Colombia’s Constitutional Court on Thursday stopped an electoral body from investigating accusations of illicit campaign financing and unreported spending by President Gustavo Petro, delivering a legal victory to the beleaguered left-wing leader. The court ruled that only Congress can investigate alleged irregularities in the financing of Petro’s 2022 campaign. Petro has denied any financial impropriety. The ruling scraps a probe by the National Electoral Council into whether Petro’s campaign exceeded fundraising limits by about $1.2 million and whether it accepted funds from labor organizations, which is banned by Colombian law. The council is an administrative body that supervises the electoral process and oversees...

 A Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 190 dead bodies in a decrepit building and sending grieving families fake ashes is set to be sentenced Friday in federal court for cheating customers and defrauding the government out of nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 aid. Jon Hallford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. Federal prosecutors are seeking a 15-year sentence. He’s pleaded guilty in a separate state case to 191 counts of corpse abuse. Hallford and co-owner Carie Hallford were accused of storing the bodies between 2019...

Japan’s Justice Ministry on Friday revealed that Takahiro Shiraishi,  convicted of murder for killing and dismembering nine people in his apartment near Tokyo has been executed.  Shiraishi, known as the “Twitter killer,” was sentenced to death in 2020 for the killings in 2017 of the nine victims, most of whom had posted suicidal thoughts on social media. He was also convicted of sexually abusing female victims. Police arrested him later that year after finding the bodies of eight teenage girls and women as well as one man in cold-storage cases in his apartment. Investigators said Shiraishi approached the victims via Twitter, offering to assist...

 Six Americans were detained Friday in South Korea for trying to send 1,600 plastic bottles filled with rice, U.S. dollars bills and Bibles toward North Korea by sea, police said. The Americans tried to throw the bottles into the sea from front-line Gwanghwa Island so they could float toward North Korean shores by the tides, said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to media on the issue. He said they are being investigated on allegations they violated the law on the management of safety and disasters. A second South Korean police...

Rama Duwaji’s Election Day post on Instagram was only four words long, but said all it needed to say: “couldn’t possibly be prouder.” It was accompanied by a photo-booth strip of happy poses with her husband, Zohran Mamdani, and a voting selfie that would presage a momentous night: The 33-year-old state assemblyman would stun the political world — and opponent Andrew Cuomo — with his success in the race for the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor. While the ultimate outcome has yet to be confirmed by a ranked choice count, many across the country woke up Wednesday eager to learn more...

The U.S. and China have signed an agreement on trade, President Donald Trump said, adding he expects to soon have a deal with India. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg TV that the deal was signed earlier this week. Neither Lutnick nor Trump provided any details about the agreement. “We just signed with China the other day,” Trump said late Thursday. Lutnick said the deal was “signed and sealed” two days earlier. It follows initial talks in Geneva in early May that led both sides to postpone massive tariff hikes that were threatening to freeze much trade between the two countries. Later talks...

A performer at Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance in February has been arrested after holding up a Sudanese flag with the message “Sudan and Free Gaza,” Louisiana State Police announced Thursday. The performer, Zul-Qarnain Kwame Nantambu, 41, of New Orleans surrendered to authorities after an arrest warrant was obtained, state police said. He was booked into the Orleans Parish Justice Center on charges of resisting an officer and disturbing the peace by interruption of a lawful assembly. State police say troopers began investigating shortly after the Feb. 9 game at the Caesars Superdome and found that Nantambu “deviated from his assigned...