The people have spoken. The United Kingdom has a new ambassador. Her debut party took place this past April at that great hub of cultural diplomacy known as Coachella. At the most popular festival in the United States, PinkPantheress displayed the improbable mix of quirks that, at just 25, has made her the most unmistakably British star of her generation — from her fixation with tartan prints (which she wears even on her lips) to the hyper‑accelerated pulse of viral tracks like Ilegal and, of course, the cool precision of a chess player’s mind inherited from a family full of champions.

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The heat presses down near the ocean’s edge. Hours pass, and the patrols look for shade, officials fan themselves, reporters lean back — but they keep going. They walk, they ask, they insist, they jot things down: a name, a date, another place they’ve never heard of. They work even with the life jackets from the boat ride still on; they don’t take them off, in case there isn’t enough time. They’ve spent 16 months searching, and this is the first time they’ve been able to do it while standing on the same ground their missing loved ones — their children, a grandson, a brother — once stood on; seeing the mangroves, the palm‑thatch roofs, the lagoon brushing up against the Pacific, all of it they are certain — certain — their loved ones also saw.

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It’s difficult to find an area that hasn’t been affected by climate change, which, among other things, is behind the increased frequency and intensity of heat waves worldwide. Sport is no exception, and competitions like the Winter Olympics and major cycling tours have been — or will be — seriously affected by global warming. The most-watched sporting event on the planet, the FIFA Men’s World Cup, being held in North America and starting in less than a month, will also be impacted by this crisis.

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The true measure of a long-established rock band lies in how they handle their low points. In 1993, Iron Maiden played in Madrid at a venue called Canciller, a small club for their stature: only 1,800 people. Bruce Dickinson, the singer, was leaving the band, and they decided to tour smaller venues. From early afternoon, the line of fans stretched for several blocks.

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One of the main drivers of aging is the accumulation of aged cells in tissues. For reasons not entirely understood, with age, the body accumulates senescent cells that do not die, and that benefit one of the suspected culprits behind the body’s deterioration over the years: inflammation. Now, a team led by Harvard University researcher David Lagares has found a possible way to reverse this process in the lungs, one of the organs whose cells deteriorate over time and can lead to diseases such as fibrosis, an incurable condition that primarily affects people over 65.

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More than 30 water slides, projected to be the tallest in Latin America, six swimming pools, three beaches, 12 restaurants, and 24 bars. That and more will be at Perfect Day, the water park that the international cruise line Royal Caribbean plans to build in the fishing village of Mahahual, Quintana Roo, on Mexico’s Caribbean coast, covering just over 107 hectares. Since 2025, the land and permits have been in place to pave the way for the complex, in which the company will invest $1 billion. This follows the company’s move to take administrative control of the Costa Maya port with another investment of more than $221 million. Some members of the Mahahual community have already raised concerns about the irreversible impact of the project. Others, however, fear that the company will withdraw its investment from the area, and jeopardize their livelihoods.

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A portrait of Emmanuel Macron, president of the French Republic, leans against the wall on the floor. Two meters away, a handwritten sign proclaims a symbolic victory: “Here begins the new France.” From the window of the new mayor’s office, painted electric blue, one can see the basilica where the remains of the monarchs of France rest. But also the narrow streets of Saint-Denis (population 115,000), where the air is thick with the aroma of halal shops, and women in headscarves walk among mosques. In short, the multicultural landscape of the second-largest city in Île-de-France, the Paris region, located in the country’s poorest department and the one with the highest proportion of immigrants — one-third of the population. His arrival here has shaken France. He remains completely calm. “The portrait? It was already like that when I arrived. I didn’t take it down; I simply didn’t put it back on the wall,” explains Bally Bagayoko, the newly elected mayor of Saint-Denis.

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The scene has been repeating itself for 72 hours in Ecuador’s main cities: lines of vehicles snaking around corners, drivers waiting for hours in the sun, and gas pumps only allowing customers to fill up with $15 or $20 worth of gasoline. In Quito and Guayaquil, two cities accustomed to endless traffic, now there’s also a fight over fuel. “I’m frantically looking for fuel because my tank is practically empty,” says Darwin Medina, a taxi driver in Guayaquil. He visited three stations before finding one with gasoline available. On his fourth attempt, he managed to fill up with just five gallons of Ecopaís, a blend of gasoline and ethanol used by a large portion of Ecuador’s vehicles because it’s the cheapest.

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The exploits of Ukrainian espionage, officially acknowledged or not, eventually reach the public eye. Around the second half of December 2024, Kyiv’s intelligence services reported that a Russian ship was damaged and stranded in the Mediterranean. It had suffered, they claimed, an engine problem. The GUR, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s spy agency, identified the vessel as the Sparta. According to Kyiv’s version at the time, it was en route to Syria to transport military equipment. Ukraine never claimed responsibility for any sabotage that might have damaged the enemy vessel. On December 23, 2024, the cargo ship, renamed Ursa Major — although until 2021 it bore the name Sparta on its hull, a long-standing family of Russian ships — sunk to a depth of 2,500 meters off the coasts of Algeria and Spain.

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A bitter spring in the southern part of North America. Tensions between Mexico and the United States are escalating rapidly, straining the very fibers and tendons that, until a few weeks ago, had sustained the bilateral relationship without much difficulty. The smooth and fruitful security cooperation that characterized the first year of Donald Trump’s administration has recently turned into a nightmare, with developments that paint a rather bizarre picture — some of which are cause for concern for the Mexican government led by Claudia Sheinbaum, such as the growing presence of CIA agents in the country. This week, U.S. media outlets revealed that the intelligence agency orchestrated the March car bomb attack against a mid-level operative of the Sinaloa Cartel near the capital. Both governments have denied the information, with varying degrees of intensity.

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The leaders of the two superpowers are now face-to-face in Beijing to resolve a host of trade, technology, and geopolitical disputes that have accumulated in recent years. After landing Wednesday night in the Chinese capital, U.S. President Donald Trump was received Thursday by his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in the Great Hall of the People, the building reserved for major political occasions, where the first round of negotiations between the two leaders took place.

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Cuba is definitively out of fuel. Cuban Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy announced Wednesday afternoon that the country has not a single drop of diesel or fuel oil left, vital for powering the country’s ailing electrical grid, which suffers from constant and increasingly prolonged blackouts. “We have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel. We have no more reserves,” the minister explained in a televised statement. “Cuba is open to anyone who wants to sell us fuel,” he added, without mentioning the strict energy embargo imposed by the United States, which is tightening its grip while simultaneously maintaining an open channel of negotiation with the Castroist regime, which is seeking some room to maneuver while the population struggles to survive.

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