A Russian court on Monday sentenced a 72-year-old American in a closed trial to nearly seven years in prison for allegedly fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine.

Prosecutors said Stephen Hubbard signed a contract with the Ukrainian military after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 and he fought alongside them until being captured two months later.

He was sentenced to six years and 10 months in a general-security prison. Prosecutors had called for a sentence of seven years in a maximum-security prison.

Hubbard, from the state of Michigan, is the first American known to have been convicted on charges of fighting as a mercenary in the Ukrainian conflict.

U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the U.S. had limited information about the case as Russia has refused to grant consular access.

“We’re disappointed, as we often are, when they refuse to grant consular access,” Miller told reporters in Washington. “They have an obligation to provide it and we’re going to continue to press for it. We’re looking at the case very closely and considering our next steps.”

The charges against Hubbard carried a potential sentence of 15 years, but prosecutors asked that his age be taken into account along with his admission of guilt, Russian news reports said.

Arrests of Americans have become increasingly common in Russia in recent years. Concern has risen that Russia could be targeting U.S. nationals for arrest to use later as bargaining chips in talks to bring back Russians convicted of crimes in the U.S. and Europe.

Georgia Supreme Court reinstates abortion ban

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a state law that prohibits abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy while it considers an appeal to a lower court decision that had briefly allowed greater access to the procedure.

The law, called the Living Infants Fairness and Equality Act, or the LIFE Act, was set to take effect again Monday.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nationwide legal access to abortion in 2022, states were left to regulate the rules around abortion. Since then, about 20 states have banned or restricted the procedure, effectively ending the practice. Many lawsuits have been filed to challenge those new standards.

On Sept. 30, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta overturned the Georgia law because he found that it violated the state Constitution, which he wrote protected the rights of “a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices.”

The judge’s decision allowed the procedure to continue in Georgia up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

Chicago mayor deals with school shakeup

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson named members of a new school board on Monday, batting away criticism of the move days after all seven members resigned amid an escalating fight over control of the public schools in the nation’s third-largest city.

During a news conference at a South Side church, Johnson introduced six new school board members and said he’d name a seventh at a later date. He said that although the new members are technically nominees who are still being vetted, it’s a formality and they could remain after the board triples in size in January and goes to a hybrid model that will include 11 mayoral appointees and 10 elected members.

Johnson has been trying to oust the district’s CEO, Pedro Martinez, who was named to the job in 2021 by Johnson’s predecessor, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer, has clashed with Martinez, including over how best to close gaps in the district’s nearly $10 billion budget. Martinez has refused to resign, citing the need for stability in the district.

Two arrested in assault on former N.Y. governor

A man and a woman were arrested in an assault on former New York Gov. David Paterson and his stepson, police said.

Paterson, 70, and his stepson, Anthony Sliwa, 20, were attacked around 8:30 p.m. Friday while they were walking in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. They were treated for minor injuries, police said.

The 40-year-old man arrested Monday was charged with gang assault and assault, a police spokesperson said, while the 34-year-old woman was charged with gang assault. It was not clear whether they had attorneys who could speak for them.

Their arrests came after two boys aged 12 and 13 were arrested Saturday on gang assault charges in the attack.

NYC Mayor Adams loses more colleagues

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Monday that he had accepted the resignation of his deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks, the latest senior official to leave as the mayor fends off an indictment and calls to step down.

Adams’ director of Asian affairs, Winnie Greco, also resigned and the city fired another former aide, Rana Abbasova, who previously served as the mayor’s liaison to the Turkish community, a spokesperson for City Hall said Monday evening.

Federal investigators have seized devices from all three officials — along with several other high-ranking city appointees — as part of apparently separate investigations that have engulfed the Democrat’s administration and prompted an exodus of top officials in recent weeks.

Federal prosecutors have said they are pursuing “several related investigations” in addition to the case against the Adams, who was indicted late last month on charges of accepting illegal campaign contributions and bribes from foreign nationals. He has pleaded not guilty.

Banks’ resignation comes days after his brother, the city’s schools chancellor David Banks, announced he was stepping down months earlier than planned at the direction of the mayor.

In a separate probe, federal prosecutors are scrutinizing whether a consulting firm run by a third Banks brother, Terence, broke the law by leveraging his family connections to help private companies secure city contracts, according to a person familiar with the matter.

All three Banks brothers have denied wrongdoing.

‘Rust’ armorer admits to separate charge

The weapons supervisor in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust” pleaded guilty Monday to a separate criminal charge of carrying a gun into a licensed liquor establishment.

Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed agreed to change her plea to guilty on the charge in exchange for a reduced sentence of 18 months supervised probation.

Judge T. Glenn Ellington approved the agreement that allows Gutierrez-Reed to begin probation while serving out an 18-month prison term for involuntary manslaughter at a New Mexico state penitentiary in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

In the “Rust” case, prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the movie set and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols.

Boris Johnson: Queen had bone cancer

Two years after Queen Elizabeth’s death, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in his new memoir “Unleashed,” claims the queen battled bone cancer at the time of her death.

The claim comes as several members of the royal family, including her son, King Charles, are battling various forms of cancer.

According to Today, in his memoir, Johnson writes, “for more than a year that (Queen Elizabeth) had a form of bone cancer and her doctors were worried that at any time she could enter a sharp decline.”

The late queen died on Sept. 8, 2022. “Old age” is written as her majesty’s cause of death.Yet, despite her physical decline, Johnson said the queen remained mentally sharp until the end.

Buckingham Palace declined comment.

— From news services