The dramatic leak of a taped conversation between Donald Trump and his longtime attorney signals an aggressive new strategy by Michael Cohen, raising questions about how much the US leader has to fear should the former fixer cooperate with prosecutors. On the tape, which was broadcast Tuesday, Trump can be heard discussing with Cohen how to hush up allegations that he had an affair with a Playboy model in 2006, and buying the rights to her story.

Nineteen people have been confirmed dead and more than 3,000 need to be rescued after a dam collapsed in a remote part of land-locked Laos, local media reported on Wednesday. The Vientiane Times, citing district governor Bounhom Phommasane, said about 19 people have been “found dead”, more than 3,000 “require rescue” and about 2,851 have been saved. Earlier, a senior Lao government official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said dozens of people were feared dead after the hydropower dam that was under construction collapsed on Monday.

Spanish rescue services said Tuesday they had plucked nearly 500 migrants from the Mediterranean in a single day who were trying to reach the country’s coast. The Spanish Maritime Safety Agency said on Twitter that it had picked up a total of 484 people in 30 makeshift vessels in the Strait of Gibraltar and Alboran Sea, which separate Spain from Morocco.

Chancellor Angela Merkel met Tuesday in Berlin with Russia s army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, Berlin and Moscow said Tuesday. In a statement announcing the unusual meeting also attended by Germany s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, Merkel s spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said the talks were arranged by Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin last week.

Israel s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday Turkey was becoming a "dark dictatorship" as he hit back at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan s harsh criticism of a "racist" new Israeli law. "Erdogan is massacring Syrians and Kurds and has imprisoned tens of thousands of his citizens," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Two people including the gunman are dead and 13 wounded in Toronto after a shooting Sunday in the busy Greektown neighborhood, adding to concern about gun violence in Canada’s largest city. “One female adult has died. One young girl in critical condition,” Toronto police said on Twitter, adding that all 14 victims were shot with a handgun.

US President Donald Trump told Iran it risked dire consequences "the like of which few throughout history have suffered before" if the Islamic Republic made more threats against the United States. His words, spelled out in capital letters in a late night Twitter message, came hours after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Trump that hostile policies toward Tehran could lead to "the mother of all wars."

The United States doubts whether South Sudan s President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar have the leadership qualities needed to deliver peace to the country at war since 2013, the White House said on Sunday. Peace talks last week in the South Sudanese capital Juba need to be more inclusive to succeed, the White House said, adding that it will impose fresh sanctions on anyone who threatens the country s stability.

US President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Sunday it was looking more and more like his campaign for the 2016 presidential election had been illegally spied upon. Trump issued the tweet after saying documents about his former presidential campaign adviser Carter Page confirmed with little doubt that the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation had misled the courts.

The top Republican lawmaker overseeing trade policies on Sunday called for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping to ease trade tensions, warning that US tariffs would likely dampen US economic growth this year. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said US tax cuts had helped drive stronger US growth but trade tariffs on steel and aluminum, and against Chinese imports, could now undermine that impact.

South Sudan s President Salva Kiir said he is ready to accept a peace deal to end a civil war and set up an inclusive new government. The deal being negotiated in Sudan would give the country five vice presidents and also covers security and power sharing.

Iran has built a factory that can produce rotors for up to 60 centrifuges a day, the head of its atomic agency said on Wednesday, upping the stakes in a confrontation with Washington over the Islamic Republic s nuclear work. The announcement came a month after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he had ordered agencies to prepare to increase uranium enrichment capacity if a nuclear deal with world powers falls apart after Washington s withdrawal from the pact.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday moved to limit the damage from his summit with Vladimir Putin, claiming he misspoke in appearing to accept the Russian leader’s denial of election meddling — in a rebuke to US intelligence chiefs. At their meeting in Helsinki on Monday, Trump failed to challenge Putin over the 2016 presidential election, seeming to accept at face value the strongman’s denial that Moscow interfered in a bid to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

President Donald Trump refused to confront Vladimir Putin over meddling in the US election at their first face to face summit, publicly challenging the findings of the US intelligence community and triggering bipartisan outrage at home. The US and Russian presidents came out of their meeting in Helsinki Monday expressing desire for a fresh start between the world’s leading nuclear powers and more talk on global challenges, after discussing an array of issues from Syria, Ukraine and China to trade tariffs and the size of their nuclear arsenals.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un berated officials during inspections of a factory, power station and holiday camp, state media reported Tuesday, with analysts saying the reports show nuclear-armed Pyongyang’s desire to focus on economic development. “Field guidance” visits by the leader are the mainstay of the North’s state media output, with Kim regularly shown giving “on-the-spot guidance” to attentive officials, their notebooks in hand.

Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a historic summit on Monday vowing their determination to forge a reset of troubled relations between the world s greatest nuclear powers. Trump, bent on forging a personal bond with the Kremlin chief despite allegations of Russian meddling in US politics, went into the summit blaming the "stupidity" of his predecessors for plunging ties to their present low.

British Prime Minister Theresa May warned her divided party on Sunday that there may be "no Brexit at all" if they wrecked her plan to forge a close relationship with the European Union after leaving the world s biggest trading bloc. "My message to the country this weekend is simple: we need to keep our eyes on the prize," May wrote on Facebook. "If we don t, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that talks on Sunday between US and North Korean officials to discuss the return of remains of US service members killed in the 1950-53 Korean War “resulted in firm commitments” and that there would be a follow-up meeting on Monday. It was the first time in nine years that US and North Korean generals held talks. The two sides met on the inter-Korean border and agreed to resume joint field activities to search for the remains of Americans missing from the war, Pompeo said in a statement.

The Israeli occupying military lifted its restrictions along the Gaza border Sunday, indicating it had accepted an Egypt-mediated cease-fire that ended a 24-hour round of fighting with Hamas militants that had threatened to devolve into all-out war. The occupying military had shut down a popular beach and placed limitations on large gatherings as residents kept mostly close to home on Saturday amid dozens of rockets that were fired from Gaza. But after several hours of calm it said residents could resume their daily routines.

US President Donald Trump hailed a personal victory at a NATO summit on Thursday, saying allies had sharply increased defence spending commitments after he provoked a crisis session with a tirade at European leaders. "I told people that I would be very unhappy if they didn t up their commitments," an ebullient president told reporters after the second day of the Brussels meeting, when NATO leaders huddled with Trump to try to defuse a crisis.

Landlocked Ethiopia wants to make the re-opening of two roads connecting it to two of Eritrea s Red Sea ports a priority in the two nations reconciliation process, a government spokesman said on Wednesday. In a move that ended a 20-year military stand-off, the Horn of African neighbours agreed on Monday to open embassies, develop ports and resume flights.