A French modelling scout with close ties to the late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Crowds of supporters of India's online "cockroach" movement grew on Wednesday at a New Delhi protest site, with their campaign for accountability and reform following examination scandals getting a boost inside parliament from opposition lawmakers.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he will meet U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Manila on Thursday for talks set to focus on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

German authorities said Wednesday they were giving the green light to a controversial French-Russian nuclear project which critics fear will enable spying and sabotage by Moscow.

Iran and U.S. forces traded new military attacks, with Tehran warning of "more decisive and powerful" strikes ahead as the conflict threatened to widen with a blockade of Saudi ports by Houthi rebels in Yemen.

A suspected gas explosion on Monday triggered a collapse inside a tunnel that was under construction at a hydropower project in India's northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, leaving at least 11 people dead and 14 missing, officials said on Tuesday.

State Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang, who visited the disaster site near the Chinese border, said the explosion was triggered by a build-up of methane gas.

Southeast Asia's top diplomats opened three days of talks in the Philippine capital Tuesday with an agenda topped by their most daunting security problems and a backdrop of unfolding crises led by the resurging war in Iran and a violent skirmish in the disputed South China Sea.

The foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met behind closed doors before issuing a joint statement calling for an immediate halt to fighting in the Middle East and the full and safe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Veteran Labour Party politician and popular former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is set to become Britain's next prime minister on Monday, formally taking over from Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation last month.

Burnham was the only candidate to secure enough support from his fellow Labour lawmakers to replace Starmer as leader of the governing party. Because Labour holds a majority in government, its leader also becomes the U.K. prime minister.

It took Andy Burnham a long time to get to the top. He won't have much time to prove he's up to the job.

A decade ago, Burnham abandoned a 20-year climb up the Labour Party ladder in London to head north and run for mayor of Greater Manchester. A month ago, he returned to Parliament by winning a risky special election. On Monday, he will become Britain's 59th prime minister.

Ukraine fired more than 400 drones toward Moscow in its latest major attack on the Russian capital, the city's mayor said Monday.

The blitz came hours after Russia bombarded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with ballistic missiles in a relentless cycle of tit-for-tat strikes that make a settlement to end Moscow's more than 4-year-old all-out invasion appear a distant possibility.