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Medellín begins demolition of a house owned by Pablo Escobar where alleged ‘satanic rituals’ took place

Medellín city hall has begun demolishing a house that once belonged to drug lord Pablo Escobar in the Diamante 2 neighborhood of the El Poblado district in the capital of Antioquia. The property, one of the many owned by the head of the Medellín Cartel, who was killed in 1993, had been abandoned, although authorities say it was being used to hold satanic rituals, for sexual activity, and for drug use. It had also become a security problem in one of the city’s most tourist-heavy neighborhoods. On Tuesday, the local administration began intervening on the site.

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© Alcaldía de Medellín

Demolition work on Pablo Escobar's house in Medellín on Wednesday.
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US lifts sanctions against Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly

Jorge Rodríguez in Caracas, April 10.

The United States on Wednesday lifted sanctions against Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and brother of the South American country’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, the Treasury Department reported.

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Searching for Baphomet one block from the Legionaries of Christ

It was highly unlikely, but it could be true. The imposing statue of a winged, muscular man with a goat’s head and legs dominated the façade, capping the perimeter wall — at least according to the photos circulating on social media. A sprawling urban conglomerate like Mexico City and its surroundings — which shelters a handful of altars to Santa Muerte, some of them truly colossal, including the one on López Portillo Avenue in Tultitlán — could easily accommodate a statue of Baphomet, the old idol of occultism, the satanic goat. Even if it were in the wealthy Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood, once an emblem of orderly development. In this eclectic, layered city of contrasts, logic rarely applies, least of all when it comes to urban life.

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© IMAGEN GENERADA CON IA

An AI-generated image of a statue of Baphomet.
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‘Violent, disgusting and a tour de force’: ‘Henry’, the film that held up a mirror to society

“This is a very disturb¬ ing movie, made by some pretty disturbed people.” That was how Chris Carlo, owner of one of the first theaters to screen Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer in 1990, described John McNaughton’s feature debut. Made four years earlier, the film had become a cult classic before it ever reached a movie theater. Carlo programmed it for midnight screenings where audience members often walked out, unable to endure its violence.

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A scene from 'Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.'
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The kidnapping of Mexican cartel leader El Mayo Zambada: Competing accounts from López Obrador and Ken Salazar

The six-year term of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador ended in September 2024 amid a surge of violence in the state of Sinaloa — a crisis he blamed on the United States. Just a few months earlier, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the longtime leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, had been captured by U.S. authorities under murky circumstances.

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© GOBIERNO DE MÉXICO

Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Ken Salazar in Santa Lucía, State of Mexico, in September 2021.
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A new Supreme Tribunal for Venezuela, rushed and without clear rules

Washington has stepped on the accelerator to renew Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal. It is its first major democratizing initiative in the country and the main task of the negotiation table between the 2015 National Assembly and the government of Delcy Rodríguez, which meets again this Wednesday. The goal is to have a new court by December, but beyond the outline the United States published last week, nothing is as yet known about the timetables, the profiles sought, the procedures to challenge appointments and how civil society will take part in a process crucial to a country that is supposedly moving toward a democratic transition.

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© Ariana Cubillos (AP)

Ceremony at the Supreme Justice Tribunal in Caracas, in January 2024.
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Latinos who turned away from Trump but distrust the Democrats: ‘I need to see deeds to believe again’

The last two years have been, she says, “an emotional roller coaster.” She voted for Donald Trump for president, immigration authorities took away her husband, she was left alone to run the freight trucking business and care for their three children, and she watched her life plans slowly slip through her fingers. Now there are exactly 20 days left until the U.S. midterm elections and no campaign promise—neither from the Republicans nor the Democrats—has convinced Jessica Ruiz about the need to get up on November 3, drive through the streets of Miami and go to the polling place for Florida’s 28th District.

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Jessica Ruíz with her family in an undated photograph. The journalist Niover at the Univisión newsroom, in an undated photograph.

© Spencer Platt (Getty Images)

Supporters of Donald Trump at a campaign event in the Bronx, New York, in May 2024.
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Milei returns to Washington to strengthen ties with Trump’s administration

Javier Milei begins another visit to the United States on Wednesday, his 20th trip since being elected president of Argentina and his fifth this year alone. He will remain in Washington, D.C., until Friday, taking part in a series of events aimed at deepening his alliance with the Donald Trump administration and demonstrating his support for Israel.

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© Charly Triballeau (Charly Triballeau/Pool AFP via A)

Javier Milei at the Shield of the Americas meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York on September 22.
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Kevin Bacon: ‘I’m still 100% focused on improving, transcending, and doing something impactful’

Although they lost almost all their savings in Bernie Madoff’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, the marriage of Kevin Bacon, 68, and Kyra Sedgwick, 61, who have been together for 38 years, survived with their New York apartment and their farm in Connecticut intact. It was there that the pandemic lockdown found them, and there that they hatched a film together, with the help of their two children, who came from the West Coast: Travis, a composer drafted into acting by the demands of the script, and Sosie, who has already established herself as a film and television actress.

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© Siu Wu (EFE)

Kevin Bacon, Saturday at midday at the Sitges Film Festival.
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The far right in Latin America threatens progress against deforestation, report warns

There is both good news and bad news about the state of the world’s forests. The good news is that deforestation fell by 15% in 2025 compared with 2024, the largest decline recorded so far this decade. The bad news is that a shift in political priorities could undo some of those gains. Much of the progress in forest conservation depends on the political will of a handful of key countries, particularly in Latin America, which is now entering a period of electoral uncertainty and possible changes of government.

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© Adriano Machado (REUTERS)

An aerial photograph shows a plantation field in the Amazon rainforest during a Greenpeace overflight in the Brazilian state of Maranhão in November 2025.
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Websites down and bots disabled: The unexpected consequences of bombing data centers

Ukraine has struck a major blow to Russia’s digital infrastructure. Since last Thursday, Ukrainian drones have carried out a series of attacks that destroyed three large data centers belonging to Yandex — known as “the Kremlin’s Google”— on the outskirts of Moscow. The Yandex Taxi ride-hailing app and the group’s payments service, Yandex Pay, have been temporarily taken offline. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy even said the bombings disabled Russian bots.

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© Vahid Salemi (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps salutes next to a drone during a parade on September 18.
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King of Spain in Ceuta: ‘Sovereignty and territorial integrity are not negotiable, and faced with any risk, our duty is their defense’

Felipe VI and Queen Letizia in the streets of Ceuta on Tuesday.

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.

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US ambassador to Greece resigns over corruption after pressure from Trump

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.

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© WILL OLIVER (Pool/EFE)

Kimberly Guilfoyle and Donald Trump last March in the White House.
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Every game could be the last one for Don Manuel, the 105-year-old chess player

The world’s oldest chess player, Manuel Álvarez Escudero, at right, shakes hands with Darío Liern at the end of their game in the tribute tournament for his 105th birthday, this Monday at the Moratalaz Sports Center in Madrid.

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.

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Manuel Álvarez Escudero's chess federation membership card, dated September 8,1952. Photo courtesy of the Chess Club of Moratalaz.Manuel Álvarez Escudero, left, during a match in the Madrid chess league, in 1998. Photo provided by Luis Reyes included in his work on Álvarez Escudero’s career.Manuel Álvarez Escudero, 105, the world’s oldest chess player.
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How Mexican cartels are stealing US rental cars to create ‘mutant tanks’

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.

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© Charles Krupa (AP)

Rental cars at a dealership in Manchester, New Hampshire, in a file image.
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No small potatoes: Andean tubers rescue the economy of a remote village in Argentina

Franco Gabriel Gari holding Andean 'papines' in the Central Market of Buenos Aires on September 30, 2026.

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.

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A resident of Iruya walking through town on August 31, 2026.VIew of Iruya, in Salta province in northwestern Argentina.Franco Gabriel Gari, an employee for Alta Red, unpacks Andean papines andinos from Iruya at the Central Market in Buenos Aires on September 30.
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Steve McQueen, artist: ‘We live in an era dominated by fear; I am interested in love’

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.

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View of '66 76 26,' Steve McQueen’s sound installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao.A photomontage of Nina Simone and David Bowie.

© Erika Ede

Steve McQueen, during the press presentation of his installation '66 76 26.'
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The WHO searches for a new leader as US funding dries up and trust in science wanes

From left to right: María Neira, Gevorg Tamamyan, and Hanan Mohamed al Kuwari, three of the candidates to lead the World Health Organization.

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.

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Pressure mounts on Maduro’s inner circle after Álex Saab ally is turned over to the US

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.

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© DEA

Mugshot of Álvaro Pulido.
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Why Democrats think they can finally flip Texas in the Senate

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.

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© Eric Gay (AP)

Supporters of James Talarico in Austin, Texas, on March 3.
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