CARACAS, Venezuela >> A Venezuelan judge on Monday issued an arrest warrant for the opposition’s former presidential candidate Edmundo González as part of a criminal investigation into the results of a disputed election.

The warrant was issued at the request of authorities who accuse González, a former diplomat, of various crimes including conspiracy, falsifying documents and usurpation of powers. The warrant comes just over a month after election officials declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of an election that his opponents say he lost.

Authorities sought the warrant after González failed to appear three times to answer questions from prosecutors in a criminal investigation stemming from the disputed election results.

Ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared Maduro the victor of the July 28 election, hours after polls closed. They did not show any detailed results to back up their claim as they had offered in previous presidential elections.

The lack of transparency has drawn international condemnation against Maduro and his allies.

The opposition, however, managed to obtain more than 80% of vote tally sheets, which are printed by every electronic voting machine, and said they show Maduro lost by a wide margin against González.

González was summoned to the prosecutor’s office as recently as Friday. Attorney General Tarek William Saab opened the investigation against González after he and opposition leader María Corina Machado revealed what they said were the results shown in the tally sheets and published them online.

Maduro’s ruling party and the National Electoral Council have refused to publish their copies of tally sheets that the electronic voting machines printed after polls closed.

Instead, as international pressure mounts to release a breakdown of results, Maduro asked the country’s high court to audit the electoral process. The Supreme Tribunal of Justice, stacked with Maduro loyalists, concluded on Aug. 22 that the vote counts published by the opposition were false and certified Maduro’s victory.

U.S. seizes plane used by Maduro

WASHINGTON >> The U.S. government has seized a luxury jet used by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that officials say was illegally purchased through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States in violation of sanctions and export control laws.

The Dassault Falcon 900EX was seized in the Dominican Republic and transferred to the custody of federal officials in Florida, the Justice Department said Monday. The plane landed at Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport shortly before noon Monday, according to flight tracking websites.

U.S. officials say associates of the Venezuelan leader in late 2022 and early 2023 used a Caribbean-based shell company to hide their involvement in the purchase of the plane, valued at the time at $13 million, from a company in Florida. The plane was then exported from the U.S. to Venezuela, through the Caribbean, in April 2023 in a transaction meant to circumvent an executive order that bars U.S. persons from business transactions with representatives of Maduro’s government.

The plane, registered to San Marino, was widely used by Maduro for foreign travel, including in trips earlier this year to Guyana and Cuba. It was also involved in a December swap on a Caribbean airstrip of several Americans jailed in Venezuela for a close Maduro ally, Alex Saab, imprisoned in the U.S. on money laundering charges.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement the aircraft had been smuggled out of the U.S. for use by “Maduro and his cronies.”

Turkey protesters held after anti-U.S. incident

ANKARA, Turkey >> Turkish authorities on Monday detained 15 members of an anti-American youth organization who physically assaulted two U.S. military personnel in the city of Izmir, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

The agency said members of the Turkish Youth Union, which is affiliated with the Patriotic Party — a small, nationalist political party without parliament seats — were detained on the orders of a prosecutor.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed the incident, saying service members on board the USS Wasp were “now safe.”

“We are troubled by this assault on U.S. service members and are appreciative that Turkish police are taking this matter seriously and holding those responsible accountable,” National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said.

The group posted a video of the incident on social media platform X and said they placed sacks over the heads of soldiers who had disembarked from the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS Wasp.

Pope Francis begins demanding Asia trip

Pope Francis left Monday on an 11-day trip to Southeast Asia and Oceania, the longest and among the most complicated of his tenure. It could be particularly challenging for Francis, 87, who has been using a wheelchair and battling health problems.

But the trip, which includes a stop in Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim majority country — also signals he has no intention of slowing down his outreach to faraway Catholics.

Francis will visit four countries for a total of about 20,000 miles by plane. From Indonesia he goes to Papua New Guinea, then East Timor and Singapore, as he deepens his engagement with Asia, one of his priorities.

The trip will include more than 43 hours of air travel and meetings with local faithful, clergy and politicians in cities with tropical climates or high levels of pollution on the other side of the world from Rome.

“It’s a physical test,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology at Villanova University, “and a sign that this pontificate is far from being over.”

The pope chose four island nations as he extends his outreach to what he calls “the peripheries,” a term for overlooked, faraway places with small, minority or persecuted Catholic communities.

The trip is also one of Francis’ boldest engagements with Asia, a fast-growing part of the world, which the pope has always regarded as a strategic objective.

Four dead in subway shooting near Chicago

FOREST PARK, Ill. >> A shooting on a commuter train outside Chicago on Labor Day morning left four people dead, police said.

Three people were pronounced dead at the Forest Park station, an above-ground stop on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line. The fourth victim died at a hospital.

The suspect got away but was subsequently arrested on a train on a different route, Forest Park police said.

“A weapon was recovered,” Forest Park Deputy Chief Chris Chin told reporters. “There is no immediate threat. This appears to be an isolated incident on this unfortunate day.”

Alabama man charged in gas station slayings

BESSEMER, Ala. >> Police have charged a 20-year-old Alabama man with capital murder in the shooting deaths of three men at a gas station near Birmingham.

Police in Bessemer said Monday that they have arrested Raukeem Cunningham in the fatal shootings on Friday. Cunningham is being held without bail, local news outlets reported. He is not yet listed in Jefferson County jail records, so it is unclear whether he has a lawyer or has seen a judge.

Police have said they believe there was at least one additional shooter and say they are still looking for possible suspects.

Christopher Eddins, 25, Ronald Dixon Jr., 20 and Wesley Fowler, 40, were all shot, police said. They all died before they could be taken to a hospital.

The shooting started in the parking lot of a convenience store, with the suspects initially shooting from a vehicle and then getting out and chasing the victims inside, said Bessemer Police Det. Justin Burmeister. Store surveillance cameras recorded much of the shooting.

Five shot during parade in Brooklyn

NEW YORK >> Five people were shot Monday at New York City’s West Indian American Day Parade, police said. It’s the latest instance of violence marring one of the world’s largest annual celebrations of Caribbean culture.

A gunman targeting a specific group of people opened fire along the parade route in Brooklyn around 2:35 p.m., NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell said.

The parade had kicked off hours earlier, with thousands of revelers dancing and marching down Eastern Parkway, a main thoroughfare through the borough. It was expected to continue into the night.

Two people were critically wounded, Chell said. The three other victims are expected to survive their injuries, he said. The gunman fled.

Titanic expedition yields lost statue

A bronze statue from the Titanic — not seen in decades and feared to be lost for good — is among the discoveries made by the company with salvage rights to the wreck site on its first expedition there in many years.

RMS Titanic Inc., a Georgia-based company that holds the legal rights to the 112-year-old wreck, has completed its first trip since 2010 and released images from the expedition on Monday.

The pictures show a site that continues to change more than a century after the disaster.

The trip to the remote corner of the North Atlantic Ocean where the Titanic sank happened as the U.S. Coast Guard investigates the June 2023 implosion of the Titan, an experimental submersible owned by a different company.

The Titan submersible disaster killed all five people that were on board, including Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who was director of underwater research for RMS Titanic.

— From news services