World

Republican White House candidate Donald Trump praised Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a "total killer" Wednesday as he discussed foreign leaders during a media blitz for the final stretch of the election campaign.

"He's great. He's a friend of mine," Trump told a podcast with millions of subscribers hosted by stand-up comedian Andrew Schultz. "On the outside he looks like he's your father. He's the nicest. Total killer."

Foreign influence campaigns, or information operations, have been widespread in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Influence campaigns are large-scale efforts to shift public opinion, push false narratives or change behaviors among a target population. Russia, China, Iran, Israel and other nations have run these campaigns by exploiting social bots, influencers, media companies and generative AI.

At the Indiana University Observatory on Social Media, my colleagues and I study influence campaigns and design technical solutions – algorithms – to detect and counter them. State-of-the-art methods developed in our center use several indicators of this type of online activity, which researchers call inauthentic coordinated behavior. We identify clusters of social media accounts that post in a synchronized fashion, amplify the same groups of users, share identical sets of links, images or hashtags, or perform suspiciously similar sequences of actions.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) on Wednesday raised suspicions about former President Donald Trump's reported post-presidency phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While appearing on CNN, Auchincloss was asked about the purported calls, which were reported by legendary Watergate journalist Bob Woodward as part of an upcoming book.

In a move akin to kicking Lenin out of Moscow's Red Square, the mayor of Belgrade wants to rid the Serbian capital of the tomb of Tito, the socialist leader who held Yugoslavia together for decades.

Nationalist Aleksandar Sapic wants to send Tito -- the wartime resistance leader who liberated the country from the Nazis -- back to his native Croatia despite his tomb in the Museum of Yugoslavia attracting 120,000 visitors a year.

Furious Indian politicians, activists and academics have demanded a 200-year-old skull listed for auction in former colonial ruler Britain, alongside at least 25 other remains, to be returned home.

Activists say the 19th century remains of their ancestor represent the colonial violence meted out to India's Nagaland state.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba dissolved parliament on Wednesday ahead of October 27 snap elections, banking on his honeymoon popularity and a fragmented opposition to lead his scandal-tainted party to victory.

Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan almost uninterrupted for decades -- albeit with frequent leader changes -- and is almost certain to be re-elected.

A recent comment by Donald Trump betrays the former president's interest in the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups, according to a political analyst Wednesday.

In an interview earlier this week, Trump made a comment about "bad genes" in relation to immigration.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded Friday, a ray of light in a dark year for world peace, with the International Court of Justice, UNRWA and UN chief Antonio Guterres seen as favorites.

In the final run-up to the announcement, Nobel-watchers are struggling to predict this year's laureate, with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, famine in Sudan, and a collapsing climate painting a grim picture of world affairs.

An 18-year-old Nepali mountaineer on Wednesday broke the record for the youngest person to summit all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks, his team said.

Nima Rinji Sherpa reached the summit of Tibet's 8,027-meter-high (26,335 feet) Shisha Pangma on Wednesday morning, completing his mission to stand on the world's highest peaks.

North Korea's army said on Wednesday it was moving to "permanently shut off and block the southern border" with the South and had informed the US military to prevent an accidental clash.

Pyongyang said in a statement it would "cut off roads and railways" that might have made travel between the two Koreas possible.

Sherlock Holmes fans are being promised a most authentic depiction of the fictional detective, with the restoration of a century-old silent film series chronicling the London sleuth's adventures.

Audiences will be treated to a first glimpse of the restored works from the early 1920s next week at a London Film Festival screening, accompanied by a newly commissioned live score from Royal Academy of Music performers.