Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from two deadly crashes of 737 Max jetliners after the government determined the company violated an agreement that had protected it from prosecution for more than three years, the Justice Department said Sunday night.

Federal prosecutors gave Boeing the choice this week of entering a guilty plea and paying a fine as part of its sentence or facing a trial on the felony criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Prosecutors accused the American aerospace giant of deceiving regulators who approved the airplane and pilot-training requirements for it.

The plea deal, which still must receive the approval of a federal judge to take effect, calls for Boeing to pay an additional $243.6 million fine. That was the same amount it paid under the 2021 settlement that the Justice Department said the company breached. An independent monitor would be named to oversee Boeing’s safety and quality procedures for three years.

The plea deal covers only wrongdoing by Boeing before the crashes, which killed all 346 passengers and crew members aboard two new Max jets. It does not give Boeing immunity for other incidents, including a panel that blew off a Max jetliner during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, a Justice Department official said.

ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay (AP) — The most notable thing about the Mercosur trade bloc’s meetings on Sunday in Paraguay was an absence — that of Argentine President Javier Milei.

With the Argentine populist skipping the summit to star at a right-wing rally in Brazil, South America’s biggest trade bloc — politically divided, notoriously slow-moving and beset by backsliding — faces an uncertain future. Milei has advocated for pulling Argentina, a leader of the alliance, out of the agreement altogether.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The return to Cambodia this week of 14 sculptures that had been looted from the country during a period of war and unrest is like welcoming home the souls of ancestors, Cambodia’s culture minister said Thursday.

The items repatriated from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Ar t arrived Wednesday and were displayed to journalists and VIPs on Thursday at the National Museum in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

They “were made between the 9th and 14th centuries in the Angkorian period and reflect the Hindu and Buddhist religious systems prevailing at that time,” the museum said in a statement this week.

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — West Africa’s divided regional bloc Sunday asked Senegal’s President Basirou Diomaye Faye to have a dialogue with the three military junta-led member states to try to reunite the region whose stability has been under threat following their decision to leave the group in January.

At its summit in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, the bloc — known as ECOWAS — appointed Faye as its envoy to meet with Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, which formed their separate union after their respective coups fractured relations with neighbors.

It was not immediately clear what the terms of the dialogue would be. The Senegalese president, who became Africa’s youngest leader after his election victory in March, “has all the credentials required to serve as a facilitator,” Omar Alieu Touray, the president of the ECOWAS Commission, said at the summit.

The three coup-hit countries already said at their summit a day earlier that they have “irrevocably turned their back on ECOWAS.” It is the first time in the bloc’s nearly 50-year history that it has lost members in such a manner.

Analysts viewed Faye’s assignment as important during an unprecedented regional crisis. Still, it will most likely “not be fruitful anytime soon” because of regional tensions that remain, said Karim Manuel, an analyst for the Middle East and Africa with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Given the choice between a far-right convention to bash his enemies and a presidential summit to discuss regional trade policy, Argentine President Javier Milei preferred the stadium packed with cheering fans.

The libertarian leader was in Brazil on Sunday, preparing to headline the country’s version of CPAC, the conservative political action conference, alongside former President Javier Bolsonaro in Brazil’s southern city of Balneario Camboriu.

In skipping the Mercosur trade bloc summit in Paraguay and sidling up to Bolsonaro just days after federal police indicted the right-wing populist in a scheme to embezzle Saudi diamonds, Milei delivered another harsh rebuke to Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, escalating a risky feud with his country’s biggest trading partner.

It was the latest example of Milei’s provocative foreign policy, courting the global spotlight through friendships with hard-right allies rather than following diplomatic convention.

DHARAMSHALA, India (AP) — Hundreds of mostly exiled Tibetans gathered in India’s hillside town of Dharamshala to celebrate the birthday of the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, who turned 89 on Saturday.

The Dalai Lama has made the hillside town his headquarters since fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Representatives of a Tibetan government-in-exile also reside there.

The main celebrations took place in Tsuglagkhang temple inside the complex where the spiritual leader lives. Tibetan and Buddhist flags adorned poles and railings.

PARIS (AP) — Photos of blood-red hands on a Holocaust memorial. Caskets at the Eiffel Tower. A fake French military recruitment drive calling for soldiers in Ukraine, and major French news sites improbably registered in an obscure Pacific territory, population 15,000.

All are part of disinformation campaigns orchestrated out of Russia and targeting France, according to French officials and cybersecurity experts in Europe and the United States. France’s legislative elections and the Paris Olympics sent them into overdrive.

More than a dozen reports issued in the past year point to an intensifying effort from Russia to undermine France, particularly the upcoming Games, and President Emmanuel Macron, who is one of Ukraine’s most vocal supporters in Europe.

This story, supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, is part of an Associated Press series covering threats to democracy in Europe.

The crew of a NASA mission to Mars emerged from their craft after a yearlong voyage that never left Earth.

The four volunteer crew members spent more than 12 months inside NASA’s first simulated Mars environment at Johnson Space Center in Houston, coming out of the artificial alien environment Saturday around 5 p.m.

Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones entered the 3D-printed habitat on June 25, 2023, as the maiden crew of the space agency’s Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog project.

Haston, the mission commander, began with a simple, “Hello.”

“It’s actually just so wonderful to be able to say ‘hello’ to you all,” she said.

Jones, a physician and the mission medical officer, said their 378 days in confinement “went by quickly.”

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — A plan to stage a coup against Bolivia’s president was not what Gen. Tomás Peña y Lillo was expecting when he entered the military headquarters in La Paz last Wednesday.

The leader of Bolivia’s retired service members said he was surprised to get a call that morning from army chief Gen. Juan José Zúñiga with a request to report for talks about how to advocate for imprisoned soldiers.

It was a coveted meeting, so he rushed over to find Zúñiga surrounded by officers asking for their help in “defending democracy.” Peña y Lillo claims he demurred, but tanks were already rumbling out of the barracks toward the presidential palace.

“It’s a tragicomedy,” Peña y Lillo, now a fugitive wanted for his participation in the alleged coup attempt, told The Associated Press by phone from an undisclosed location.

Like many Bolivians, he said he struggled to piece the story together, recalling how “there had been a lot of talk in the military that (Bolivian President Luis) Arce would hand the government over to Zúñiga” as protests roiled the country over shortages of dollars and fuel.

The retired general’s comments mark another surreal turn in the nation’s efforts to establish the facts of what happened on June 26, when military forces stormed downtown La Paz, stunning the country and spinning off waves of rumors from the mundane to the absurd.

A week after the purported rebellion roiled the South American country that has seen no fewer than 190 coups since its independence in 1825, Bolivians who thought they’d seen it all say they’ve never been more confused.

“This is so strange, so unbelievable,” said Marcia Tiñini, a 58-year-old teacher in La Paz. “First I believed the government and felt solidarity, but now I don’t know what to say.”

SAO PAULO (AP) — The indictment of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for money laundering and criminal association in connection with undeclared diamonds from Saudi Arabia marked the far-right leader’s second formal accusation, with more potentially in store.

The indictment on Thursday by Federal Police, confirmed by two officials with knowledge of the case, followed another formal accusation in March against Bolsonaro, for allegedly falsifying his COVID-19 vaccination certificate. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Once Brazil’s Supreme Court receives the police report with the latest indictment, the country’s prosecutor-general, Paulo Gonet, will analyze it and decide whether to shelve it, ask for additional police investigation or file charges and force Bolsonaro to stand trial.

It’s still early to say how likely the last option is, but the police indictment already marked a turning point in the case, said legal expert Renato Stanziola Vieira, president of the Brazilian Institute of Criminal Sciences.

BANGKOK (AP) — New fighting has broken out in northeastern Myanmar, bringing an end to a Chinese-brokered cease-fire and putting pressure on the military regime as it faces attacks from resistance forces on multiple fronts in the country’s civil war.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, one of three powerful militias that launched a surprise joint offensive last October, renewed its attacks on regime positions last week in northeastern Shan state, which borders China, Laos and Thailand, and the neighboring Mandalay region with the support of local forces there.

Since then, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army has joined in, and by Friday, combined forces from the two allied militias had reportedly encircled the strategically important city of Lashio, headquarters of the regime’s northeastern military command.

This is the next phase of October’s “1027” offensive, said Lway Yay Oo, spokesperson for the TNLA, which last week said the military provoked retaliation with artillery and airstrikes despite the cease-fire.

“In phase two, our number one aim is the eradication of the military dictatorship, and number two is the protection and safety of local people,” she said.