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Electoral clout of sexist attitudes tests its weight in the contest between Paloma Valencia and Abelardo de la Espriella

Abelardo de la Espriella and Paloma Valencia.

The far-right candidate is navigating treacherous ground to reach the second round of the Colombian presidential election. Abelardo de la Espriella, who is vying for second place in the polls with Uribista candidate Paloma Valencia, gave two interviews — one on radio and one on television — that have dominated the debate due to his misogynistic remarks. On the radio program Piso 8, he claimed that he gained many female votes because of the size of his genitals and asked the reporter present to zoom in on a photo that highlighted them. On television, he called a veteran journalist ignorant when she asked him about a comment the criminal lawyer had made years earlier: “Ethics has nothing to do with the law.” Journalists and politicians came out in defense of women and criticized the lawyer, making sexism a central issue in the electoral arena. This presents an opportunity for Valencia to gain ground, but De la Espriella also has a path to maintain his lead in the polls.

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Massive protest against cuts to public universities in Argentina: ‘It is our future as a society, as a people’

Enormous banners erected across Plaza de Mayo and the surrounding avenues in downtown Buenos Aires repeated the same slogan: “Milei, comply with the law.” Hundreds of thousands of people chanted it this Tuesday as they marched to demand that Argentina’s hardline government halt its cuts to public universities and release the funds approved by Congress. “The funding of the national university system is in a critical state, and the main cause is that the national government is failing to comply with the basic democratic and constitutional rule: to uphold the university funding law, which establishes a minimum level of resources that ensures the normal functioning of the system,” denounced academic authorities, faculty members and students in a joint statement read at the main protest event. The administration of Javier Milei labeled the federal university march an “opposition act” and reiterated that it will not release the requested funds.

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© Rodrigo Abd (AP)

Aerial view of the protest in Buenos Aires, this Tuesday.
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Trump’s attack on the International Criminal Court tests nations’ support for humanitarian justice

The political pressure exerted by the United States on the International Criminal Court (ICC), through sanctions imposed on eight of its judges and three prosecutors, as well as on the entities and NGOs that collaborate with them, is testing its very resilience. All individuals involved are carrying on with their work, even though the degree of interference from Washington goes so far as to prevent them from even using a credit card. For a court like this one, without its own police force, the only way to defend itself is through its legitimacy and the support of other countries.

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© CONTACTO vía Europa Press (CONTACTO vía Europa Press)

Several protesters in the Philippines display banners showing former President Rodrigo Duterte (left) and Senator Ronald dela Rosa behind bars, in a file photo.
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‘51st State’: The White House’s latest threatening taunt to Venezuela

An image of Venezuela with the American flag superimposed within its borders and two words: “51st State.” And eight minutes later, another tweet. A nine-second video showing Secretary of State Marco Rubio in January 2026 paraphrasing rapper Biggie Smalls — “If you don’t know, now you know” — with the New York mogul’s music playing in the background, after announcing the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Then the now-iconic image of Maduro inside an aircraft en route to New York is shown. And finally, Rubio again, dressed in the same gray Nike tracksuit as Maduro. They are memes, jokes, trolling. But the official White House account joked on Tuesday afternoon, without subtlety, about something profoundly serious: annexing Venezuela.

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© La Casa Blanca

A map published by the White House Tuesday.
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CNN report claims CIA ‘facilitated’ assassination of a Sinaloa Cartel operative in Mexico

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday denied that it was involved in the murder of a Sinaloa Cartel operative last March, as alleged in a CNN report. The media network claims that Francisco Beltrán, known as “El Payín,” did not die in an accident but was murdered, and that his death was “facilitated” by the CIA during a covert operation carried out in the State of Mexico, on the outskirts of Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), near the capital. The alleged assassination occurred in late March, when the car in which the cartel member was traveling exploded, also killing his driver.

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The accident in which Francisco Beltrán, “El Payín,” died in the State of Mexico on March 31.
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Trump proposes suspending the gasoline tax to avoid a political crisis over fuel prices

Gasoline has become Donald Trump’s Achilles’ heel. Fuel prices are a matter of national concern in a country where citizens often commute long distances to work and where cars, with their larger engines, tend to consume more fuel than elsewhere. The war in Iran has driven up oil prices, and the tension in the energy markets has spilled over to the pumps, where gasoline has become more than 50% more expensive since the start of the conflict. Against this backdrop, the U.S. president announced this week that he will propose temporarily suspending the federal gasoline tax. The measure has been described by members of the Democratic opposition as a publicity stunt to divert attention from the rising cost of living for Americans. Other legislators from both parties support the proposal to ease the financial burden on citizens.

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© AARON SCHWARTZ / POOL (EFE)

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday during a dinner honoring the police.
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Efforts to control hantavirus outbreak reach global scale while cases in Spain and France fuel uncertainty

High-Level Isolation Unit at the Gómez Ulla Military Hospital in Madrid.

With the disembarkation of the Antarctic cruise ship MV Hondius progressing and with reports that there were no people with symptoms on board, experts and health authorities were confident during the early hours of Monday that the health crisis created by the hantavirus outbreak was entering a final phase that could be long —quarantines last up to 42 days— but without cause for major concern.

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From Del Rio to Laredo: The journey of seven migrants who suffocated on a Union Pacific train in Texas

From a Union Pacific train, a migrant woman texted a relative on Saturday. The railway car she was in felt very hot, she wrote. That day, the temperature in San Antonio, Texas, where the train was traveling, reached nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). Authorities estimate that the heat index inside the shipping containers could have reached as high as 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). San Antonio police were alerted to the woman’s text messages, but they were unable to locate the train.

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© Gabriel V. Cardenas (REUTERS)

Immigration agents on the Rio Grande perimeter, after the discovery of the bodies in Laredo, Texas, on May 11.
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The summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, in five key points: From Taiwan to AI and rare earths

Ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s imminent visit to Beijing, China’s Foreign Ministry has dusted off an old Soviet Cold War concept: “peaceful coexistence.” This is the current state of affairs between the two superpowers: “The world is too small for China and the United States to be at odds,” argues a propaganda video, laden with meaning, released Monday.

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© Mark Schiefelbein (AP)

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meeting in Busan, South Korea, last October.
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Dancing cows and tigers hatching from eggs: The impact of AI-generated videos on children

YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are facing a flood of AI-generated content aimed at children. It’s easy and quick to create, and production is rampant. But it has the inherent flaws of AI-generated video: visual inconsistencies, narrative gaps, and a lack of realism. While it’s still too early for comprehensive studies, experts have already raised concerns about the impact of these videos on children’s cognitive development.

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Images generated by artificial intelligence posted on social media.
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Why is electricity spotty and fuel so expensive in Africa’s largest oil-producing nation?

When the street siren sounded outside Mr. Kofi’s tailoring shop in Ikeja, Lagos, it meant only one thing: the grid was back. His team had been sitting in the dark for most of the day. They had run out of generator fuel. Mr. Kofi joked that NEPA — local shorthand for the long-defunct agency that once ran the national grid — must have known a visitor was coming, and that’s why they “brought back the light.” He has been running his tailoring business for 25 years. His shop sits in Band A, Nigeria’s highest-priority electricity zone, promised 20 hours of power a day under the tariff reform introduced in April 2024. The fuel to bridge the gaps now costs around ₦1,300 per liter — up from a national average of ₦1,034 in January, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics.

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© Sodiq Adelakun (REUTERS)

Drone view of an oil tanker anchored in Lagos in December 2025.
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A California mayor admits to having acted as an agent of the Chinese government

Eileen Wang, the now-former mayor of Arcadia, a city in the Los Angeles area, has resigned from office after federal prosecutors revealed that she agreed to plead guilty to acting illegally as an agent of the Chinese government within the United States. Her departure from the mayor’s office comes shortly before a planned summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

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© City of Arcadia - City Hall via ( via REUTERS)

Eileen Wang in Arcadia, California, on April 16, 2025.
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