The United States has sent spy drones to Colombia and Ecuador to support both countries’ actions against organized crime, two military sources told the newspaper The New York Times. The aircraft involved are an undetermined number of MQ-9 Reapers that had been stationed in Africa. Although their primary roles are linked to surveillance, they can be used in offensive operations. The arrival of these aircraft, announced by Colombia in August, cements Washington’s growing active role in the operations of the armed forces of the two South American countries, which in recent months have agreed to begin “joint operations.”

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María Elvira Salazar wore a dark blouse and a striking pearl necklace when she arrived at journalist Juan Manuel Cao’s studio in Miami. She took a seat, tucked her hair behind her ears, made sure she had good lighting and found the best camera angle. She’s well trained in the ways of television.

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Russia is stepping up its hybrid war against Europe. From sabotage, drone incursions, and arson to plots (mostly foiled) to assassinate pro‑Ukraine activists and Russian dissidents on European soil, the Kremlin is testing the allied response, and incidents against NATO’s European partners are becoming more serious, such as the explosive‑laden drones found this summer at Leipzig Airport in Germany. That gray line between a hybrid attack and a conventional one is blurring, and several European intelligence sources warn of the risk that one of those incidents could escalate — either by a deliberate Kremlin decision or a miscalculation.

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The Mexican peso is enduring a “black Monday.” The currency’s losses against the dollar deepened and fell to 18 pesos at the beginning of the week, its weakest level since last March. The strength of the U.S. dollar, uncertainty over the conflict in the Middle East and rising global interest rates have hit the currency, which after reaching 18 pesos per dollar closed the session at 17.95 pesos per dollar, according to Bank of Mexico data, representing a 1.8% depreciation from the previous close. The peso’s performance has been undermined by monetary policy decisions from the central banks of Mexico and the U.S. The Federal Reserve raised its interest rate by 25 basis points, placing it in a range between 3.75% and 4%, its first increase since July 2023. That decision strengthened the dollar, while the Bank of Mexico kept its rate at 6.5%. The issue matters because a narrower gap between the two rates reduces the appeal of the carry trade, a strategy that involves borrowing in countries with very low interest rates to invest in countries where rates are higher and yields greater.

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A federal appeals court will examine Tuesday whether a federal judge can proceed with a criminal contempt investigation into the Trump administration related to the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March 2025.

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A military contingent blocked the bridge over Lake Maracaibo on Monday in the Venezuelan oil capital to prevent a workers’ protest from closing the road. In Guayana, in front of the state-run basic industries, workers erected a barricade to demand better wages. In Caracas, a group protested for the release of political prisoners after news emerged of a death in the women’s prison run by the National Institute for Women’s Guidance (INOF). Over the weekend people took to the streets to demand a date for elections and the return of opposition leader María Corina Machado. Almost every night during a sweltering September, in inland cities such as Maracay, Guanare, Barinas, Valencia, and Maracaibo, people have expressed on the streets their frustration over blackouts that are increasingly prolonged, lasting up to 10 or 12 hours a day.

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Polls are unfavorable for Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton. With 38 days until the midterm elections, some Republican politicians have all but conceded the Lone Star seat and remain haunted by the belief that the safer bet would have been to give the nomination to veteran congressman John Cornyn. Paxton isn’t gaining traction, not even after President Donald Trump himself urged voters at the unprecedented Republican convention in September in Dallas — his “Trumpapalooza” — to imagine that on November 3 they would be choosing him instead of the controversial Southern politician.

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Water service failed in at least 300,000 Atlanta households on July 27. Taps ran, but only a trickle came out. After receiving several consumer alerts, the water company found that a pumping station had stopped functioning, affecting that city and others in the state. The loss of pressure led authorities to advise boiling water before drinking it to reduce the risk of contamination, sparking some panic among the population. It was not a technical fault: everything points to it having been orchestrated from a computer almost 7,000 miles away, in Iran.

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The U.S. midterm elections are not limited to Tuesday, November 3. For millions of voters, Election Day will begin much earlier, either through in-person early voting or by casting a mail-in ballot, despite recent attempts by President Donald Trump to restrict and overhaul mail-in voting.

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Vladimir Putin is in trouble. The war in Ukraine is not going well for him; casualties are mounting at an alarming rate; discontent in Russian society is growing amid serious economic hardships; and the Kremlin’s inner circle is becoming increasingly perplexed by their leader’s ineffectiveness. His response, for now, is the same as always: escalation. Against Ukraine, with more missiles; against his own citizens, with more repression; and against the EU, with attacks, threats, and provocations of various kinds — sabotage, cyberattacks, incursions — that are becoming increasingly bold and dangerous.

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Commercial integration between Mexico and the United States, under the protection of the USMCA trade agreement, will first have to navigate a complicated customs issue: China. On the eve of the fourth round of talks, scheduled in theory for October, the economic rules that the Mexican government will impose on Chinese goods, investment and technology are of particular interest to the White House.

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Donald Trump returned to power in Washington with two major foreign policy promises: to end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours” and to keep his country out of more “forever wars.” Almost two years after his decisive electoral victory, the Russian invasion continues with no sign of a quick end, and the United States has plunged itself into yet another hornet’s nest in the Middle East. Two conflicts of unpredictable outcome have pushed fossil fuel costs to historic highs worldwide and are increasing doubts about whether — with price signals distorted — supply chains will withstand the pressure.

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Donald Trump’s Swiss Army knife is national security. He uses it for everything. If judges block his plan to remodel the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom that dwarfs the presidential residence, he cites national security to keep the work going. When obstacles arise to building a gigantic triumphal arch in Washington to honor himself, he says national security reasons justify it. If a judge questions him about deploying the National Guard in American cities, it’s for national security. Sued for banning certain media outlets, the answer is the same. And if he can’t find other grounds to impose tariffs, he invokes national security.

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The iconic GALA Hispanic Theater in Washington, D.C., a pioneer in presenting Spanish-language plays in the U.S. capital, hasn’t been immune to the impact of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies. Faced with the intensification of raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across D.C., this center for Hispanic culture has become a refuge for the Latino community on more than one occasion.

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Saying that Cuba is in crisis is hardly news. It has been for decades. Nor is it news that Washington’s sanctions have worsened the health of an economy that is now on life support. Both statements are axioms. But talking about Havana is a high-risk sport.

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Alejandro Betancourt’s tentacles in Spain are long. The Venezuelan businessman who amassed a fortune after his country’s power crisis at the end of the 2010s has seen his wealth rise again after the Trump administration touched him with the magic oil wand, entrusting him with crude exploitation in a deal with the government of Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez. The billionaire’s assets in Madrid alone are substantial, according to police documents that are part of an ongoing investigation into alleged money laundering. Authorities seized five luxury cars, a United Arab Emirates residency card and 17 firearms at his private estate in Toledo.

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For years, Europe grew used to a contradiction that it is only now beginning to see as a risk: being one of the world’s foremost regulatory powers in the digital sphere while remaining dependent on others for much of the technology those rules were designed to govern. Over the past decade, Brussels has assembled an extensive legislative arsenal aimed at curbing the power of big tech, from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act and the AI Act. Yet while Europe was writing rules, the United States and China were building companies, data centers, chips, cloud platforms and artificial-intelligence models on a scale that no European firm has managed to match.

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For the past 96 days, a huge tarp has hung over the facade of the Kennedy Center, a fitting symbol of Donald Trump’s assault on Washington’s cultural institutions.

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“All that’s standing between me and my vacation is you guys,” Zohran Kwame Mamdani jokes as he welcomes EL PAÍS on a Friday afternoon. He is about to take a week off, his first break since becoming mayor of New York at the beginning of the year.

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I found it easy to resist the early dispatches from “UFC Freedom 250,” the Ultimate Fighting Championship event held in June on the White House South Lawn. But Jon Ronson is the sort of writer I can’t help following into battle. Fresh off a new book about masculinity, Ronson brings a delightfully skewed perspective to the fights and the days that surrounded them. The result is a portrait of a planned media spectacle that can’t quite make sense of itself. The best battle here may be Ronson’s tussle with his own photographer, 79-year-old Bruce Gilden, who is a bit of a hugger.

“I’m pretty certain you hugged Stephen Miller first,” I say. “I don’t see Stephen Miller as initiating a hug.”

“You may be right,” he says. “I don’t remember. Look, I do things maybe other people aren’t comfortable doing, but I felt comfortable and I trust my instincts.”

He acknowledges that “nobody is immune to misreading a situation” and that because of him we were all forced back indoors, but he blames Miller’s entourage for not checking with their boss on whether he minded being hugged.