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Received — 25 October 2026 ⏭ El País - English

María Corina Machado returns to Venezuela

25 October 2026 at 16:46

After nearly 10 months abroad, María Corina Machado, the anti-Chavista opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has returned to Venezuela. “I am here, with you,” the opposition figure wrote on social media on Sunday morning.

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© Vente Venezuela (EFE)

Supporters welcome María Corina Machado this Sunday at the Divina Pastora Shrine in Barquisimeto, Venezuela.

Steering clear of the Postal Service and delivering ballots in person: Voter fears ahead of the midterms

25 October 2026 at 04:00
Lidia Sánchez drops her ballot into the Los Angeles Registrar's main office drop box on October 16.

Lidia Sánchez, a Nicaraguan immigrant who arrived in California as a child, had two items on her agenda on a warm October morning: a routine doctor’s appointment and personally dropping off her ballot at an election office drop box in Los Angeles. She had always voted by mail, but this time she feared her ballot might not reach its destination and that her vote would not be counted.

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Lidia Sanchez at the Los Angeles County Registrar's main office.Gloria Tiscareño casts her ballot for the midterm election in Los Angeles.Official election drop box in Los Angeles, California.Teresa Burns after dropping her ballot at the Los Angeles Central Office drop box on October 16.

Ukraine, at an impasse: Besieged by Putin and abandoned by Trump

25 October 2026 at 04:00
A woman in front of a building split in two by a Russian bombardment in Kramatorsk.

Dawn breaks under rainfall in Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian stronghold under Russian threat on the eastern front. What makes it harder for drones to fly becomes an opportunity for Russian infantry to try to gain ground. These are, in any case, small skirmishes. EL PAÍS reports this from a military command post in Kramatorsk based on images captured by drones on October 15. The front line shows hardly any change and the war is stuck in a complex tangle as the fifth anniversary of the full-scale invasion approaches. Kyiv has also recently suffered serious setbacks: at home, with attacks across around 20 of its regions, and internationally, the blow represented by the United States’ overt alignment with Russia.

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Ukrainian soldiers in Kramatorsk, October 18. A building in Kramatorsk that was hit by a Russian strike last week.A group of women harvesting potatoes in a village in the southern region of Kherson, October 17.A woman on a street in Kramatorsk, a city under constant Russian bombardment.A vehicle on a road with anti-drone protection between the eastern regions of Donetsk and Kharkiv.

Bunkers, ransoms and threats of mutilation: Peru’s kidnapping surge

25 October 2026 at 04:00

It looked like any other house in a residential neighborhood in the city of Trujillo, in northern Peru: a three-story structure, with iron railings and varnished wooden doors. But inside, it concealed a cell.

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© Cedida

Iván Díaz, in a photograph taken in Trujillo.

The mothers of Bukele’s prisoners, caught between sadness and hope: ‘Even if they are released, their lives have been destroyed’

25 October 2026 at 04:00

Within the first two months of the state of emergency in El Salvador imposed by President Nayib Bukele back in 2022, two of Gladis Álvarez’s sons were arrested and accused of being gang associates. Since then, the 53-year-old woman’s life has fallen apart. “There were eight of us in my family. Now, I’m the only one left,” Álvarez laments. “Since my sons were arrested, our lives have been destroyed in a terrible way,” she adds.

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© Jose Cabezas (REUTERS)

The mothers of people imprisoned in El Salvador stage a protest ahead of Mother's Day in San Salvador on May 9, 2026. 

Kathleen Belew, historian: ‘Trump is using and benefiting from the white power movement’

25 October 2026 at 04:00

Patrick Crusius, a withdrawn 21-year-old, drove nine hours from the outskirts of Dallas to El Paso, on the U.S.–Mexico border. After driving all night, he spent another hour behind the wheel with no fixed destination until he parked outside a Walmart. Shortly after 10:30 a.m., he posted a manifesto on an online forum warning of “a Hispanic invasion of Texas” and pulled a semiautomatic rifle from his trunk. Crusius killed 23 people and wounded 22 others, most of Mexican origin. That August 3, 2019 attack was the deadliest racist attack suffered by the Latino community on U.S. soil.

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© Brian McConkey (Brian McConkey)

Kathleen Belew, a historian and expert on white supremacy, in a photo courtesy of her publisher.

Peter Thiel, the tech oligarch who believes in the Antichrist

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When Hulk Hogan sued the tabloid Gawker in 2016 for publishing a sexual video without his consent, no one gave him a chance of winning. But Hogan won the case and was awarded $140 million in damages, which led to the online outlet’s demise. Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s most shadowy figures, tipped the legal battle: he secretly funded Hogan’s lawyers. He wanted revenge on Gawker because it had ridiculed him for years and outed him as gay.

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‘They should leave us alone and go away’: Indigenous leaders protest against nature conservation projects that are forcing them off their land

25 October 2026 at 04:00

Mirihai Ngilepoi knows what it means that his cattle can’t graze in his Tanzanian village. A carbon-trading and emissions-reduction program restricts the use of his land. Across the Indian Ocean, JA Shivu has witnessed the expulsion of thousands of families. In India, to make room for a tiger reserve, they’ve been kicked off their ancestral lands.

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© Diego Menjíbar

JA Shivu and JK Thimma, leaders of the Jenu Kuruba people of India, in Nairobi.

Squeezing the clouds: Aboard the small plane making it rain in drought-stricken Honduras

25 October 2026 at 04:00
Juan Carlos Díaz, technical operator of the cloud stimulation program, on a flight over Honduras on October 8.

The rivers near the capital look brown from an altitude of 3,600 meters. It rained lightly in Honduras a week ago, and some of the murky water is returning to the Humaya river, one of many parched streams that 20 years ago did not show such arid scenes. Aboard the King Air C90, Víctor Torres, a Mexican pilot and member of Startup Renaissance, enlarges a patch of dark clouds near Comayagua on the screen and receives a clear instruction from the meteorologist on the ground: a dart-in-a-bullseye emoji. “Hold on,” he warns.

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A river rising after precipitation generated by the cloud stimulation program.A satellite map of the areas of Honduran territory intervened during the flight day.The small plane used for seeding on the runway of Coronel Hernán Acosta Mejía Air Base, in Tegucigalpa.Suyapa Alvarenga pours rain-collected water from a barrel into her sink in Tegucigalpa on October 7.

Zoe Kazan takes on her grandfather’s legacy in ‘East of Eden’

25 October 2026 at 04:00

For the past two decades, Zoe Kazan, 43, has built a low-key career, moving between independent films and more ambitious projects. The former include Ruby Sparks (2012), a comedy she also wrote and produced. The latter include hits such as She Said (2022), in which she starred alongside Carey Mulligan as one of the New York Times reporters who exposed Harvey Weinstein’s abuses.

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© Rob Kim (WireImage)

Zoe Kazan at the New York premiere of the Netflix series 'East of Eden' at the Plaza Hotel, New York, September 30, 2026.

Robert Reich: ‘Capitalism is compatible with democracy as long as democracy is in the driver’s seat’

24 October 2026 at 15:00

Robert Reich is one of the most tireless critics of American economics and politics. Millions of people turn to his Substack essays and social media videos to make sense of the complexities of the moment. He is an academic turned influencer, and at 80 he does it with an effectiveness, rigor and simplicity that the savviest millennials and Gen Zers would envy.

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© Kyle Parker (Inequality Media Civic Action)

Robert Reich, secretary of labor in Bill Clinton's administration, in September 2025.
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