Tractors swarm across Iowa’s cornfields. Farmers are rushing the harvest before rains arrive and ruin their season. Chip Hoffman is among the lucky ones. He has already gathered nearly the entire crop from the family farm, which spans several dozen hectares. It’s Wednesday morning and the 66-year-old farmer is helping his older brother position a hopper to unload grain from the truck into the silo. “These are hard times. Fuel, insurance, even machinery repairs have gone up and they’re extremely expensive,” says Chip. He blames tariffs and the war with Iran for the surge in inflation and the squeeze on profit margins that has hit Iowa’s farmers.

Seguir leyendo

The U.S. midterm elections come after aggressive efforts by both Democrats and Republicans to redraw district maps in their favor, a practice known as gerrymandering.

Seguir leyendo

The ad opens with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas, seated at a desk, apparently rewriting the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament. “In the beginning,” Talarico says, hunched over as he writes, “God was nonbinary. And was not Christian. And God said: ‘Let there be six genders’; and there were.”

Seguir leyendo

The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) neither forgets nor forgives. On its official website it hosts a microsite called “Justice for Kiki” dedicated to agent Enrique Camarena, who was killed in Guadalajara in February 1985. In the welcome message for the memorial, the DEA names Rafael Caro Quintero as the principal perpetrator of the kidnapping, torture and murder of its most famous agent, describing him as “a cartel kingpin who unleashed violence, destruction, and death.” The “Narco of narcos” is back in the headlines as he negotiates a deal that could lead him to plead guilty for events that took place 41 years ago. The story of this drug trafficker — one of the founders of the powerful Guadalajara Cartel in the 1980s — could end with an image far removed from the terrifying legend that surrounds Mexican kingpins of that era: a 74-year-old, battered man with a head full of gray hair, asking forgiveness for his sins before a jury in the U.S. Federal Court in Brooklyn.

Seguir leyendo

For decades, lithium has been the most coveted element in energy storage. It has been called “white gold,” a label that has brought major problems, including soaring prices, fragile supply chains and a geopolitical dependence that worries both governments and industry. Enter sodium: abundant, cheap and a major promise for a more sustainable energy revolution.

Seguir leyendo

The recyclability factor

When we talk about more sustainable batteries it’s important to ask how their recycling works. “[Sodium batteries] are much easier to recycle, but also much less interesting from an economic perspective,” says Jon Ajuria of CIC energiGUNE. They typically contain fewer high-value metals, so technologically there is less need to recover materials for second use. Paradoxically, that also means recovering less money from recycling. “This makes it especially important to design batteries from the outset to be easy to disassemble and recycle,” says Professor José Luis Tirado, although Ajuria says policies that truly promote recycling will be essential.

“This is a story about the family that sustains you when all your other family ties break,” says Julián Delgado Lopera, a 38-year-old trans writer from Bogotá, Colombia. His latest novel, Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You (2026), is a finalist for the National Book Award, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States.

Seguir leyendo

Mikey Madison burst onto the scene, won an Oscar and disappeared. Just a couple of seasons ago, the 27-year-old Los Angeles actress was everywhere in Hollywood. After a long awards campaign in which Demi Moore seemed poised to triumph at every ceremony, the Oscars delivered a surprise. Madison, still virtually unknown to the wider public, took home the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Anora, in which she played a sex worker in a gritty portrayal far removed from Pretty Woman and other fairy tales.

Seguir leyendo

Studio Ghibli took shape in 1984 when Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata made the film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, based on a manga by Miyazaki. A year later, they founded the studio with the support of producer Toshio Suzuki, and in early 2026 the Princess of Asturias Foundation announced it had awarded Studio Ghibli the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. The jury justified the award thus: “Employing a highly imaginative artisanal process, they have created universal stories brimming with sensitivity and humanistic values: friendship, empathy and tolerance, as well as respect for people and nature. The studio’s films transcend generations and borders, and serve as a reference for the challenges of globalized society and the protection of the environment.”

Seguir leyendo

Sitting in the suite of an upmarket hotel with an iced latte in hand, Paul Banks (Essex, 48) shows few visible aftereffects of the intoxicated lifestyle that nearly sent him to the other side. The Interpol singer looks happy in middle age. His band, which shone in early-2000s New York amid the post-punk revival, is now enjoying a second youth, lifted up by a generation that once again reveres the archetype of the tormented indie figure à la Ian Curtis, with whom Banks has long been compared.

Seguir leyendo

Three years after the start of the war in Gaza, thousands of families still do not know what happened to their loved ones. Some vanished beneath buildings bombed by Israel; others remain unaccounted for. The destruction of territory, the displacement of millions of people and the lack of resources to recover and identify remains make it increasingly difficult to reconstruct their stories. The longer time goes by, the greater the risk of losing the evidence that could lead to them.

Seguir leyendo

Ricardo Almanza was 25 when he was arrested. On Thursday, when he walked out of the Preventive Detention Center in the San Mateo Xalpa neighborhood of southern Mexico City, he was 49.

Seguir leyendo

The scandal over alleged U.S. interference in security operations in the Mexican state of Chihuahua has taken another turn. It was not two but four CIA agents who took part in an April anti-drug operation in the community of El Pinal, in the municipality of Morelos, Chihuahua.

Seguir leyendo

Paulina Montesinos met a man named Baruc, an Italian in his thirties with an attractive profile, on the dating app Bumble. After they matched, their story moved quickly: they chatted for days, went out on a few dates and soon he started showing strong affection and lavish gestures. “I’ve met the perfect man,” she thought. He also presented himself as vulnerable, neurodivergent and with an intense past that aroused deep empathy in Montesinos.

Seguir leyendo

Citadel is one of the most visited shopping centers in Los Angeles. But in these lean times, few customers browse its clothing, bag and shoe stores. On this hot October afternoon, Rocío López is here, treating herself to “a luxury” amid the cuts her family has made to blunt the impact every time they fill the car’s tank or do the grocery shopping. The pressure on her finances became clearer with her latest tax return: she and her husband were shocked to find they owed $8,000 to the IRS.

Seguir leyendo

Humanity has never been closer to self-destruction. That is the warning of the Doomsday Clock, an initiative the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists updates each year to alert the public to threats facing the planet. It is now only 85 seconds to midnight—the symbol of total annihilation—because of the climate emergency, the rise of artificial intelligence and wars threatening millions of people. Moreover, amid a surge in militarism, the world’s most powerful countries have accelerated an arms race to expand and modernize their nuclear arsenals, which is why the Doomsday Clock was first unveiled in 1947.

Seguir leyendo

More than four million Latinos have turned 18 since the last midterm elections in 2022 and will be able to vote for the first time in the midterms on November 3. For years, Latino advocacy groups have pointed to the community’s growing political potential, noting that every 30 seconds, a Latino comes of age in the United States.

Seguir leyendo

In October 2023, as the initial shock of Hamas’s attack was giving way to the realization that it had been the greatest security failure in Israel’s seven decades of statehood, few believed that Benjamin Netanyahu would still be prime minister three years later. Fewer still thought that a country used to broad coalitions and early elections — having gone to the polls on average every 2.4 years between 1996 and the last election in 2022 — would complete a full parliamentary term this time. And fewer still imagined both things happening at once: that after four years of controversy and war, Netanyahu would enter the final stretch of the election campaign, with Israelis due to vote on Tuesday, less popular and less supported than before, yet still with a realistic chance of remaining in power. “I will not surrender,” reads one campaign poster bearing his image.

Seguir leyendo

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and 12 Democratic members of Congress on Thursday asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain the alleged unequal treatment by his main platforms (Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp) of the campaigns of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and far-right Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who are facing off Sunday in the second round of Brazil’s presidential election. The final stretch of the campaign, tense amid polls predicting a technical tie, has been marked by alleged technical errors at Meta that have generally harmed the leftist leader.

Seguir leyendo

The magic of cinema is made in the most unexpected places. In an industrial park on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, past small woods and residential neighborhoods, several gray warehouses hide eagles, castles, monsters and mice. You wouldn’t guess it, but there sits Laika which, alongside the British studio Aardman, is the most famous film studio specialized in stop motion animation.

Seguir leyendo

2026 has not been a good year for Meta. On Wednesday, a judge in New Mexico ordered the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to pay a fine of about $25 billion after finding it guilty of misleading Facebook users about its data privacy policies.

Seguir leyendo