In a remarkably forceful address, Felipe VI of Spain on Tuesday asserted Ceuta’s ‘sovereignty’ and ‘territorial integrity,’ two and a half months after more than 80,000 people crossed illegally from Morocco in an unprecedented mass incursion into the Spanish exclave city in northern Africa.
On Tuesday, three weeks before the midterms, the White House went back to its news conferences after a 47-day hiatus following the departure of former press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Her successor, Katie Zacharia, made a very brief appearance in which she only took three questions and fell short of the cool aplomb with which Leavitt made a name for herself defending the policies of her boss, President Donald Trump, resorting to lies when necessary.
© WILL OLIVER (Pool/EFE)
There is something curious about birthdays. The most celebrated ones are children’s and those of very elderly people. Reaching 100 years or more is often hailed as a special event. But the birthday of Don Manuel Álvarez Escudero, 105, is really exceptional. Every year he receives a singular tribute: a chess tournament that bears his name.
This story was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a binational nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to providing accurate, high-quality reporting on the border between Mexico and the United States.
© Charles Krupa (AP)
The trip from the village of Iruya, in northwestern Argentina, to Buenos Aires Province can take several days. “The truck carrying fresh produce takes between 24 and 35 hours to arrive,” says Raúl Viveros, a member of the community Kolla Colanzulí of Finca Santiago. That is the effort required for the country’s largest market to sell the small potato-like tubers known as papines, which have a unique flavor and are produced by the first indigenous community to have been recognized by the state of Argentina.
On the eve of the opening of his exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on October 8, Steve McQueen met with the museum guides who will introduce his work to visitors and school groups, so they could understand his intentions firsthand.
© Erika Ede
A woman in her 70s holds a sign against the World Health Organization (WHO) in the rain outside the World Health Summit in Berlin, one of the main international forums on global health. The image catches the eye of Gevorg Tamamyan, an Armenian physician and candidate to lead the agency. “When I was a child, the WHO meant trust. Why has that trust become so fragile?” he asks hours later during the first debate among several of the seven contenders to succeed Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The government of acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez has handed Álvaro Pulido — Álex Saab’s Colombian-born associate who had been held in Caracas since 2023 — over to the United States. The transfer was announced Sunday on X by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, while the Venezuelan government has remained silent on the case.
© DEA
Despite years of political defeats in Texas, Democrats are hoping that the 2026 midterm elections will finally turn a Senate seat in the staunchly red state purple. James Talarico, a rising star within the party, is seen as one of the keys to achieving that new shade. For Republicans, he has become one of the biggest challenges in this closely contested campaign. So much so that a substantial share of the money being spent in the race has gone not toward promoting their controversial Senate candidate, Attorney General Ken Paxton, but toward attacking his opponent.
© Eric Gay (AP)
Artificial intelligence is also making its way into the world of books. EL PAÍS examined the use of AI in a sample of 119 popular books published in 2025 and 2026, analyzing titles that appeared on the bestseller lists at Amazon.es and the Spanish bookstore chain Casa del Libro, as well as the winners of a major literary prize.
© Albert Garcia
How do you make a growing economy deliver for those who need it most? That is the challenge a group of several dozen progressive Spanish economists has set out to tackle. Organized under the banner Accelerating Shared Prosperity, the initiative is being launched in Madrid on Tuesday. While they remain open to expanding the platform, they have already brought together 70 economists and established a Scientific Council that includes prominent figures such as Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, Dani Rodrik, and Gabriel Zucman.
© DPA vía Europa Press (DPA vía Europa Press)
The latest economic forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) do not bring good news on inflation for Donald Trump, who, less than a month before the midterm elections, is facing his lowest approval ratings, largely because of his handling of the economy.
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The coronavirus arrived in Bolivia amid uncertainty and panic that gave rise to racism. There are reports in which Indigenous people say they were denied medical care because healthcare workers were afraid of becoming infected. They were labeled sources of contagion for failing to comply with lockdown measures, since their livelihoods depended on in-person activities. Yet during the same period, another narrative emerged within Indigenous communities: that the Andean body was resistant to the virus because of the hardiness developed from living at high altitudes.
© ARTHUR CHERVIN
Spain’s Supreme Court has refused to restore the voting rights of tens of thousands of people who acquired Spanish nationality under the so-called grandchildren’s law, a measure that allows descendants of Spaniards who went into exile during the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship to claim citizenship.
© Alberto Ortega (Europa Press)
Sharon Eizenkot’s house is overwhelming. Everything revolves around Maor, her son, who died in 2023 while serving as a soldier in the Israeli army in Gaza. Like a mausoleum of grief, the white walls bear no decoration other than dozens of mementos, from the jersey of his soccer team to the uniform and assault rifle he was carrying when he was hit by an explosive device in Khan Younis.
In 1990, NASA discovered that the mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope had a very small polishing defect that caused blurred images. While waiting for a repair, astronomers turned to mathematics. Because they knew exactly how that faulty mirror was distorting light, they could undo the blurring with a technique known as “deconvolution.”
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“What makes a good intelligence officer is that they do not attract attention.” This was one of the mottos that August Hanning repeatedly invoked in public appearances during his tenure as head of Germany’s intelligence services. Hanning, now 80, has been in custody since October 6 precisely for attracting too much attention. The former president of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, earned a reputation for being available to the highest bidder, whoever that might be. Germany’s federal prosecutor is investigating him on suspicion of treason and espionage on behalf of foreign countries.
© Michael Kappeler (DPA via AP)
If the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have demonstrated anything, it is that unexpected, entirely unforeseen and unpredictable events can drastically affect public health and even put humanity at risk. Danger can emerge at any time and from anywhere, but the scientific community has identified a handful of threats with particularly severe potential consequences for human survival.
© Daniel Buuma (Getty Images)
A commercial starring Lady Gaga for FamilyMart — in which the pop diva is shown mopping the floor before inviting viewers to follow her example and apply to work for the convenience-store chain (among other products) — has revived an advertising practice that flourished before the internet made it commonplace to see Hollywood stars outside of Japan in non-celluloid situations. Dressed in a garment with pronounced shoulder pads and a short platinum-blond bob, the music star performs a choreography in which she also restocks shelves, offers fried chicken, scrubs the floor and, during her break, contemplates the view through a surreal skylight. The video, shot in a monochrome aesthetic with flashes of neon green and blue, ends when Gaga looks at the camera and asks in Japanese, using the chain’s colloquial name: “FamiMa de hataraku?” (Will you come work at FamiMa?).
© EL PAÍS
Selden is a town of fewer than 200 inhabitants on the banks of Interstate 83, which runs north–south from North Dakota to Texas as it passes through Kansas. The town is surrounded by wheat and corn fields that look as if they were drawn with a ruler, and circular wheat and corn fields that look as if they were drawn with a compass. In other words, Selden is an almost indistinguishable point in the geographic center of the United States — a vast tapestry of gold, brown, or green depending on the time of year — so flat that the horizon is everywhere.
© EPV
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