The former president of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, was arrested tonight at his residence in Asunción, a few hours after the Senate removed him from office in a political trial for “malfeasance in his duties.” The Public Prosecutor's Office is investigating whether Peña committed the crimes of breach of trust, self-dealing, and influence peddling in connection with the collapse of Ueno Bank, a conglomerate in which he held shares until March 2025 and where millions in funds from state pension funds ended up during his term.

The only condition that Jaume Duch Guillot (Barcelona, 1962) set for President Salvador Illa when he proposed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to him was to change the order of the job title. That is to say, changing from Minister of Foreign Action and European Union of Catalonia to Minister of European Union and Foreign Action of Catalonia. Europe at the forefront. At a decisive and urgent moment for the continent, Duch reviews current international affairs and the role that Catalonia can play. The conversation takes place weeks after having met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, on a trip led by the president, Salvador Illa, and the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni.

“A Jewish and Arab government, together” was the demand repeated last Saturday at one of the demonstrations in Jerusalem after the elections. On the street, some Israelis were asking that Arab parties be able to participate in the future government. In Parliament, this possibility remains the main obstacle to ousting Benjamin Netanyahu from power.

If the midterm elections were an opportunity to curb Donald Trump's "bad ideas" – in the words of American diplomat Daniel Fried – the Democratic victory could be read as a counterbalance to the U.S. president's fluctuations in his positioning regarding Ukraine. And it will be, in part, but possibly not as much as the Ukrainians would like because the New York tycoon will continue to have the final word on foreign affairs. However, paradoxically, an internally weakened Trump could also use foreign policy to project power and seek victories that could also reinforce him internally.

After the shock of the electoral defeat, Donald Trump finally reacts and opts for a hardline approach. The US president has announced that he is replacing White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and in her place promotes the hardliner Stephen Miller. The hitherto deputy chief of the presidential cabinet is one of the most extremist figures within the administration, the mastermind behind the campaign for mass deportations and the transformation of ICE into the tycoon's armed wing.

Belgium hardens its anti-immigration stance. After ten hours of heated debate, the Belgian Parliament has approved a law that will allow the police to conduct raids on homes if they suspect undocumented immigrants may be living there. The controversial measure will require a court order and will only be applied in cases where immigrants have previously ignored a deportation order. The visits will be permitted between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m., and the police officer will be able to request the assistance of a locksmith.

"I am an owl," joked Pablo Hernández de Cos in a session of the Círculo Ecuestre de Barcelona colloquium series held in April 2024. The question invited him to take a stance between the two positions traditionally known in monetary policy: the hawk, which opts for more restrictive policies, and the dove, which opts for looser ones. De Cos, however, dodged the dilemma and opted to mimic the response of the person he aspires to have as his predecessor, Christine Lagarde: "President Lagarde was asked this question and said she was neither a hawk nor a dove, that we are all owls.".

The trickle of bomb threats against planes in Europe continues, and the wave has now spread to the media, with warnings issued to several Irish media outlets and a "security threat" at the British broadcaster Sky News. This Thursday, the bomb warnings affected about 30 flights, and a dozen more threats have continued to keep European flights and airports on alert this Friday, with alerts on planes in France, Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Czech Republic.

When I visited the women's wing of Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul a few days ago, I did not know what I would find. I had an official permit from the Taliban to enter, but the prison officials made me wait for nearly an hour at the gate. Before gaining access, they warned me that I could only report on the sewing and literacy classes they hold for the inmates, and the nursery inside the prison for their children.

On the 109th anniversary of the October Revolution, Russian communists are facing one of the most delicate moments in their history. The Kremlin has banned several of the party's commemorative events for this Saturday because they fear that the rallies will overflow and turn into protests against Vladimir Putin. This is what happened a month ago in Moscow, when a group of young activists took advantage of a demonstration by the old guard to shout “Down with the Tsar!” and there were about sixty arrests.

Europe has experienced this week two waves of bomb threats on planes and at airports, and also a second cyberattack against supermarkets in several countries where freezers have turned into ovens. No one has claimed responsibility for these incidents and no authority dares to point the finger at anyone. But considering the context in which it is happening, it is inevitable that the idea that Moscow could be behind it will arise. We speak about this with Fredrik Wesslau, an expert analyst on security at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), one of Europe's leading think tanks in foreign policy and security.

The electoral defeat in the midterm elections has placed the Republican Party before a mirror it had long avoided looking into: the reality beyond the White House. The fierce loyalty that Donald Trump has demanded and imposed upon his own has led to a blindness regarding what has really been happening these past two years in the United States. The immediate reaction amidst the shock has been to intone a mea culpa while pointing at the president and thinking about how to prevent the necrosis from spreading. Not even 48 hours have passed, and there have already been the first resignations and also leaks regarding possible departures, such as that of Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

The hangover from the Republican victory in last Tuesday's US legislative elections has caused sharp falls among some of the main technology companies listed on the US stock exchange. One of the main ones affected by the drops is the tycoon Elon Musk, who is estimated to have lost more than 27 billion euros.

Support for the State of Israel, in the midst of the genocide in Gaza, has been one of the issues that weighed on the resounding defeat of Donald Trump and the Republican Party in Tuesday's elections in the United States. American public opinion has changed in these three years, and the defense of Israel is no longer a cross-party consensus policy within the bipartisan system. Democratic President Joe Biden, a staunch defender of Israel, had said and repeated that "if Israel did not exist, we would have to invent it," and the support of Trump's favorite son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for Israel and his investments in the Israeli military industry is well known. But on Tuesday, candidates critical of Benjamin Netanyahu's government and the Zionist project won in key states. And now, the Democratic majority in both chambers could cause the White House's support for Tel Aviv to change.

Gadi Eisenkot is gaining ground in the race to be tasked with forming Israel's next government. The former Chief of Staff of the Israeli army has garnered 67 recommendations, compared to Benjamin Netanyahu's 46, placing him in the lead during presidential consultations. The options for Eisenkot have increased after the ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism announced that it will not recommend any candidate to President Isaac Herzog, and the two Arab factions expressed their support for the former general. The endorsements, however, do not yet guarantee his investiture.

Reports about planes that have received bomb threats in Europe have been constant throughout this Thursday morning. According to the Reuters agency count, there have been at least 27 planes affected, in an episode that adds to the one already experienced on Tuesday. There have been alerts on planes that were flying and also on some that were on the runways of various airports. From low-cost carriers and also from flag airlines. All with different routes, but all within European territory. For now, there is no news that any of these warnings were a real threat. And no authority has dared to point out who may be behind it.

The world has been watching the midterm elections in the United States. The defeat of Donald Trump and the Republican Party fills the front pages of the international press, some with very original headlines.

At least 600,000 people demonstrated this Thursday throughout France, according to data from the Interior Ministry, against the rising cost of living and the deterioration of public services. Within the framework of a general strike called by the main French unions, which place the participation figure at 1.6 million French people, citizens have once again returned to the streets in one of the forerunner states of the mobilizations sweeping across Europe, and which mostly share the loss of purchasing power and the cutting of social items in public budgets as motives for protest.

The real stress test for the Democrats will begin in January, once the new Congress has been constituted. The new representatives who will take their seats in both chambers will have two priorities. The first, more immediate, will be to initiate investigations against Trump and his circle. The second, more complicated, will be to prevent the party from ending up immersed in an internal war between the progressive wing and the moderate sector, more linked to the leadership. After the rejection of Trump has united the different souls of the party, there is a risk that power will separate them and the opportunity to build a political project of its own for 2028 will be lost.

Oleksandra Matviichuk (Kyiv, 1983) has been chosen for the ARA newspaper's International Award "for her courageous defense of human rights and the freedoms of the Ukrainian people in the face of Russian military aggression," according to the justification for the award, which in its first edition last year went to the Greek-Swedish writer Theodor Kallifatides. While back then the figure of a Mediterranean migrant welcomed and integrated into the continental north, and turned into a literary and humanist benchmark, was highlighted, now the award goes to a prominent figure and the Center for Civil Liberties that she directs. Oleksandra Matviichuk and the aforementioned center have been—and are—crucial in the Ukrainian struggle for self-defense, a struggle in which all of Europe's democratic destiny is at stake.