Pope Francis has acknowledged his increasingly vocal conservative critics, saying their "nasty comments" were the work of the devil and adding that "some wanted me dead" after his recent intestinal surgery.

Francis made the comments during a Sept. 12 private meeting with Slovakian Jesuits soon after he arrived in the Slovak capital of Bratislava during his just-finished visit. A transcript of the encounter was published Tuesday by the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, which often provides after-the-fact accounts of Francis' closed-door meetings with his fellow Jesuits when he's on the road.

Facebook's semi-independent oversight board says it will review the company's "XCheck," or cross check, system following an investigation by The Wall Street Journal into the use of this internal system that has exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules.

The board said Tuesday that it expects to have a briefing with Facebook on the matter and "will be reporting what we hear from this" as part of a report it will publish in October. It may also make other recommendations, although Facebook is not bound to follow these.

Latinos are perpetually absent in major newsrooms, Hollywood films and other media industries where their portrayals — or lack thereof — could deeply impact how their fellow Americans view them, according to a government report released Tuesday.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus asked the U.S. Government Accountability Office to investigate last October.

The projectors are rolling. The ruby slippers are on. Many an Oscar sits glistening. The shark has been hanging, and waiting, for nearly a year.

Nine years after it was announced, four years after its first projected open date, and five months since its last planned launch date, the U.S. film academy's museum is ready to open to the public on Sept 30.

A Chinese real estate developer that is struggling to avoid defaulting on billions of dollars of debt reassured jittery global markets at least briefly Wednesday by announcing it will make an interest payment due this week.

The Chinese government, meanwhile, kept investors guessing about whether it might intervene.

The two biggest economies and largest carbon polluters in the world announced separate financial attacks on climate change Tuesday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country will no longer fund coal-fired power plants abroad, surprising the world on climate for the second straight year at the U.N. General Assembly. That came hours after U.S. President Joe Biden announced a plan to double financial aid to poorer nations to $11.4 billion by 2024 so those countries could switch to cleaner energy and cope with global warming's worsening impacts. That puts rich nations close to within reach of its long-promised but not realized goal of $100 billion a year in climate help for developing nations.

Big Tech companies that operate around the globe have long promised to obey local laws and to protect civil rights while doing business. But when Apple and Google capitulated to Russian demands and removed a political-opposition app from their local app stores, it raised worries that two of the world's most successful companies are more comfortable bowing to undemocratic edicts — and maintaining a steady flow of profits — than upholding the rights of their users.

The app in question, called Smart Voting, was a tool for organizing opposition to Russia President Vladimir Putin ahead of elections held over the weekend. The ban levied last week by a pair of the world's richest and most powerful companies galled supporters of free elections and free expression.

A small Spanish island in the Atlantic Ocean is struggling days after a volcano erupted, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people, and authorities are warning that more dangers from the explosion lie ahead.

Here is a look at the volcanic eruption on La Palma and its consequences:

The Kosovo-Serbia border was blocked again Tuesday by ethnic Kosovo Serbs protesting a decision by Kosovo authorities to start removing Serbian license plates from cars entering the country. The traffic chaos raised fears that it may unleash much deeper tensions between the two Balkan neighbors.

Serbia doesn't recognize its former province of Kosovo as a separate nation and considers their mutual border only as an "administrative" and temporary boundary.

Choosing calm language as tensions with the United States grow, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reiterated his nation's longtime policy of multilateralism on Tuesday, telling world leaders at the United Nations that disputes among countries "need to be handled through dialogue and cooperation."

His remarks came hours after U.S. President Joe Biden said he didn't have any intention of starting a "new Cold War" — itself a response to criticism from the U.N. chief this weekend that both Washington and Beijing need to make sure their differences and tensions don't derail their 42-year-old relationship and cause problems for the rest of the planet.