A U.S. Border Patrol agent was fatally shot Monday on a highway in northern Vermont south of the Canadian border, authorities said.

The death was confirmed by the FBI and Benjamine Huffman, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in Washington.

In a statement, the FBI said that in addition to the agent, a suspect in the shooting was killed and a second suspect was injured and taken into custody during the encounter on Interstate 91 in Coventry, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

The FBI said there was no ongoing threat to the public.

Huffman said the death occurred “in the line of duty.” The identity of the agent, who was assigned to the U.S. Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector, was not immediately released. The sector encompasses Vermont and parts of New York and New Hampshire.

Federal authorities did not provide additional details but said they would be released as they became available.

A portion of Interstate 91 was closed in both directions for about two hours afterward. The northbound lane reopened just after 5 p.m. Besides federal authorities, the Vermont State Police was also investigating. The FBI responded from the Albany, N.Y., office.

Huffman said the death would be “swiftly investigated.”

“Every single day, our Border Patrol agents put themselves in harm’s way so that Americans and our homeland are safe and secure,” Huffman said in a statement.

Coventry is close to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Newport Station, part of the Swanton Sector. The area includes 295 miles of international boundary with Canada.

In a joint statement, Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint sent condolences to the agent’s family and said Border Patrol agents “deserve our full support in terms of staffing, pay and working conditions.”

Attacks prompt Colombian emergency

Colombian president Gustavo Petro said on Monday that he will declare a state of emergency, following a spate of guerrilla attacks in the country’s northeast that has killed dozens of people and forced thousands to flee their homes.

In a message on X Petro said that he will “declare a state of internal commotion,” a measure that enables the executive branch to pass certain kinds of legislation without congressional approval for three months. The measure will go into effect after a decree is signed by the President and his Cabinet, but it can also be invalidated by Colombia’s constitutonal court.

Internal commotion decrees were used in the early 2000s by the administration of then-President Álvaro Uribe to increase financing for the military through a special war tax. According to Colombia’s constitution, this emergency measure cannot be used to suspend congress or eliminate civil rights. “I hope the judicial system supports us,” Petro wrote on X.

Earlier on Monday Petro had warned that his nation’s military will take offensive actions against the National Liberation Army after the rebels, known as the ELN, unleashed a wave of attacks in Colombia’s Catatumbo region, in which at least 80 people have been killed.

“The ELN has chosen the path of war, and that’s what they will get,” Petro wrote in a message on X, in which he accused the rebels of turning into a drug trafficking group and compared their methods to those of Pablo Escobar, the infamous cartel leader who bombed government buildings and murdered his enemies by hiring hundreds of hitmen.

Pope dissolves Peruvian movement

Pope Francis has taken the remarkable step of dissolving a Peruvian-based Catholic movement, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, after years of attempts at reform and a Vatican investigation. The probe uncovered sexual abuses by its founder, financial mismanagement by its leaders and spiritual abuses by its top members.

The Sodalitium on Monday confirmed the dissolution, which was conveyed to an assembly of its members in Aparecida, Brazil this weekend by Francis’ top legal adviser Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda. In revealing the dissolution in a statement, the group lamented that news of Francis’ decision had been leaked by two members attending the assembly, who were “definitively expelled.”

It provided no details, saying only that the “central information” about the dissolution that was reported by Spanish-language site Infovaticana “was true but it contained several inaccuracies.” It didn’t say what the inaccuracies were.

The Vatican has not responded to several requests for comment. Dissolution, or suppression, of a pontifically recognized religious movement is a major undertaking for a pope, all the more so for a Jesuit pope given the Jesuit religious order was itself suppressed in the 1700s.

Teen pleads guilty in U.K. dance class killings

A British teen pleaded guilty Monday to murdering three girls and attempting to kill 10 other people in what a prosecutor said was a “meticulously planned” stabbing rampage at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in England last summer.

The crime shocked Britain, and misinformation about the attacker sparked anti-immigrant violence across the country. The government announced it would hold an independent public inquiry into the attack, which was carried out by a U.K.-born teenager whose troubling fascination with violence saw him reported to authorities years before the crime.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, entered the surprise guilty pleas as jury selection had been expected to begin at the start of his trial in Liverpool Crown Court.

The July 29 stabbings led to a week of widespread rioting across parts of England and Northern Ireland after the suspect was falsely identified as an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in Britain by boat. He was born in Wales to Rwandan parents.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed Rudakubana’s conviction, but said it was “a moment of trauma for the nation.”

“There are grave questions to answer as to how the state failed in its ultimate duty to protect these young girls,” he said. “Britain will rightly demand answers, and we will leave no stone unturned in that pursuit.”

OxFam: Billionaires’ wealth grew in 2024

Billionaires’ wealth grew three times faster in 2024 than the year before, a top anti-poverty group reported on Monday as some of the world’s political and financial elite prepared for an annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland.

Oxfam International, in its latest assessment of global inequality timed to the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting, also predicts at least five trillionaires will crop up over the next decade. A year ago, the group forecast that only one trillionaire would appear during that time.

OxFam’s research adds weight to a warning by outgoing President Joe Biden last week of a “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people.” The group’s sharp-edged report, titled “Takers Not Makers,” also says the number of people in poverty has barely budged since 1990.

The World Economic Forum expects to host some 3,000 attendees, including business executives, academics, government officials, and civic group leaders at its annual meeting in the Alpine village of Davos. The first big day of meetings starts Tuesday, after a largely ceremonial start on Monday.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House is expected to be a topic of formal conversations and off-the-cuff remarks. Policy experts are participating in a Tuesday panel titled, “47th US Presidency, Early Thoughts” and a town hall called “State of Play: U.S. Dollar.”

China announces truce in Myanmar fighting

Myanmar’s military government and a major ethnic rebel group in the country’s northeast have signed a formal ceasefire agreement, mediator China said Monday.

The ceasefire between the military and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which seized large tracts of territory along the border with China, is the second such pact in little over a year and came into effect on Saturday. A previous pact in January last year was not honored by either side.

The new ceasefire was brokered by China in mid-January, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing in Beijing.

China is the most important foreign ally of Myanmar’s military rulers, who took power after ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. The takeover led to nationwide peaceful protests that escalated into civil war.

Beijing has major geopolitical and economic interests in Myanmar and is deeply concerned about instability along their border.

Missing American’s mother visits Syria

The mother of American journalist Austin Tice made her first visit to Syria in almost a decade Monday and said that the administration of President-elect Donald Trump had offered support to help find her son, who disappeared in 2012.

Debra Tice made the remarks at a news conference in Damascus in her first visit to the country since insurgents toppled President Bashar Assad last month. She did not present any new findings in the ongoing search.

Austin Tice disappeared near the Syrian capital in 2012, and has not been heard from since other than a video released weeks later that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men. Tens of thousands are believed to have gone missing in Syria since 2011, when countrywide protests against Assad spiraled into a devastating civil war.

Then-President Joe Biden told reporters in December that he believes Washington can bring Tice back, while admitting that “we have no direct evidence” of his well-being.

— News service reports