World

Colombia's President Gustavo Petro claimed Monday to have been the target of a plot to down his plane with missiles by "big mafias" irate at his government's attempts to hunt them down.

"They want to shoot a missile at my plane... not one, but two missiles. We know who they are," the South American country's first-ever leftist president told a police ceremony in Bogota.

Wildlife rangers will Wednesday begin shooting 90 dolphins stranded on a remote Australian beach, saying the stressed creatures would be euthanised after attempts to refloat them failed.

A pod of 157 dolphins from a poorly understood deep-sea species was found stranded Tuesday evening on an isolated beach in Australia's southern island of Tasmania.

by Alice Philipson and Lam Nguyen

Vietnam's parliament approved plans on Wednesday for an $8 billion rail link from its largest northern port city to the border with China, boosting links between the two communist-ruled countries and making trade easier.

Brazil's far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro has been bogged down in legal woes since leaving office, and is now facing a possible high-profile trial while trying to pave a path back to power.

Bolsonaro, 69, was on Tuesday formally charged over an alleged coup bid to prevent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after losing a 2022 election.

by Johanna Lehn with Anuj Chopra in Washington and Dounia Mahieddine in Paris

From a fabricated sex scandal to a fake museum heist, disinformation aimed at influencing Germany's high-stakes election is originating from dozens of AI-generated German sites apparently linked to a U.S. fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist, researchers say.

An allegedly intoxicated man vandalized a 500-year-old archaeological artifact known as the 12-Angle Stone in Peru, authorities said Tuesday.

Police said the 30-year-old man was suspected of attacking the stone with a hammer.

Battered and bruised Chinese workers from online scam centers in Myanmar faced an anxious wait to return home, as Beijing and Thailand finalized plans on Wednesday for their repatriation.

Scam compounds have flourished in Myanmar's lawless borderlands, staffed by foreigners, many of whom say they were trafficked and forced to work swindling people around the world.

by John HADOULIS

Ilias Roussos will never forget the day he was driven from his native island of Santorini with thousands of others by a quake barrage that shows little sign of slowing down after three weeks.

EU countries on Wednesday agreed a new round of sanctions on Russia, diplomats said, as the bloc looks to keep up pressure in the face of U.S. talks with Russia.

The wide-ranging package -- which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum -- will be formally adopted by EU foreign ministers on Monday, the third anniversary of Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and opposition leader Friedrich Merz will face off in a final head-to-head debate Wednesday, four days before the election, in a campaign overshadowed by the rise of the far right.

Immigration and security, the hot-button topics so far, are expected to feature prominently in the clash from 8:15 pm (1915 GMT) along with US-European tensions and the woeful state of the German economy.

On Tuesday, the White House social media accounts published a video of people in leg restraints and handcuffs being loaded onto a plane as part of a deportation operation.

On the social media accounts, the White House joked it was an ASMR video, an acronym for autonomous sensory meridian response. Such videos have gained popularity in recent years among people who enjoy certain sounds. The video showcases the clanking of the restraints on the migrants.

by Burcin Gercek'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday criticized U.S.-Russia talks for excluding Kyiv, saying efforts to end the war must be "fair" and involve European countries including Turkey.