“By the way, don’t touch the figs.” Actress Siân Phillips has remarked that when she traveled the world, even decades after the premiere of I, Claudius, someone would recognize her voice and ask her to deliver the phrase delivered by her character, the Machiavellian Livia Drusilla. That scene from the series competes in collective imagination with its opening sequence, in which at the start of its 13 episodes, a serpent slithered to threatening music over a tiled mosaic face of Emperor Claudius. There it was in a nutshell: the greatness and filth of a newborn empire already corroded by corruption, the moral sickness that dominated a family, the political intrigues, the personal betrayals, the devastating effects of exercising and coveting power. The influence of I, Claudius can be seen in much more recent television projects, from Game of Thrones to Succession, but it also emerges in the current international political panorama, in the form of leaders like Donald Trump. This year, a half-century will have passed since its first broadcast, but anyone who watches an episode will confirm that it continues to be as relevant as it was back then.

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A merchant named Robert Keyne showed up crestfallen before the General Court of Massachusetts in Puritan Boston in 1639. His offense: trying to sell at the highest possible price and buy at the lowest possible price, putting his profits above the interests of the community. The judges showed no mercy: they fined him £200 for a practice they described as “extremely wicked and corrupt” and for having embraced “false principles.” Yet those are the same principles that now seem completely natural to us and structure our entire lives.

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There are issues — some crucial, others trivial — with a proven capacity to divide humankind. Among the trivial, let’s include soccer, politics, cuisine, and countless other subjects. And, among the crucial ones — setting aside the growing global inequalities and the misery faced by the poorest people — we must include perspectives on death.

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Three of the four Afghans who left their country to compete last week in the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, were detained at the border on Monday when they returned to Afghanistan, where chess is banned by the Taliban government. The players are under house arrest in Kabul and face penalties that could include corporal punishment. The fourth player has been able to return home without reprisals.

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The mountains of Grand Teton could become the backdrop for a Major League Baseball game. The proposal is only on the table for now, but it has already drawn opposition from local officials and environmental groups because bringing baseball there would require building — even if only temporarily — a field inside one of the most important national parks in the United States.

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Evan Gershkovich does not conceal the fact that he would rather be on the other side of the table. “Your job as an interviewer is much more fun than mine,” admits the journalist who has had to get used to being the center of the story. His ordeal began on March 29, 2023. The then–Moscow correspondent for The Wall Street Journal was detained that day on charges of espionage. He spent 16 months in prison before being freed in the largest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War. The exchange, in which the governments of the United States and Germany were heavily involved, had the makings of a spy movie.

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In another life, Johnny Cross (Clovenfords, Scotland, 34) might have become a sports journalist covering British football teams, but an Erasmus year in Seville during his final year of university changed everything. There he met Marta, his partner, with whom he now has two children, and he decided to stay in Spain. He also realized sports journalism wasn’t for him, so he began teaching English to make some money — “very typical of the guiris [a Spanish term for British people] here,” he says with a laugh.

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One week after Chile joined the Shield of the Americas, the regional alliance promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump, domestic resistance against the move has not let up. On the contrary, the membership documents ratified by the government of José Antonio Kast in New York on September 22, along with 14 other countries, have raised new questions about the scope of the initiative.

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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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For the first time in over a year, Google Maps has updated its satellite imagery of the Gaza Strip, allowing anyone with the app to see how a territory devastated by the Israeli military has changed. By updating imagery in 2024, 2025 and now 2026, Google has taken a step that other apps such as Apple Maps have not.

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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 fake story, with the Virgin of Aparecida, patron saint of Brazil, as an unwitting protagonist, has sparked a major controversy and poisoned the final stretch of the electoral campaign in Brazil. The contention, which harms Bolsonarismo, grew until it drew the direct intervention of the two leading candidates — President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro — the Bishops’ Conference, and the Supreme Court. Since Thursday night there have been statements, official notes, mutual accusations, and conflicting judicial rulings. The falsehood, which continues to circulate on social media, could affect an election that promises to be extremely close.

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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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All three are well-known, globally recognized, and outstanding women in their fields. All three became mothers just days ago, almost simultaneously. All three had children without giving birth to them: one adopted, two used a surrogate. And all three, despite their different methods and the ways they told their stories, received the same warm congratulations. But are the three cases the same? In the United States, for a large majority, the answer is yes.

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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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You may have recently come across some of these athletic shoes with unsettling holes in the sole. If you noticed them, you might already have seen a lot of them. It’s not just your imagination: in a few short years, designs from the brand On have spread across the globe. Outside the sports world the label was little known before the pandemic, but it has since become a cultural phenomenon that goes beyond the world of running. The company’s latest headline-making move came last week, when it announced a deal with Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé, who left Nike after 20 years of collaboration. On already works regularly with luxury house Loewe, superstar Zendaya, and former tennis world number one Roger Federer. The brand so appealed to Federer that he became one of its shareholders.

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Known as the tomato capital of the United States, Immokalee is an agricultural community in southern Florida. A couple of hours from cosmopolitan Miami, palm trees stand beside dirt roads where cucumber, pepper, and eggplant are grown; hens roam the yards of small houses and people carry shovels and hoes. Although it is part of Collier, one of the state’s wealthiest counties, there is no hospital with a labor and delivery ward or specialists to handle an obstetric emergency. Pregnant people must drive up to an hour to receive care.

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Twenty-three children make their way to school with their eyes glued to the murky water of the Nare River to see if they can see the hippopotamus. The school route has become a kind of safari with the kids scanning the horizon. Everyone in the municipality has a story to tell about the hippopotamus; that his feces scare away the fish, that he eats the banana crops, that his footprints are the size of three palms, that he will capsize a canoe... The Puerto Nare hippopotamus is all that’s talked about here. For Luis and his brother Diego, he is not a stranger. They call him Selmo. Their mother shakes her head and asks them not to get too attached because the judge has allowed just 60 days for the hippo to be removed from the vicinity.

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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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