WILMINGTON, Del. — Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once retrieved a bear that was killed by a motorist and left it in New York’s Central Park with a bicycle on top, sparking a mystery that consumed the city a decade ago.

Kennedy described the incident in a video that was posted to social media Sunday, saying it would be included in a New Yorker article that he expected to be damaging.

The article was published Monday and included a photo of Kennedy with his fingers in the bear’s bloodied mouth, a mock grimace on his face. His left pant leg appears to have a bloodstain on it.

It’s the latest bizarre incident in Kennedy’s quixotic campaign that has divided his famous family and left Republicans and Democrats concerned about his potential impact on the presidential contest.

In the video, Kennedy recounts the story to actor Roseanne Barr. He says he was heading to a falconry excursion with friends when a woman driving ahead of him hit and killed the young bear with her vehicle. He says he put it in his own vehicle, intending to skin it and eat the meat, but the day got away from him.

Eventually, he says, he was in Manhattan and needed to get the bear carcass out of his vehicle. His friends, fueled by alcohol, concocted the Central Park plan as a prank, he said, adding that he was not drunk. At the time, bicycle accidents were getting significant media attention, so Kennedy and his friends thought it would be funny to make it look like the bear was hit by a bicycle.

Two women walking their dogs found the dead bear and alerted authorities, touching off a mystery that captivated the city for a few days. Bears are not among the park’s known wildlife population.

Fake Arizona electors: Former President Donald Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with Rudy Giuliani, will cooperate with Arizona prosecutors in exchange for charges being dropped against her in a fake electors case, the state attorney general’s office announced Monday.

Ellis has pleaded not guilty to fraud, forgery and conspiracy charges. Seventeen others charged in the case have pleaded not guilty to the felony charges — including Giuliani, Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Trump had won Arizona.

Last year, Ellis was charged in Georgia after she appeared with Giuliani at a December 2020 hearing hosted by state Republican lawmakers at the Capitol during which false allegations of election fraud were made. She pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.

The cooperation agreement signed by Ellis in the Arizona case requires her to provide truthful information to the attorney general’s office and testify honestly in proceedings in any state or federal court. Prosecutors can withdraw from the deal and refile charges if Ellis violates the agreement.

Venezuela election: Venezuela’s opposition leaders are calling on the country’s armed forces to abandon their support of President Nicolás Maduro and stop repressing demonstrators who have come out in force to dispute the leader’s claim that he won the July 28 election.

The armed forces are traditionally the arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela and have been key to Maduro’s grip on power ever since he took over the so-called Bolivarian revolution in 2013 from his mentor, Hugo Chávez.

So far, they’ve shown no signs of ditching Maduro even in the face of credible evidence presented by the opposition that it trounced the self-proclaimed socialist at the polls by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

In a message posted Monday on social media, Edmundo González — recognized by the U.S. and a half-dozen countries as the victor — and opposition leader María Corina Machado called on rank-and-file members of the security forces to rethink their loyalty.

Authorities declared Maduro the victor but have yet to produce voting tallies to prove that he won. The opposition claims to have collected records from more than 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide showing it won.

As Venezuelans fight Maduro on the streets, pressure is also building internationally for the Venezuelan government to publish the full breakdown of the electoral results.

US base in Niger: The U.S. handed over its last military base in Niger — one of two crucial hubs for American counterterrorism operations in the country — to local authorities, the U.S. Department of Defense and Niger’s Ministry of Defense announced Monday.

The handing over of Airbase 201 in the city of Agadez came after the U.S. troops withdrew in July from Airbase 101, a small drone base in Niger’s capital, Niamey.

U.S. troops have until Sept. 15 to leave the Sahel country in an agreement with Nigerian authorities.

About two dozen American soldiers remain at the U.S. Embassy in Niger, largely for administrative duties related to the withdrawal, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said.

More UN staffers fired: The U.N. said Monday it fired additional staff members from its agency for Palestinian refugees, bringing the total to nine employees terminated, after an internal investigation found that they may have been involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack against Israel.

The U.N. secretary-general’s office announced the move in a brief statement to journalists. Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the secretary-general, did not elaborate on the UNRWA staffers’ likely role in the attack or on the evidence that prompted its decision.

The U.N.’s internal watchdog has been investigating the agency since Israel accused 12 UNRWA staffers in January of being involved in the Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed 1,200 people and abducted 250.

Kansas newspaper raid: Two special prosecutors said Monday that they plan to charge a former Kansas police chief with obstruction of justice over his conduct in the weeks after a police raid last year on the local weekly newspaper.

Prosecutors Marc Bennett and Barry Wilkerson concluded in their 124-page report that the staff at the Marion County Record committed no crimes before then-Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody led a raid on its offices and the home of its publisher.

They said police warrants signed by a judge to allow the searches contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation” and that the searches were not legally justified.

Cody resigned as chief in October. It wasn’t clear whether officials planned to charge him with a felony or a misdemeanor, and either is possible.