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The promise of $1,000 in exchange for becoming one of Trump’s deportees: ‘I wanted to get out of detention, not out of the US’

2 May 2026 at 04:00

When Luis Andrés Monterroso López, 29, set foot on Guatemalan soil on December 19, 2025 — his first time back in three years — he was furious. Dressed in a gray jumpsuit and dark‑blue slippers, the standard uniform for migrants held in U.S. detention, he spoke to his mother on the phone while sitting outside the Guatemalan Air Force base where deportation flights land. “They don’t treat animals like this. I came back with my hands and feet shackled,” he told her, outraged.

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Andrés repairs the side mirror of a scooter in his auto repair shop in El Estoraque, in the village of Amatón, Quezada, Jutiapa, on March 13, 2026.

© Simona Carnino

José Andrés Monterroso López, deported from the United States on December 19, 2025, in the Guatemalan town of Amatón, on March 13, 2026.
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  • Colorado’s Tamale Act: Easing the financial strain on Latinos by legalizing homemade tacos Patricia Caro
    Tamales, tacos, burritos, pupusas… traditional Latin American food is now deeply woven into the culinary landscape of the United States. A fundamental part of each country’s culture and heritage, the recipes that Latinos pass down from generation to generation have not only helped them preserve their customs at home — they have also long served as a way for many migrants to make a living upon arriving in the United States. Necessity sharpens ingenuity, and when there is no money or resources to
     

Colorado’s Tamale Act: Easing the financial strain on Latinos by legalizing homemade tacos

2 May 2026 at 04:00

Tamales, tacos, burritos, pupusas… traditional Latin American food is now deeply woven into the culinary landscape of the United States. A fundamental part of each country’s culture and heritage, the recipes that Latinos pass down from generation to generation have not only helped them preserve their customs at home — they have also long served as a way for many migrants to make a living upon arriving in the United States. Necessity sharpens ingenuity, and when there is no money or resources to open formal businesses such as restaurants, sales move to the street, to home delivery, online, or to local markets.

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© Allen J. Schaben (Los Angeles Times vía Getty Images)

Taco stand in Playa Vista, California, in May 2024.
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  • The phantom fleet fueling Israel’s wars Andrés Mourenza
    On March 1 the Kimolos, an oil tanker flying the Marshall Islands flag and operated by a Greek shipping company, disappeared from radars while sailing south-southwest about 60 nautical miles off the Lebanese coast. Two days earlier, it had docked at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey. There, it had loaded approximately one million barrels of Azerbaijani crude oil at the BTC pipeline terminal, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea. For nearly four days, the tanker — which had declared t
     

The phantom fleet fueling Israel’s wars

2 May 2026 at 04:00

On March 1 the Kimolos, an oil tanker flying the Marshall Islands flag and operated by a Greek shipping company, disappeared from radars while sailing south-southwest about 60 nautical miles off the Lebanese coast. Two days earlier, it had docked at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey. There, it had loaded approximately one million barrels of Azerbaijani crude oil at the BTC pipeline terminal, which transports oil from the Caspian Sea. For nearly four days, the tanker — which had declared that it was heading to Port Said, Egypt — stopped transmitting its position to the Automatic Identification System (AIS), as it is required to do by maritime safety regulations. After those four days, according to the Global Fishing Watch tracking platform, it reappeared about 40 miles south of the spot where it had disappeared, only this time it was sailing north, back towards the port of Ceyhan. What happened during those days it had become a phantom ship?

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Left: route of the ‘Kimolos’ up to March 1, showing the point in which its AIS signals were turned off to conceal its destination. Right: Satellite image that locates the oil tanker in the port of Ashkelon, Israel.Satellite images in which the oil tanker ‘Nissos Ios’ is seen shipping crude oil in the BTC terminal of Ceyhan, Turkey on October 20 (left) and at the EAPC terminal fo the Ashkelon, Israel port on October 22 (right), despite having declared its destination as Port Said, Egypt.

© UCG/Universal Images/Getty

The Israeli port of Ashdod.
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  • Brazil and its 81 million debtors: a country full of families drowning in debt Naiara Galarraga Gortázar
    Signs that Brazil is a brutally unequal country are an everyday occurrence. This very week, the fact was unequivocally on display. While the percentage of indebted Brazilian families reached a new record at 80%, making its way into the electoral debate, the reaction of a judge to the fear of losing the extravagant privileges of the bureaucratic elite has left the public stunned. Not to mention, generated scandal. “Soon we won’t even be able to pay the bills,” complained the magistrate. Eva do Am
     

Brazil and its 81 million debtors: a country full of families drowning in debt

2 May 2026 at 04:00

Signs that Brazil is a brutally unequal country are an everyday occurrence. This very week, the fact was unequivocally on display. While the percentage of indebted Brazilian families reached a new record at 80%, making its way into the electoral debate, the reaction of a judge to the fear of losing the extravagant privileges of the bureaucratic elite has left the public stunned. Not to mention, generated scandal. “Soon we won’t even be able to pay the bills,” complained the magistrate. Eva do Amaral Coelho, who is white, went even further: “Soon, judges will be like those civil servants working under slave-like conditions.” Last month, Coelho earned about $18,000 in salary and bonuses. Her fellow citizens know it thanks to Brazil’s transparency laws.

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© Cris Faga (Getty Images)

Customers line up outside a Caixa bank location in São Paulo.

What to do with 30,000 gouged-out eyes? Writer David Toscana takes on the story of Basil II’s punishment of the Bulgarians 

2 May 2026 at 04:00
David Toscana, winner of the Alfaguara prize for novels, at the Manuela café in Madrid on April 8.

He was an engineer before he was a writer (although he’s more of a writer than an engineer). Mexican novelist David Toscana spent 10 years at companies like General Motors, Mattel (“Making Barbie dolls,” he says) and Coca-Cola. He worked as an engineer in the maquiladoras, those Mexican assembly plants along the U.S. border, where laborers put together parts that are received from around the world. This industry is part of the labyrinth that is globalized production.

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Penélope Cruz: ‘I would never let anyone silence me when it comes to speaking out against the brutal treatment of civilians and children’

2 May 2026 at 04:00

“While they were putting on my wig, I had a doctor on the phone who told me, ‘It looks like you have a brain aneurysm,’” says Penélope Cruz, 51, the actress who has starred in some of the most memorable scenes in cinema of recent decades, both in Spain and abroad.

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Styling:

Juan Cebrián

Make-up and hair:

Pablo Iglesias (NS Management) for Chanel.

Set design:

Virginia Sancho.

Production:

Cristina Serrano.

Photography assistants:

Marcos Jiménez and Mario Val.

Digital assistant:

Orlando Gutiérrez.

Styling assistants:

Paula Alcalde and Carmen Cruz.

Production assistant:

Marina Marco.

Nails:

Laura Hurtado

© Gorka Postigo (EL PAÍS)

Penélope Cruz wears a wool jacket, silk pants, and metal and crystal earrings from CHANEL’s Métiers d’art 2026 collection.

How Edwyn Collins survived two strokes, returned to music and is now retiring with honors

2 May 2026 at 04:00
Scottish musician Edwyn Collins in a recent promotional image.

Edwyn Collins’ retirement from the stage at age 66 has come two decades later than anyone could have imagined. In 2005, the Scottish musician survived two cerebral haemorrhages. He was left with aphasia, a disorder that affected his communication abilities, both in expressing himself and understanding information. He also suffered paralysis on the right side of his body, which disabled one arm, although he was able to walk again with the aid of a cane. According to doctors, the prospects for improvement were slim. Founder of Orange Juice, an emblematic post-punk band that was more influential than popular (their career, which began in the late 1970s, barely spanned five years), Collins later had a respectable solo career that peaked in 1994 with the success of his song “A Girl Like You.”

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Edwyn Collins has survived two cerebral haemorrhages.

The Tories: How to bring down the oldest political party on the planet

2 May 2026 at 04:00

Perhaps not many Europeans have ever envied Britain’s weather, but admiration for its institutions has been unwavering. The explanation is simple: over the past two centuries, Germany has lived under a monarchy, a republic, the Reich, a partition into two opposing regimes, and a federal model. France and Spain have been no less turbulent, and Italy, for a long stretch, did not even exist.

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© Carl Court ( Getty Images)

Nigel Farage, leader of Reform, poses with party candidates in Chigwell, on April 10.

Estel Blay Carreras, the scientist who will lead an Arctic expedition simulating a mission to Mars

2 May 2026 at 04:00

Estel Blay Carreras, 39, has dreamed of becoming an astronaut since childhood. More than half of girls who aspire to a career in science give up in adolescence, but that wasn’t the case for her. She turned a fantasy into a professional future. She studied aerospace science, earned a doctorate, and held several jobs. Today, Blay Carreras — who lives in a residential neighborhood of Spain’s Sitges with her family and two hamsters — greets us with a smile and wearing socks. She leads a seemingly conventional life, but in just over a year, she will be the next commander of a mission that will simulate an expedition to Mars on a remote Arctic island.

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© Lupe de la Vallina (EL PAÍS)

Estel Blay Carreras tries on her astronaut suit at home in Sitges.
Received — 1 May 2026 El País in English
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  • Techno utopia or AI nightmare? The problem with music made by machines Frankie Piza
    Last year, Exit From BIG D, a Detroit techno album from an unknown artist named Marcellus Young, attracted attention from leading electronic music forums. It was presented as a lost gem from 1994, a convincing story with an even more convincing sound. Even experts in the field were nearly taken in. Then the truth was revealed: Marcellus Young was AI. At this point, the questions shifted. Wasn’t this the ultimate and desired evolution of electronic music? Isn’t this what many have imagined and si
     

Techno utopia or AI nightmare? The problem with music made by machines

1 May 2026 at 19:04
Is this not the final form of electronic music?

Last year, Exit From BIG D, a Detroit techno album from an unknown artist named Marcellus Young, attracted attention from leading electronic music forums. It was presented as a lost gem from 1994, a convincing story with an even more convincing sound. Even experts in the field were nearly taken in. Then the truth was revealed: Marcellus Young was AI. At this point, the questions shifted. Wasn’t this the ultimate and desired evolution of electronic music? Isn’t this what many have imagined and simulated, made reality? Artificial, synthetic music, created for and by machines, the closure of a mythological circle.

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The invisible face of pregnancy and postpartum: one in every 16 women experiences serious depression

1 May 2026 at 17:08

Our collective imagination paints pregnancy and the postpartum period as an idyllic time, forever flush with happiness, no matter the circumstances. No other scenario is even considered. But reality is often much more complicated, its difficulties rendered invisible. There can be joy and excitement, but the period can also involve fits of crying with no apparent cause, sadness, anxiety and a feeling of emptiness that, on occasion, can be a precursor to serious mental health issues. A study published Thursday in The Lancet Psychiatry journal offers statistics related to serious depression in the peripartum period — which runs through pregnancy, and up to one year after childbirth — concluding that at least one in every 16 women suffers from major depressive disorder during that time. The most critical phase is two weeks after birth, during which there is the highest risk of experiencing the mental health condition.

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© Nasos Zovoilis (Getty Images)

A mother in a hospital with her newborn in her arms.

Frida Escobedo: ‘The accessibility of a museum is also about who feels represented’

1 May 2026 at 14:29
Frida Escobedo in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

On New York’s Fifth Avenue, Mexican architect Frida Escobedo spoke in her own language. It was a big deal. In a full auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an institution that for decades has embodied an idea of universality, Spanish became the vehicle for an intimate reflection on architecture, identity, and belonging.

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Frida Escobedo in New York, on April 24.Frida Escobedo in conversation with Laura Gonzáles on April 24 in New York.
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