TV News LIES

An Iranian nuclear scientist, whose disappearance in Saudi Arabia in 2009 and subsequent return to Tehran a year later from Washington was shrouded in mystery, has been executed in his home country.

The family of Shahram Amiri, an expert in radioactive isotopes at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, which is affiliated to Iran’s ministry of defence, told two overseas Persian-language TV networks at the weekend that he had been executed earlier in the week at an unknown location.

At least 21 people have died in floods that hit the Macedonian capital, Skopje, following torrential rain.

The victims' bodies were found on Sunday morning after the storm passed. Several people are still missing. Some of the victims drowned in their cars. Parts of the city's ring road were swept away in the floods, dragging cars into nearby fields.

More than 200 Hamas-affiliated Palestinian prisoners have halted their hunger strike after reaching a deal with Israeli prison authorities to end body searches and improve prison conditions, the Gaza-based Prisoner's Media Office said.

The group published what it said was the terms of the agreement on Saturday. The deal reportedly includes an end to strip searches and other types of invasive body checks that are considered "humiliating", improving ventilation in prisons and reducing overcrowding in cells, among other issues.

A fire swept through a bar in the northern French city of Rouen overnight, killing 13 people and injuring six, after a birthday cake with candles and sparklers fell to the floor and set the carpet ablaze, police said.

The fire broke out in the basement of the popular Cuba Libre bar and quickly engulfed the room where some 20 people were celebrating, filling it with thick black smoke and poisonous fumes, a Rouen police officer told Reuters.

The Olympic torch will end is 95-day worldwide journey tonight to light the cauldron in front of an estimated crowd of 70,000 at Maracana Stadium. Workers were seen on video using bolt cutters to open the gates because the keys to the locks were reportedly lost.

The opening ceremony features three key themes: reinvent, rejoice and replant. The event opened with several projected images of water and moved into significant events in Brazilian history, including a presentation of the "beginning of life," the "birth of the forest" and a tribute to the indigenous people who occupied Brazil in the past and present, according to the BBC. Acrobats then mimicked the movement of ships to symbolize when Europeans arrived to the continent in the 1500s.

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Foreign tourists being escorted by an army convoy in western Afghanistan have been ambushed by gunmen in an attack that left at least seven people wounded, Afghan officials say.

Twelve tourists from the UK, the US and Germany were attacked in the Chesht-e-Sharif district of Herat province on Thursday while on their way to Herat from Bamiyan and Ghor provinces.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement. Spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the foreigners were killed - a claim the governor's office denied.

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