Brazil's top electoral court has set new rules on when WhatsApp broadcast channels count as official campaign tools, a week before the October 25 presidential runoff between Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro.

China's government has proposed draft controls restricting exports of certain technologies used in solar panel manufacturing. The move is being read as part of Beijing's broader recent push to tighten export oversight of critical technology sectors.

Anthropic policy chief Jack Clark told US policymakers in Washington that artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly and could substantially boost American economic growth. Clark said transformative AI needs "unusual and serious rules" set through international cooperation.

At least four service members have been killed and dozens more seriously injured in one of the worst peacetime tragedies for Canada’s military on domestic soil.

Presidente norte-americano pronunciou-se sobre os protestos violentos em França, culpando a imigração. "Fechem as fronteiras", pediu aos franceses.

© TOM BRENNER / POOL/EPA

A nota de repúdio foi conhecida hoje em comunicado da porta voz da UE para os negócios estrangeiros. E ainda, novo Ministro da Defesa do Irão promete ripostar contra vizinho, caso EUA ataquem.

En mi generación, la oferta televisiva y las pantallas disponibles en casa eran, por decirlo de alguna manera, limitadas. Aunque existían tres canales, la señal no cubría el país entero por falta de repetidoras, aquellas torres hacia las que había que orientar la antena colocada sobre unos largos tubos que despuntaban de los tejados. En uno de los pueblos en los que viví de niño, solo se podía sintonizar uno de los canales porque estaba en el fondo de un valle. Gracias a esa falta de alternativas, vi programas que quizá me habría perdido en otra circunstancia. Uno de ellos fue Soul Train, "el tren del alma", como se apresuraba a aclarar el presentador, Osvaldo Valencia, en cuanto terminaban las imágenes algo psicodélicas de una locomotora acercándose a la estación.

El programa era una franquicia del show que conducía en Estados Unidos Don Cornelius. Con los años supe que la idea de traerlo a la televisión ecuatoriana partió de los dueños de la discográfica J. D. Feraud Guzmán, que encontraron en aquel medio la oportunidad de introducir géneros y artistas nuevos en un país entonces más rural que urbano. Así nos llegó, a quienes vivíamos en la periferia, lo mejor de los músicos afroamericanos de finales de los setenta. Quizá fue allí donde escuché por primera vez soul, R&B o funk, aunque lo que de verdad me impresionaba eran los números de baile. Era deslumbrante ver ese grupo de chicas y chicos, tan felices, moverse y disfrutar como si estuviesen en una fiesta.

Además, eran bellos, estaban en plena forma y desbordaban elegancia. Muchos lucían el afro, esa cabellera que, por lo apretado de sus rizos, no cae, sino que crece en todas direcciones hasta dibujar una especie de globo. Me llamaba la atención que lo llevaran hombres y mujeres, porque en mi entorno estaba muy claro qué cortes correspondían a cada sexo. Era un tipo de peinado que vi también en algunos futbolistas afroecuatorianos, cuyas fotos aparecían en la revista Estadio. Pero aquel estilo fue desapareciendo, y varias de las cantantes que había admirado con unos afros preciosos empezaron a mostrarse con melenas lacias que, como descubrí mucho después, eran pelucas.

Todo esto no pasaría de anécdota si detrás de aquellos peinados no hubiera habido, como luego comprendí, bastante más que una moda. En los años sesenta y setenta, el afro se convirtió en símbolo de afirmación de la identidad negra, ligado al movimiento por los derechos civiles y al Black Power. Dejar el pelo al natural, sin los tratamientos químicos que lo alisaban para acercarlo a los cánones de belleza blancos, suponía reivindicar el orgullo por los propios orígenes y rechazar los patrones estéticos de una sociedad racialmente jerarquizada. Aquellas cabezas no respondían a una mera cuestión de peluquería. Eran también una declaración política.

Más adelante, sin embargo, el afro fue cediendo terreno ante los alisados, las extensiones y los postizos, sobre todo entre las mujeres, sometidas a una doble exigencia por su raza y por su género. No se trataba de que ellas decidieran simplemente cómo llevar el pelo, sino de lo que pasó a significar para muchas mostrar los rizos. Dejar su pelo natural podía implicar ser vistas como descuidadas o impropias en un entorno profesional, un obstáculo a la hora de conseguir empleo, ascender o ser aceptadas en determinados espacios. En algunos países latinoamericanos se llega al colmo de llamar "pelo malo" al rizado y crespo propio de buena parte de la población afrodescendiente. Peor aún, entre los argumentos para alisar el "pajón" a toda costa figura el de que, en su forma original, parece sucio.

Estos adjetivos despectivos no se quedan en la superficie ni son reflejo de una costumbre pasajera. Que algo tan aparentemente trivial como un peinado condicione la consideración social de una persona se explica porque el pelo esconde una jerarquía, y esa discriminación golpea en América Latina, con especial dureza al Caribe. En la República Dominicana han trascendido varios casos de alumnas presionadas en sus centros educativos para arreglarse de determinada manera. En 2019 se difundieron los audios del director de un liceo que, a gritos y golpeando la mesa, recriminaba a las estudiantes que habían acudido con sus rizos al natural y les advertía que aquello era una escuela "para la formación y el empleo, no para la chabacanería". Ese mismo año, la directora de Género del Ministerio de Educación, impulsora de la campaña "Ni pelo bueno ni pelo malo", fue destituida poco después de disponer la readmisión de una niña a la que habían suspendido por llevar el cabello afro. Las autoridades atribuyeron su salida a reiteradas ausencias en el trabajo y negaron que tuviera relación con la campaña o la confrontación con los gestores del centro docente.

Cuando a una persona le repiten desde pequeña que tiene "pelo malo", aprende que algo con lo que nació está mal. Lo escucha en casa, en la peluquería, en el colegio y en la publicidad, hasta que el mensaje se instala en su manera de mirarse al espejo. De ahí que desde muy niñas sean sometidas a desrizados y secadores, las quemaduras en el cuero cabelludo y esa sensación, que tantas mujeres evocan al recordar su infancia, de no resultar nunca presentables tal como son y que por eso tienen que aguantar el dolor que esos tratamientos implican. Por eso, cuando una adulta decide dejar de alisarse, no está cambiando de peinado sin más, sino desaprendiéndose de años de vergüenza. No es casual que en varios países de las Antillas hayan surgido iniciativas que reivindican el cabello afro como expresión de identidad y, ante todo, de libertad.

Cada vez que alguien con poder dicta cómo debe peinarse un menor, le está indicando qué tipo de persona se espera que sea"

Con todo, el control sobre la cabeza ajena no se limita a las afrodescendientes. En El Salvador, el Gobierno de Nayib Bukele impuso en 2025 un "corte de cabello adecuado" en los colegios públicos como parte de su cruzada contra las pandillas, con catálogo de cortes incluido, cual Corea del Norte. Y esta semana, la presidenta de Perú, Keiko Fujimori, ha anunciado un reglamento escolar según el cual "los hombrecitos" deberán ir con el pelo corto. Como si la violencia, la indisciplina o el fracaso académico se solucionasen con tijera y una raya bien marcada.

Cada vez que alguien con poder dicta cómo debe peinarse un menor, le está indicando qué tipo de persona se espera que sea. En mi infancia, aquellos afros que veía en la televisión proclamaban algo tan sencillo como que así eran y que no pensaban esconderlo. Lo inquietante es que medio siglo después sigamos discutiendo si una alumna puede ir a clase con el cabello tal como le crece, o si un chico rendirá peor por llevar flequillo. El orden impuesto a golpe de tijera es el más fácil de exhibir y el más barato, porque no exige más maestros, ni mejores aulas, ni reflexión alguna sobre el racismo. Mientras tanto, la dignidad de miles de niñas sigue pendiendo de un pelo.

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Francisco Sánchez es director del Instituto Iberoamericano de la Universidad de Salamanca. Aquí puede leer todos los artículos que ha publicado en www.elindependiente.com

No espaço de uma semana, Ucrânia enfrentou falhas no Starlink e nas informações militares vindas dos EUA. Trump, pressionado pelas intercalares, aponta a Zelensky. É um ponto de não-retorno?

© Getty Images

Um grave incêndio na base militar canadiana de Wainwright, na província de Alberta, causou mortos e feridos, de acordo com as autoridades, que ainda não precisaram o número de vítimas.

Os manifestantes pedem habitação digna e tecem críticas às políticas do Governo de Luís Montenegro. E ainda, a imprensa canadiana diz que pelo sete pessoas morreram num incêndio numa base militar.

Madalena Meyer Resende, especialista em relações internacionais, avisa que a Europa não tem capacidade militar para substituir os Estados Unidos no apoio antiaéreo e de inteligência à Ucrânia. 

Antofagasta plc said a strike at its Centinela copper mine in Chile has ended after reaching a deal with unions. The company has not yet disclosed further details of the agreement. Centinela is closely watched given Chile's weight in global copper supply.

Ainda não são conhecidos os números oficiais deste incidente, na província de Alberta. E ainda, centenas de manifestantes passaram a noite nas ruas de Lisboa e do Porto.

Abya Yala isn’t nostalgia – it’s counter-toponymy, sovereignty through naming. Empires die; names endure.

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A name imposed from outside

Every October 12, history once again becomes a battlefield. This year, the two events took place just a few days apart and a few thousand kilometers from one another. On one side, the White House, where on October 9, Donald Trump honored Christopher Columbus in front of a marble statue reassembled from fragments of the Baltimore monument that had fallen into the harbor in 2020, and signed a proclamation linking the 1492 voyage to the 1776 Declaration of Independence and promising that the explorer’s legacy will not be erased by “radical extremists.” On the other side were Indigenous organizations that for more than thirty years have rejected even the name of the continent, calling it Abya Yala.

The dispute over the continent’s name is a dispute over sovereignty, and the fact that it is resurfacing with such intensity in 2026 – while Washington is rewriting its relations with the Western Hemisphere in an openly hegemonic manner – is no mere coincidence of the calendar.

The name “America” originated in a cartographic workshop in the Vosges Mountains. In 1507, in Saint-Dié, Martin Waldseemüller printed a large wall map of the world and a brief accompanying treatise, proposing to name the new fourth part of the world after Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine navigator who had argued that those lands were not Asia. On the map, the name appears in the southern part of the continent. Within a few decades, it came to apply to the entire continental landmass. None of the people who lived there were consulted.

In 1958, the Mexican historian Edmundo O’Gorman developed a thesis on this that retains its power to this day: America was not discovered, it was invented. Not in the trivial sense that it did not exist before, but in the sense that Europe constructed a new geographical and conceptual entity, placing it within its own image of the world and assigning it a role in its own universal history. The name was the first act of this construction. Before being conquered by force of arms, the continent was conquered on paper.

There is also a second appropriation, less discussed in Europe and deeply felt south of the Rio Grande. In common usage, “America” means the United States. The shift is not merely lexical. On December 2, 1823, James Monroe declared to Congress that the American continent was no longer to be considered open to European colonization: the phrase “America for Americans” already contained, in embryo, the idea that the Americans par excellence were those of Washington. Two centuries later, the same logic has led to pressure regarding the Panama Canal in 2025 and the military operation in Venezuela in January 2026. When an indigenous movement utters “Abya Yala,” it thus challenges two names at once: the one imposed by Europe and the one annexed by the United States.

The nomos of discovery

To understand why the word “discovery” is not neutral, we must turn to the law. Carl Schmitt, in a 1950 book that remains one of the foundational texts of legal geopolitics, argues that 1492 ushered in the first global nomos of the earth: an ordering of space based on the seizure of land. The European powers recognized one another as legal subjects and treated the New World as a free space, available for occupation. The papal bull Inter caetera of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 drew a line from pole to pole that divided the planet between Castile and Portugal. Those who lived on those lands did not participate in the division: they were its objects.

Schmitt describes this order with a jurist’s admiration for an effective legal construct, and his analysis must be read with that in mind. But the mechanism he identifies is real and has had a long institutional life. In 1823, the same year as the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case Johnson v. M’Intosh: Justice Marshall ruled that “discovery” conferred sovereign title to the land upon the European power – and later upon the United States as its successor – leaving the indigenous peoples with a mere right of occupation. The Doctrine of Discovery has remained part of American jurisprudence to this day. It was not until March 2023 that two Vatican departments issued a joint statement formally distancing themselves from it, acknowledging that 15th-century papal bulls were used to justify the expropriation of indigenous peoples.

The human cost of this system is measured in figures that remain uncertain, though their order of magnitude is not. A study published in 2019 in *Quaternary Science Reviews* estimated that between 1492 and 1600, the population of the Americas plummeted by about 90 percent, due to the combined effects of epidemics, war, forced labor, and social disintegration; the reforestation of abandoned lands was so extensive that it left a trace in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Tzvetan Todorov, in his book The Conquest of America, had already spoken of the greatest genocide in human history, questioning how knowledge of the other could coexist with its destruction. The “discovery,” in other words, was also the disappearance of most of those who were there.

What Abya Yala means

Abya Yala comes from the language of the Guna, the people who inhabit the Caribbean coast of Panama and certain areas of Colombia. In its form “Abiayala,” it is usually translated as “land in full maturity”; other renderings such as “living land” or “land of vital blood” are also in circulation. The transition from a local place name to a continental name is recent. According to the most widely cited accounts, it was the Bolivian Aymara leader Takir Mamani who proposed that indigenous peoples adopt this name in their documents, in place of that of the colonizers. The proposal took shape during the wave of protests that accompanied the 500th anniversary in 1992, when counter-celebrations marking “500 years of resistance” stood in opposition to the official commemorations. In the 2000s, the summit meetings of indigenous peoples across the continent permanently adopted it as part of their name.

The Guna’s choice is no accident. This is a people who, in 1925, rose up against the Panamanian state and eventually secured an autonomous comarca – now known as Guna Yala – with its own institutions and effective control over the territory: one of the most successful examples of indigenous self-governance on the continent. Borrowing their word means choosing as an emblem a concrete experience of territorial sovereignty, not mere nostalgia.

It should be noted that Abya Yala does not erase the plurality of local names: Anáhuac for the Nahua world of central Mexico, Tawantinsuyu for the political and territorial organization of the Incas, and Pindorama for the Tupi lands of present-day Brazil. Each of these names expresses a different cosmology of space. Abya Yala functions as common ground, a sort of federal name that does not replace the specific ones. This is an important detail, because it signals that the project is not the invention of a single, symmetrical indigenous identity mirroring the “American” one, but rather a coordination among diverse actors.

Cartography as an act of sovereignty

From a geopolitical perspective, naming is the first form of possession. This is well understood by states that rename gulfs and seas, contest place names on official maps, and impose transliterations in international institutions. The year 2025 provided a textbook example with the U.S. renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. In this context, Abya Yala is a counter-toponym: a name that does not seek to occupy school atlases, but rather to wrest from hegemonic power the monopoly on the description of space.

The Latin American decolonial school has given this insight a precise theoretical form. Aníbal Quijano has termed the structure that survives the end of formal colonialism “the coloniality of power”: a hierarchy of peoples, knowledge, and territories that continues to organize the international division of labor and the production of knowledge. Walter Mignolo has shown how “Latin America” itself is a designation that originated in the nineteenth century in French and Creole circles, with specific political functions. The year 1492 marks not only the beginning of the conquest of the Americas but also the birth of the world-system centered first on Europe and later on the Atlantic. Challenging the continent’s name therefore means challenging the founding date of the unipolar order, tracing it back to its very roots.

Here, the issue intersects with the debate on multipolarism. A multipolar order is not merely a different distribution of power among great states. It implies the recognition that there are multiple civilizations, each with its own concepts of space, law, and relationship to the land. The 2008 Constitution of Ecuador and the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia have translated some of these concepts into positive law: the former by recognizing rights inherent to nature, the Pacha Mama, and the latter by reestablishing the state as plurinational. These are imperfect experiments, but they represent the most serious attempt in the hemisphere to build a form of statehood that does not derive entirely from the European model.

Columbus, Italy, and two identity politics

For the Italian reader, the story takes an additional turn. Columbus Day did not originate as a celebration of conquest. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison’s proclamation came a year after the New Orleans lynching, in which eleven Italians were killed by a mob: the commemoration also served to offer the Italian-American community – which was facing discrimination at the time – a founding hero with whom to identify. Columbus thus became a tool for the integration of a minority that Anglo-Saxons considered little more than white.

Today, that history is being enlisted in a different battle. When Biden first proclaimed Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2021, and when Trump makes it the target of his own “Columbian restoration,” what is clashing are two identity politics within American society, each of which uses 1492 as a symbolic resource. Italian Americans find themselves serving as a shield for an operation that primarily concerns the definition of the U.S. nation and its relationship with the rest of the hemisphere.

Italy and Europe can avoid this dilemma. Remembering Columbus as a navigator, as a figure of Mediterranean and Genoese culture, and as a man of his time does not oblige one to subscribe to the “nomos” of discovery or the legal doctrine that derived from it. One can honor the sailor while rejecting the claim of ownership. Indeed, it is precisely from Europe that a gesture of historical maturity might emerge, similar to the one made by the Holy See in 2023: distinguishing the memory of the person from the legitimization of a spatial order that has produced expropriation and death on a continental scale.

October 12, 2026, revealed two opposing ways of approaching the same date. Washington used Columbus to reaffirm a narrative of national founding that, in foreign policy, translates into a renewed claim to guardianship over the hemisphere. Indigenous movements used Abya Yala to remind us that that hemisphere had names, political systems, and sovereignty before 1492 – and that it still retains some of them today.

There is no symmetry between the two positions. One has aircraft carriers, sanctions, and courts; the other has a word and territories to defend one by one, but the history of maps teaches us that names have a long life – longer than the empires that imposed them. “America” appeared on a map printed in a small town in the Vosges and ended up designating half the planet.

No one can say today what fate awaits Abya Yala, but the mere fact that millions of people refuse to call their land by another’s name already speaks volumes about the crisis of the order that name had ushered in.

• Oxford Economics' 2026 Global Cities Index ranked cities around the world on their quality of life.
• US cities ranked highly for economics, but fell short in the quality of life category.
• European cities dominated the quality of life list, while only one US city made the top 20.

Cities in the US rank high globally in terms of economics, but they have some ground to cover in quality of life, according to a new report.

For its 2026 Global Cities Index, economic advisory firm Oxford Economics ranked 1,000 cities across the globe based on five categories: economics, human capital, environment, and quality of life.

Every category is viewed from an economic lens, even quality of life, where indicators include income equality and housing expenditure, among others.

"The Global Cities Index records the progress cities are making across a comprehensive range of metrics," Mark Britton, managing director of city services at Oxford Economics, said in the report. "Sitting alongside our forecasts and scenario models, its ability to highlight how paths change under different conditions and its capacity for comparability shows you not just where cities stand today, but also where they are heading."

The overall list features several US cities in the top 20 — eight, to be exact, with New York taking the No. 1 spot. However, when highlighting quality of life specifically, only one US city made the cut.

Quality of life, which accounts for 25% of a city's overall score, wasn't a bright spot for the US, but plenty of other cities excelled in that category. See which cities ranked highest in quality of life, according to Oxford Economics.

Autoridades mexicanas detiveram Luis Manuel "N", o "Engenheiro", responsável pela construção de túneis para o tráfico de droga.

© Lauro Serna/EPA

Rússia doou mais de 750 toneladas de óleo vegetal a Cuba. Havana agradece o "apoio permanente" do Kremlin.

© Ernesto Mastrascusa/EPA

Presidente norte-americano anunciou que Moscovo vai fornecer aos EUA milhares de toneladas de gasóleo no âmbito do "acordo energético". Suspensão de sanções surge em momento tenso entre EUA e Ucrânia.

© RON SACHS / POOL/EPA

O acordo entre EUA e Rússia deixa novamente a Europa a lidar com os humores de Trump. Ainda os ataques na Arábia Saudita, eleições no Brasil, Filipe VI em Ceuta e a ponte entre China e Coreia do Norte

On November 3, voters will head to the polls for the midterm elections, which will determine whether Donald Trump’s Republicans retain a friendly Congress or whether Democrats take control of one or both chambers, enabling them to mount a more aggressive opposition by blocking legislation, budgets and appointments during the final two years of his term.

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