Posts:
Having lived and worked in Bermuda for a decade or more, I feel a certain sympathy for an island that has spent half a century being blamed for things that mostly happened a thousand miles away. Bermuda has pink beaches, turquoise waters, oleanders, pastel-painted...
Who uses cocaine these days? Really? Once upon a time, the answer seemed reasonably straightforward. Rock stars who sing about it, movie stars, wealthy people at fashionable parties, and perhaps the gentleman who had been explaining his extraordinary business success...
By Armando Regil Velasco Argentina has become the most important economic experiment in Latin America. The issue is not only whether President Javier Milei can reduce inflation or balance the budget. The strategic question is whether a democratic government can...
By Armando Regil Velasco Ecuador has become one of Latin America’s most important testing grounds for whether a democratic state can recover territory and institutions infiltrated by transnational criminal organizations. Once considered one of the region’s safer...
Four prisoners died in a riot at Cotopaxi prison on October 22, according to Ecuavisa. Three were reportedly shot and a fourth appeared to have been strangled. The trouble began in areas designated for recently classified minimum and medium security persons deprived...
By Sean Doherty Ecuador’s militarized organized crime crackdown on gangs has failed to translate into a sustained reduction in violence. Three years in, President Daniel Noboa’s government is now making tentative moves toward a more holistic approach while at the same...
By Kevin Koenig In 2013, in a drab downtown Houston, Texas hotel conference room, the Ecuadorian government held a briefing for energy investors on the “incredible opportunity” that oil blocks in the country’s southern Amazon represented. But the scene outside said...
Once upon a time, a young man of humble upbringing discovered that his father was a prince, and that royal blood had been flowing through his veins all along. In a story by the Brothers Grimm, the truth might have been revealed by an enchanted mirror, a talking frog...
The Cornell 7 story that has been roiling the media in the US reached my screen in Cuenca with most of the verdict apparently a foregone conclusion. The media story included seven fraternity brothers, a young woman, booze, illegal drugs, a gang rape, and a posh...
By Sarah Birke A story is a story until it isn’t. That is the case with El Salvador. After President Nayib Bukele was first elected in 2019, there was a flurry of interest that lasted several years, focused on his crackdown on crime and his consolidation of power,...
By Timnit Gebru and Emily M. Bender It’s been a busy few months for AI hype. At the end of April, Anthropic claimed that its model Claude Mythos is better at finding software vulnerabilities than most security experts. Then we had the OpenAI–Hugging Face hacking...
By Stephanie H. Murray On a cloudy evening in June, after a leisurely dinner with an old friend, I told her I’d better call an Uber and pulled out my little black brick of a phone. “What is that?” she asked. It’s a Light Phone, I explained. A dumbphone, essentially....
Most mornings in Cuenca I drink my coffee, listen to the dogs on the corner sharing the latest canine gossip, and wonder why two presidents on two different continents have both decided that soldiers in the streets are the answer to everything. Trump talks about...
By Louis Bourgeois Perhaps one of the things I enjoy most about turning 74 is that the preoccupations of my youth and middle age have fallen away. Our mission in this life is to give our highest creative gifts to the world.I have found that this endeavor comes much...
By Carlos H Brandt S. Latin America is seeing growing military activity by the United States. Under the umbrella of the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition (ACCC), launched by President Donald Trump in March, US forces are carrying out strikes on vessels suspected of...
On January 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a 32-year-old registered nurse living in Duxbury, Massachusetts, killed her three children. Cora was five, Dawson was three and Callan was eight months old. Clancy strangled them with exercise bands in the basement of the family...
By Andrew M. Leonard On Thursday, U.S. SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan met with the Colombian and Ecuadorian defense ministers in San Lorenzo, Ecuador. The trio agreed on a plan to significantly expand their military cooperation along the Ecuador-Colombia...
Charlie Larga, or the collective of writers who use that name, seems to have been born around 1950, when the population of the United States was about 154 million. By 2020 it had more than doubled. The population of the world did even better, rising from approximately...
By the Editorial Staff The government of Daniel Noboa, through a ministerial agreement, has allowed U.S. soldiers and contractors to enter Ecuador without a visa, even if they are not working on security operations. For several years now, Ecuador has been experiencing...
The trade war between the United States and Canada has reached the stage at which mediation may no longer be sufficient. What they really need is a marriage guidance counsellor. The two countries have been together for more than two centuries. They share the world’s...
