A marble statue of a woman, believed to be more than 2,000 years old, was found abandoned in a garbage bag near the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police said Wednesday.

A resident discovered the 80-centimeter (31-inch) headless statue beside a trash bin in Neoi Epivates, outside Greece’s second-largest city. The man turned it over to local authorities, who contacted archaeologists to assess its significance.

Police said experts, following an initial evaluation, determined the piece dates to the Hellenistic era, a period roughly between 320 and 30 B.C. that was marked by a flourishing of art and culture following the conquests of Alexander the Great.

The statue was sent for further examination by archaeologists. It will ultimately be handed over to the local antiquities authority for preservation and study.

Police opened an investigation to determine who discarded the statue and briefly detained a man for questioning who was later released without charge.

Accidental archaeological discoveries are relatively common in Greece, a country renowned for its ancient heritage, and often made during building construction or public works.

In December, workers installing natural gas pipelines near Athens uncovered a Roman-era statue of Hermes buried upright in a brick-lined pit near the Acropolis.

Thessaloniki weeks ago unveiled a trove of antiquities found during the decades-long construction of its metro system, which officially opened in November.

Key finds, including a marble-paved Roman thoroughfare and tens of thousands of artifacts spanning the Greek, Byzantine and Ottoman periods, are now showcased at subway stations.

A 28-year-old man from Afghanistan has been arrested following a knife attack in a park in the German city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday in which two people were killed, including a toddler, police said.

The suspect was detained at the scene in Schoental park, an English-style garden in the Bavarian city, where the attack occurred at around 11:45 a.m. local (5:45 a.m. ET).

A 41-year old man and a two-year old boy were fatally injured, police said in a post on the social media platform X. Two seriously injured people were receiving hospital treatment.

Police said there was no indication of further suspects and no danger to the public.

The stabbing adds to a string of violent attacks in Germany that have raised concerns over security and stirred up tensions over migration ahead of parliamentary elections on February 23.

A Saudi doctor was arrested after a car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg on December 20, in which six people were killed and around 200 injured.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement has released the crew of a cargo ship more than a year after its fighters hijacked the vessel in the Red Sea, as part of its campaign of attacks in support of Hamas in its war against Israel.

The Galaxy Leader’s 25-strong crew – comprising 17 Filipinos, three Ukrainians, two Bulgarians, two Mexicans and a Romanian – has been handed to mediators from Oman, the Houthi-owned Al Masirah TV reported Wednesday.

The crew’s release comes just days after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, bringing a reprieve to Palestinians in Gaza after 15 months of war. The Houthis had long said they would only wind down their campaign in the Red Sea once Israel halted its offensive in Gaza.

The crew had been held hostage since November 2023, when armed Houthis – descending from a helicopter bearing Yemeni and Palestinian flags – stormed the ship off the coast of Yemen.

The Houthi attacks forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through the Red Sea, one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.

Arsenio Dominguez, Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization, said the crew’s release was a “profound relief.”

“Today’s breakthrough is a testament to the power of collective diplomacy and dialogue, recognizing that innocent seafarers must not become collateral victims in wider geopolitical tensions,” he said.

Hans Grundberg, the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, welcomed the “heartwarming” reports that the Houthis had “put an end to the arbitrary detention” of the ship’s crew for 14 months.

The Galaxy Leader sails under the flag of the Bahamas and is usually used to transport vehicles worldwide. It was among dozens of vessels targeted by the Houthis during their Red Sea campaign.

Eduardo de Vega, a Filipino foreign affairs official overseeing millions of Filipino migrant workers, said in March last year that little could be done to influence the Houthis except the end of hostilities in Gaza.

The Houthis – one side of Yemen’s civil war that has raged for more than a decade – played an outsized role during the past year of conflicts in the Middle East. As well as targeting ships, the Houthis fired a series of missile attacks at Israel.

Although most of the attacks were intercepted by Israeli air defense, Israel’s military responded with airstrikes of its own against Houthi targets in Yemen. The United States and United Kingdom, both allies of Israel, also carried out rounds of strikes against the Houthis.

More than 32,000 people have fled to towns in northeast Colombia as they attempt to escape a sharp rise in fighting between militant factions, according to the country’s ombudsman.

Iris Marín said the violence escalated last week in the Catatumbo region, displacing tens of thousands of people. Hundreds more remain confined to their homes and are unable to evacuate due to the ferocity of the clashes, Marín warned Tuesday in a video statement.

Colombian authorities say 80 people have been killed in the fighting.

Almost half of those displaced have flocked to the city of Cúcuta near the Venezuelan border. Officials there have launched a major campaign to shelter the more than 15,000 people who have arrived in recent days.

In Cúcuta, the city’s football stadium has been turned into a large welcome center, with thousands of displaced victims lining up to receive food, water and clothing from locals.

Many are also sheltering in hotels and the homes of relatives, Cúcuta Mayor Jorge Acevedo said, pledging to support those in need.

“We are going to address the emergency that is occurring. Total solidarity, respect, affection and love for these human beings who are arriving in the city of Cúcuta,” Acevedo said.

Violence in strategic drug production territory

The humanitarian crisis is a direct result of increased clashes between the National Liberation Army – ELN – and spin-off groups of the disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Both factions were founded around the 1960s and ‘70s as left-wing guerrilla groups, but are now mostly involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, Colombia senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

The Catatumbo region in northeastern Colombia, where the crisis originated, is a strategic territory for both drug production and trafficking due to its proximity with Venezuela. The region has seen some of the highest levels of violence in modern Colombian history.

In response to the violence, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has suspended peace talks with the ELN, whose actions he described as criminal. On Monday, he said he would declare a state of internal unrest, but that decree has yet to be published or signed.

The Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday reactivated arrest warrants for 31 ELN members who were involved in peace negotiations. The judicial body said the move was due to “the evidence and the seriousness of the criminal acts” in the Catatumbo region.

The arrest warrants had been suspended since 2022, when Petro restarted the peace process with that armed group.

Some have criticized Petro’s “total peace” initiative which has attempted to reduce violence partly through negotiations.

“The crisis in Catatumbo should be a wake-up call for the Petro administration. Its ‘total peace’, coupled with the lack of effective security and justice policies, have allowed armed groups to expand their presence and brutal control over remote communities across Colombia,” said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

Evacuation efforts

The Colombian cities of Ocaña and Tibú have also received 11,503 and 5,300 displaced people respectively, Colombia’s ombudsman Marín said Tuesday.

Other victims have fled to neighboring Venezuela, a country that in recent years has seen far more people leaving its borders than entering due to spiraling economic and political insecurity.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said the country has implemented a humanitarian operation to help Colombian families that have arrived in the municipality of Jesus Maria Semprún near the border in recent days.

Colombia’s defense ministry said more than 400 evacuations have been carried out in the Catatumbo region since the uptick in fighting last week, while more than 5,000 soldiers and special forces unit have been deployed to Cúcuta.

At least 12 train passengers were killed in western India Wednesday after being struck by another train on an adjacent track after they jumped from their coaches in panic to escape a rumored fire incident, the Press Trust of India reported.

At least six other people were injured, the news agency cited police officer Dattatraya Karale as saying.

The accident occurred in Jalgaon, one of the largest cities in Maharashtra, near the Pardhade railroad station, 410 kilometers (255 miles) northeast of Mumbai, India’s financial capital.

PTI said the victims jumped off the Pushpak Express train, which had stopped after some passengers pulled an emergency chain. Those who disembarked were hit by another express train on the adjacent railroad track, PTI quoted railway spokesman Swapnil Nila as saying.

“Our preliminary information is that there were sparks inside one of the coaches of the Pushpak Express due to either a ‘hot axle’ or ‘brake-binding’ (jamming), and some passengers panicked. They pulled the chain, and some of them jumped down on the tracks. At the same time, Karnataka Express was passing on the adjoining track,” a senior railway official told PTI.

Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, hundred of accidents occur every year on India’s railways, which is the largest train network under one management in the world.

In 2023, two passenger trains collided after derailing in eastern India, killing more than 280 people and injuring hundreds in one of the country’s deadliest rail crashes in decades.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focusing on the modernization of the British colonial-era railroad network in India, which has become the world’s most populous country with 1.42 billion people.

China’s navy has commissioned a new-generation frigate as competition rises with the US and other regional powers, saying the ship will “play a vital role in enhancing the overall combat effectiveness” of its forces.

China already has the world’s largest navy in terms of number of hulls, although its technology is sometimes seen as lagging. Its largest competitor, the US, has warned its Navy could be outnumbered and has called for a building program as well as reforms to put damaged ships into action sooner.

China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy operates mainly in waters off the Chinese east coast and in the huge and strategically crucial South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety. A key mission also remains backing up the army in any attack on Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy about 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the Chinese coast that Beijing has vowed to annex by force if necessary.

The first Type 054B frigate, christened the Luohe, was commissioned Wednesday in Qingdao, a port city in northern China where the PLAN’s northern fleet is based.

The ship has a displacement of approximately 5,000 tons and includes stealth technology, combat command systems and firepower integration, “significantly enhancing overall performance,” the navy said.

“With strong capabilities for comprehensive combat operations and diverse military missions, the warship will play a vital role in enhancing the overall combat effectiveness of naval task forces,” it added.

The Luohe’s armaments include a variety of machine guns for close combat and anti-air and anti-ship missiles, according to defense publications, some of which say the ship could become the backbone of the Chinese navy.

The statement said nothing about future 054Bs, but at least two more are believed to have been launched and another is under construction. China has around 234 warships compared to the US Navy’s 219, including around 50 frigates and the same number of destroyers. China has two operating aircraft carriers and another undergoing sea trials, along with a massive and powerful coast guard.

Recent wargames have shown China would lose many more vessels in a simulated clash with the US, but would be able to absorb the losses and continue fighting.

The PLAN has also sent ships further abroad including the Mediterranean Sea and the Caribbean in its attempts to use its navy as an extension of its growing economic and diplomatic clout. PLAN and Chinese coast guard ships have also patrolled in the East China Sea, where China claims a group of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan. While planes and ships from both sides have come into contact, no shots have been fired during such incidents.

The US and other nations have deliberately sailed close to islands, some of them human-made, to challenge China’s claim to them. Beijing has ignored a UN-backed court’s ruling that threw out most of China’s territorial claims.

Record ocean heat has taken a devastating toll on one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, with coral bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef reaching “catastrophic” levels, a new study has found.

More than 50% of affected corals monitored near an island in the reef’s south were killed last year during the most “severe and widespread bleaching” to ever hit the area, according to a team of Australian scientists.

In 2024, the reef experienced its worst summer on record. Soaring ocean temperatures smashed records, causing the reef’s seventh mass bleaching event. Corals are bleached white when marine heat waves put corals under stress, causing them to expel algae from their tissue, draining their color.

The culprit is the burning of planet-heating fossil fuels, which is driving up global temperatures. Coral damage was also accelerated last year by the El Niño weather pattern, which heats ocean temperatures in this part of the world.

Scientists from the University of Sydney tracked 462 coral colonies at the reef’s One Tree Island over the course of five months last year, beginning at the heat wave’s peak in early February.

By May, 370 of those colonies were bleached and, by July, 52% of the bleached corals were dead, according to the peer-reviewed study published in Limnology and Oceanography Letters.

Some coral species monitored had a mortality rate of 95%, with researchers observing the start of “colony collapse” where the dead skeleton detaches from the reef and turns to rubble.

Another species, the Goniopora, became infected by black band disease, which invades the coral’s tissue and can kill it.

“Our findings underscore the urgent need for action to protect coral reefs, which are not only biodiversity hotspots but also crucial for food security and coastal protection,” said lead author Maria Byrne, from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the university.

Byrne said the area studied is in a protected part of the reef, far from the coast and free from mining activities and tourism.

But the reef, “despite its protected status, was not immune to the extreme heat stress that triggered this catastrophic bleaching event,” she said.

Covering nearly 133,000 square miles (345,000 square kilometers), the Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef, home to more than 1,500 species of fish and 411 species of hard corals. It contributes billions of dollars to the Australian economy each year, mainly through tourism, and is promoted heavily to foreign visitors as one of the country’s – and the world’s – greatest natural wonders.

The authors said mass bleaching is becoming “a biennial event” and as such “reinforces the need for urgent global action now to adhere to ambitious climate and reduced emissions targets.”

The bleaching hit areas of the reef not impacted before, and disease and death were found in coral species considered resilient, the study found.

“Seeing the impacts on a reef that has largely avoided mass bleaching until now is devastating,” said Shawna Foo, a marine scientist and co-author of the study. “The high rates of mortality and disease, particularly in such a remote and pristine area, highlight the severity of the situation.”

Severe mass bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef had previously been observed in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020 and 2022.

The 2022 bleaching was the first during a La Niña event, El Niño’s counterpart, which tends to have a cooling influence – raising serious concerns about the reef’s outlook.

The authors said their research was a “wake-up call for policymakers and conservationists” as its implications extend beyond ecology and conservation to communities that depend on the reef for fishing, tourism and coastal protection.

“The resilience of coral reefs is being tested like never before, and we must prioritize strategies that enhance their ability to withstand climate change,” said Ana Vila Concejo, co-author of the study from the university’s School of Geosciences.

“Our findings underscore the need for immediate and effective management interventions to safeguard these ecosystems.”