran two cities at the start of the year.

The Ukrainian military staged an airborne assault and air attacks against pro-Russian separatists who seized the biggest airport in eastern Ukraine early Monday. But hours of gun battles left the strategic facility in dispute, and the fighting spread to city of Donetsk.

Even as ballots were being counted in Kiev after Ukraine’s historic presidential election, at least 10 Russian-made Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters landed troops at the airport early Monday afternoon, touching off a volley of rebel fire from automatic small arms and anti-aircraft weapons.

More than 20 people have been killed in what has been branded the worst flooding on record across the Balkans. Tens of thousands have been evacuated and 250,000 homes are without power.

The death toll has reached 19 in Bosnia alone, including nine people found on Saturday when waters receded from the northeastern town of Doboj, Reuters reported. Authorities have warned that more bodies could emerge as waters recede in dozens of cities flooded over the past three days. Serbia has seen eight deaths, AP reported.

David Miranda, partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, has been granted permission to appeal against a ruling that he was lawfully detained under counter-terrorism powers at Heathrow airport.

The case – which also involves a challenge to the police seizure of computer material related to the US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden – will now go to the court of appeal.

An explosion followed by a fire in a coal mine in western Turkey killed 157 miners and trapped hundreds more on Tuesday, a provincial mayor said, in what appeared to be the country's worst mining accident in years.

Rescue workers pumped oxygen into the mine to try to keep those still trapped by the blaze alive as thousands of family members and fellow workers, clamoring for information, gathered outside the town's hospital, held back behind police lines.