U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday fired his brand new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, just five days into the job. The story broke right after Trump told reporters that he had asked Zacharia to reconsider whether she wanted to remain in the job after her bumpy first briefing on Monday.
© JIM LO SCALZO (EFE)
Number 116 on Rue Réaumur in Paris sits at the crossroads of the two worlds that define Revolut. On one side lies the historic financial district centered around the stock exchange; on the other, the Sentier neighborhood, home to much of the French capital’s technology ecosystem. It is at this intersection of finance and technology that the bank is preparing its new headquarters for Western Europe.
© Benjamin Girette (EL PAÍS)
The race to succeed António Guterres as head of the United Nations (UN) from next January 1 is a long-distance one with very few certainties. Among the seven current candidates, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, a former minister of Guyana and that country’s ambassador to the United Nations, stands out alongside Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and, to a lesser extent, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi. Rodrigues-Birkett, who received EL PAÍS in her New York office last Tuesday, avoids speculation but does speak of a campaign against her that caused her to lose ground in the last vote.
© Jaclyn Licht
The fact that Spain is swimming against the tide on European immigration issues became more evident than ever on Friday, when several EU leaders led by the prime ministers of Denmark and Italy — Mette Frederiksen and Giorgia Meloni — strongly criticized the Spanish government’s decision earlier this year to grant legal status to potentially hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.
© FRANCOIS LENOIR (ACN)
“The growth sucks.” That’s how Alex Karp, the CEO and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, described the company’s performance in Europe. He said this on August 3 to shareholders, while his colleagues defended an “incredible” quarter in the United States.
Follow The Money and its media partners presented Palantir with the findings of this investigation, along with 14 detailed questions. Palantir has not responded to any of them. Instead, the firm forwarded a statement from a spokesperson: “A serious debate is needed on how Europe safeguards its technological sovereignty. Technological sovereignty must ultimately be measured by who controls the data, the decisions and the mission: not just by the nationality of the software provider.” According to Palantir, control over data (and what is done with it) belongs to the customer.
The statement adds: “Since 2011, Palantir has been working with democratically-elected European governments and institutions to increase hospital capacity, accelerate cancer diagnoses, safely resettle refugees, combat organized crime, protect victims of domestic violence, and respond more quickly to floods and other emergencies.” It also notes that more than 20% of Palantir’s employees work in Europe and that the company helps European businesses compete and grow in various sectors, such as aerospace, manufacturing and life sciences. Palantir further states that it supports European governments in protecting their national security, including in Ukraine.
In a previous response to this same media consortium, Palantir denied accusations of its involvement in human rights violations.
On September 1, the small town of Almazán, in Spain’s Soria province, found itself robbed of a large portion of its heritage. A section of the palace of the Hurtado de Mendoza family collapsed. Twenty days later a further section fell into ruin, prompting an emergency intervention. The disintegration of part of the façade, the gallery and the roof has affected the interior of the 15th-century Gothic building in which the Catholic Monarchs once temporarily took up residence. It is not the only palace that has crumbled. Its decline flags up an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in Spain.
© Wifredo García Álvaro (EFE)
Maricopa County, in Arizona, has emerged as the “main epicenter” of illegal arms trafficking into Mexico, according to John Lindsay-Poland, coordinator of Stop US Arms to Mexico, an initiative that studies the illicit flow of weapons between the two countries.
© Ross D. Franklin (AP)
Amid the internecine war within the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the factions to have suffered the heaviest blows has been Los Chapitos, led by the sons of former cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. On the other side stands La Mayiza, headed by the successors to former kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Unlike their more aggressive and media-savvy rivals, La Mayiza’s leaders have generally operated with a lower profile and less direct exposure.
© @TheJusticeDept
“We came here four decades ago chasing a dream, but we lost hope,” whispers Tanya Jo, dark circles etched beneath her eyes as she holds a pumpkin-shaped decoration. Halloween is only a few weeks away, and she is getting her house ready in Fort Madison, a small town in Lee County, in southeastern Iowa. The state, known for its vast cornfields, is one of the battlegrounds in this year’s fiercely contested midterm elections, which will be held on the first Tuesday of November.
Donald Trump is a man of loyalties and, above all, grudges. If there is one community for which the U.S. president has repeatedly shown contempt, it is the Somali community. And if there is one political rival who has borne the brunt of his hostility, it is Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was born in Somalia 44 years ago.
© Adam Gray (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
The trailer for GTA VI, the latest installment in the acclaimed Grand Theft Auto video game series, introduces Lucía Caminos, a Latina woman, as one of the protagonists alongside her partner, Jason Duval. Criticism from some fans of the franchise quickly surfaced online. Beyond comments about Caminos’s appearance, some users have labelled her “too dominant” because of her personality and questioned her weapons skills, which they deem “unrealistic for a woman,” even comparing them to those of a U.S. Marine.
© Rockstar Games
The clearest example concerns Ukraine’s air defenses. One of the biggest challenges currently facing Ukraine’s air-defense units, whether mobile teams or surface-to-air missile systems, is Russia’s jet-powered Geran drones. These can now exceed speeds of 300 kilometers (186 miles) per hour, although they do not always fly at the same speed. Bringing them down requires munitions fast enough to intercept such targets and guided by highly accurate tracking data. That is why Ukraine’s access to the satellite network operated by Starlink, the company owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, is so critical.
© Efrem Lukatsky (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
U.S. President Donald Trump has handed Russian President Vladimir Putin another gift ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, with Republicans increasingly at risk of losing both chambers of Congress.
© Anastasia Barashkova (REUTERS)
With just over a week to go until Brazil’s closely contested presidential election, the picture remains much the same as it has for months: a dead heat.
© Amanda Perobelli (REUTERS)
“Wake up, Link!” High in his treehouse, a pointy-eared boy named Link is roused by the call of a fairy. He is the only resident of the Kokiri Forest without a winged companion, until Navi bursts into his dreams to tell him that his destiny lies far beyond that sheltered corner of the woods. Thus begins a journey that will lead him to a princess, pit him against a threat determined to plunge the kingdom of Hyrule into darkness and, seven years later, task him with saving a world that has fallen into the clutches of evil.
Raivis Melnis walks down a long corridor inside Latvia’s Ministry of Defense, located in an aging building in central Riga, the capital. He shows up all alone, a striking oddity for someone with government responsibility. Born 48 years ago in the Balvi municipality, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Russian border, the Latvian army colonel has held the defense portfolio since late May. That was when several attack drones penetrated the Baltic country’s airspace without encountering any opposition. Two struck near an empty fuel depot. The crisis prompted then–prime minister Evika Silina to dismiss the defense minister and turn to Melnis.
© MARÍA PAGE
A young man waits for the bus. It’s cold and he has only a few coins on him. He asks his friend if he has 15 cents. His friend doesn’t have much either. Together they try to scrape together enough to buy something and catch the bus. The boy is fed up with relying on public transit, he doesn’t own a car and still lives with his mother. “I’m 21,” he says, and there’s a baby on the way. He wants to get rich. He wants to make records that sell. He’s tired of being poor.
© Michel Linssen (Redferns)
Google Maps still shows a prosperous image of Pacific Place, a business center on the busy Valley boulevard in a suburb east of Los Angeles, California. But that picture no longer matches reality. The windows of a mental health clinic and a real estate agency have been boarded up to protect the premises from vandalism. One by one, shops pulled down their shutters until the mall was almost deserted. Several businesses belonging to an enigmatic figure also closed: Guojun Xuan, a wealthy Chinese immigrant who is at the center of a chilling case involving the alleged mistreatment of 21 children at his Arcadia mansion.
© Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag)
How many days of work does it take to earn enough to buy a basic food basket of 10 items? If we ask that question in Ireland, the answer is just 1.2 hours of work. The picture changes dramatically in the Central African Republic, where a worker needs about 30 days to purchase the same basic basket. In Finland, a person can pay for a week’s groceries with only 1.7 hours of work, compared with the 20.4 days required for someone living in Malawi.
© Michel Lunanga (Getty Images)
Seasoned in defending rural communities and smallholder farmers, Sofía Monsalve, 56, was appointed United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food in May. In exchange for throwing herself into an unpaid position, the Colombian political scientist says she enjoys complete independence. “I have the freedom to call things by their name,” she tells EL PAÍS in Turin during Terra Madre, the gathering of the international sustainable food network Slow Food.
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