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Received — 16 October 2026 ⏭ El País - English

Trump fires Katie Zacharia after five days as White House press secretary

16 October 2026 at 21:15

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.

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© JIM LO SCALZO (EFE)

Donald Trump, flanked by White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia.

Nik Storonsky, the visionary who came from Russia to revolutionize the financial industry with Revolut: ‘At legacy banks, it’s almost impossible to get something new off the ground’

16 October 2026 at 20:55

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.

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© Benjamin Girette (EL PAÍS)

Nik Storonsky, during the interview with EL PAÍS at Revolut’s new Paris headquarters, provided by the company.

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, candidate to lead the United Nations: Not choosing a woman would send ‘a very bad message’

16 October 2026 at 19:29

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.

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© Jaclyn Licht

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, candidate for UN secretary-general, in her New York office at Guyana’s permanent mission to the organization last Tuesday.

Denmark asks EU to ‘examine’ Spain’s plan to legalize migrants

16 October 2026 at 19:01

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.

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© FRANCOIS LENOIR (ACN)

Danish PM Mette Frederiksen and Italian PM Giorgia Meloni in Brussels.

Armies, healthcare systems and intelligence services: 11 European countries already have multimillion-dollar contracts with Palantir

16 October 2026 at 17:31
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“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.

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Palantir's response

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.

Endangered heritage: Why Spanish palaces are collapsing

16 October 2026 at 15:24

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.

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The façade of the Villagómez palace, in Villagómez La Nueva in Valladolid.Palace of the Condestables, Casalarreina in La Rioja. The Villagómez coat of arms, one of the last elements that have been preserved in Villagómez la Nueva in Valladolid.Drawing of the Palace of Valsaín.

© Wifredo García Álvaro (EFE)

The Hurtado de Mendoza Palace in Soria, after the collapse it suffered on September 21.

Maricopa County, Arizona: The ‘main epicenter’ of gun trafficking from the US to Mexico

16 October 2026 at 13:53

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.

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© Ross D. Franklin (AP)

View of Tempe, in Maricopa County, in a file image.

Los Rugrats weakened, but still a force in Sinaloa’s cartel war

16 October 2026 at 13:04

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.

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© @TheJusticeDept

Images released by the U.S. Department of Justice on July 7.

Skepticism and disillusionment in Iowa: Trump’s promised steel mill awakens old ghosts

Ted Summers, a resident of Fort Madison, is skeptical about the new steel plant announced by Trump.

“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.

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A cornfield near Cedar Rapid (Iowa).The Pfeiffers scrape the façade of a house in Fort Madison.

United States vs. Ilhan Omar: How Trump is pursuing his biggest enemy in Congress

16 October 2026 at 12:16

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.

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© Adam Gray (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Ilhan Omar, at a press conference in Minneapolis, on January 28.

From Lara Croft to Lucía Caminos: Why does a female lead in a video game still provoke backlash?

16 October 2026 at 11:14

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.

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© Rockstar Games

Lucía Caminos, protagonist of 'GTA VI.'

Ukraine needs Starlink satellites to fight the war, but the Pentagon holds the reins

16 October 2026 at 10:48

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.

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© Efrem Lukatsky (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A Ukrainian soldier ready to repel a Russian drone attack on September 19 in Kyiv.

Trump throws Putin another lifeline with diesel deal

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.

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© Anastasia Barashkova (REUTERS)

An image of Vladimir Putin, last Wednesday in Moscow.
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