Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Members of the military police special unit detain suspected drug dealers during a police operation against drug trafficking at the favela do Penha, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October 28, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Massive drug raid in Brazil, Five Republicans vote to scrap Brazil tariffs, Wildlife charity eyes duke’s estate, & More
64: A massive police raid targeting a drug-trafficking organization in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, yesterday has left at least 64 people dead, including four police officers. The state governor said it was the “biggest operation” in Rio’s history. More than 40 bodies were seen strewn on the streets of the Penha favela on Wednesday.
5: Five Republican senators crossed party lines to vote to end the Trump administration’s 50% tariff on Brazil. The resolution is unlikely to pass the House, but the vote signaled growing resistance in the Republican ranks to President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff and trade agenda.
750,000: Cuba evacuated 750,000 people before Hurricane Melissa made landfall on the Caribbean island on Wednesday. The storm only adds to a torrent of challenges for the communist-ruled country, which has faced economic collapse, frequent blackouts, and a mass exodus of its citizens. The category 5 storm has weakened to category 2 since wreaking havoc in Jamaica, which is still assessing the cost.
99.9%: Will the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates today? Futures markets this morning gave a 99.9% chance of a 25 basis-point cut (that’s 0.25 percentage points). This would be the second consecutive month of rate cuts. Trump has pushed the Fed for deeper and faster rate cuts than that.
£30 million: After seven centuries of family control, the son of a British duke is looking to sell his family’s estate in north-east England, and one of the interested buyers is… a wildlife charity. The Wildlife Trusts already bought the western part of the estate last year, but the plot thickens: it’s now looking to buy the remaining 3,839 hectares for £30 million ($40 million). The charity would try to conserve and rewild the area, which is rich with wildlife. Editor’s note: People outside the UK may wonder why we included this fascinating number – but GZERO’s Zac Weisz assures us it’s a real banger for his fellow Brits.South Korea's former first lady Kim Keon Hee, wife of impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol, arrives at a court to attend a hearing to review her arrest warrant requested by special prosecutors at the Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea August 12, 2025.
Hard Numbers: South Korea’s ex-first lady jailed, Mexico transfers cartel members to US, Europe threatens to re-sanction Iran, Poland rearms
800 million: South Korea sent Kim Keon Hee – the 52-year-old wife of former President Yoon Suk Yeol – to solitary confinement on Tuesday, after arresting her for stock manipulation, bribery, and election meddling. Prosecutors accused Kim of making over 800 million won ($580,000) by manipulating the stock price of local BMW dealer, Deutsch Motors. Her husband President Yoon was impeached and detained after he tried to impose martial law in December last year.
26: Mexican authorities extradited 26 suspected cartel members to the US, at the Department of Justice’s request on Tuesday. The move comes as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to crack down on cartels and drug smuggling. A similar transfer of 29 prisoners was made last February.
3: The E3 – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – threatened to reimpose previous sanctions on Iran at the end of this month unless Iran agrees to restart negotiations over its nuclear program. US-Iran nuclear talks were previously suspended after Israel and the US struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. Analysts observe that Iran faces some tough tradeoffs ahead.
$3.8 billion: Poland – which borders both Russia and Belarus – signed a $3.8 billion deal with the US on Wednesday to modernize its fleet of F-16 fighter jets. The deal is part of a broader rearmament push in the country, which was launched after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro addresses supporters during a march marking the first anniversary of his victory in the disputed July 28 presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela July 28, 2025.
Hard Numbers: US doubles Maduro’s bounty, Trump appoints new Fed member, Modi and Lula combine forces, & more
$50 million: The US doubled its bounty to $50 million for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest. The reward is linked to a 2020 case at the US Department of Justice that accused Maduro and other Venezuelan officials of narco-terrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking. Venezuela has dismissed the move as “political propaganda.”
7: US President Donald Trump will nominate Stephen Miran, a tariff advocate and critic of current Fed chair Jay Powell, to temporarily join the seven-member Federal Reserve board, a move analysts say could be positioning Miran to take over for Powell once his term is up in February of 2026. Miran is known for supporting the goal of structurally weakening the US dollar – more on that here.
50: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hopped on a call to discuss a unified response to Trump’s tariffs, which currently stand at 50% against Brazil and 25% against India. The call comes the day after Lula announced he would try to rally BRICS countries to push back on the US leader’s trade policy.
8: Check m8. OpenAI’s model beat Elon Musk’s Grok, and Google’s Gemini model came after a three day chess tournament this week. The competition took place between eight AI companies' normal AI products – rather than models designed for chess – testing their reasoning skills at a task they are still improving at.Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Matteo Salvini meets with journalists following the CIPESS decision to approve the construction of the Messina Strait Bridge, Italy, on August 7, 2025.
Hard Numbers: Italy builds bridge over troubled waters, Ghanaian helicopter crash kills two ministers, Portuguese cop stuffs coke in animal skins, & More
13.5 billion: After decades of planning, the Italian government has approved a €13.5 billion ($15.6 billion) project to build the world’s longest suspension bridge, connecting Sicily to mainland Italy. The Ponte Messina will span one of the most seismically active areas in the Mediterranean, but designers say it will be able to withstand earthquakes. The target date for completion is 2033.
8: A helicopter crash in the central Ashanti region of Ghana has killed eight people including two government ministers: Edward Omane Boamah and Ibrahim Murtala Muhammed. The cause of the crash was unclear, but local farmers near the crash site reported foggy conditions as the helicopter flew overhead.
1.5: What’s that smell in Portugal? Oh it’s just some cocaine in rotting animal skins. A police captain and an accomplice are under arrest in Portugal on suspicion of importing 1.5 tons of the drug by hiding it in untanned hides imported from Latin America. The plot thickens: captain was himself involved in a sting operation against a drug ring two years ago.
1 of 3: South African prosecutors have withdrawn charges against one of the three men accused of murdering two Black women last year and feeding their bodies to pigs. The case has exacerbated racial tensions in the country, especially in rural areas. The trial will resume on Oct. 6.
74: Myanmar’s figurehead President Myint Swe died on Thursday at the age of 74. Swe had held the role ever since the military coup of 2021, repeatedly endorsing extensions of the country’s state of emergency to ensure the military junta could hold power.
Spiritual Counsel: Azucar para siempre! Nuyorican pianist and band leader Eddie Palmieri, a giant of Latin jazz and one of the pioneers of the genre that came to be called salsa, died Wednesday at the age of 88. Thank you for all of the music, all of the magic, and all of sugar, Eddie. Que en paz descanses.
CBP agents stand by a plane that's believed to have carried Mexican drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, who were arrested in El Paso, Texas.
Sinaloa cartel leaders arrested
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the leader and co-founder of the notorious Sinaloa cartel was arrested on Thursday in El Paso, Texas, along with Joaquin Guzmán Lopez, the son of imprisoned cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The two men are considered to be among the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, and this is a major victory for US law enforcement agencies that have hunted figures like Zambada for years.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the men face “multiple charges” for leading the cartel’s criminal operations, which include “its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
The DEA has directly attributed the deadly synthetic drug crisis in the US, involving substances like fentanyl and methamphetamine, to the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels and their associates.
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Garland said.
A congressional report earlier this year pointed to fentanyl as the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45. The opioid crisis is a major political issue in the US and has emerged as a key topic in the 2024 presidential election.
Though these arrests are a win for the Justice Department, experts doubt they will put a major dent in the drug trade — and suggest the arrests could lead to a spike in violence due to infighting that was already prevalent.Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, candidate for the Presidency of Mexico by Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition shows a electoral ballot before casting their vote at a polling booth during the 2024 Mexico s general election on June 2, 2024,
Mexico elects first woman president — will she bring change?
Claudia Sheinbaum made history on Sunday, with preliminary results showing she won roughly 60% of the vote to become the first woman elected Mexico’s president. Her victory was never really in doubt, given the support she enjoyed from outgoing and immensely popular President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. But that same popularity means it will be hard for Mexico’s first female president to emerge from her predecessor’s shadow.
Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term, but AMLO has pitched Sheinbaum as his loyal successor. He’s promised she will carry on the work of what he calls Mexico’s populist “Fourth Transformation” (the first three being Mexican Independence in 1821, the civil war of 1858-1861, and the revolution 1910-1917).
Her vote more than doubled the runner-up’s, and her party took 251 seats in the lower house and 60 in the Senate, which should give her so-called “qualified” majorities in both houses alongside coalition partners. In other words, she can change the constitution, and perhaps enact some of the controversial changes AMLO failed to implement.
When the fiesta dies down at Morena headquarters, Sheinbaum will face demands from voters to tackle cartel violence, the country’s historically high murder rate, and immigration – problems she has slim chances of resolving. On the latter issue, she’s at the mercy of Washington, as folks crossing her southern border with Guatemala are trying to get to the United States, not stay in Mexico. She won’t have a clear picture of the policy environment she can act within until the gringos vote in November.
And she’ll need to break away from AMLO’s “hugs not bullets” policy, which has utterly failed to protect Mexicans, especially women and girls, from the predations of drug traffickers. The trick will be doing so without implicitly criticizing her former boss.
“The challenge is to follow Lopez Obrador, manage an extremely challenging security situation, ensure macroeconomic fundamentals remain sound and potentially deal with Trump,” said Eurasia Group analyst Daniel Kerner, who was at Sheinbaum HQ on Sunday. “And if she tries to do the constitutional reforms, economic and social stability will suffer.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a press conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan May 28, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Multinationals stay in Russia with love, Narcos play squid game in Greece, Biden helps Cuban entrepreneurs, PNG suffers landslide amid political earthquake
2,100: More than 2,100 international firms have stayed in Russia since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked a raft of EU and US sanctions, according to a study by the Kyiv School of Economics. Why stay? Some are reluctant to leave a market of 140 million people while others are hamstrung by Kremlin rules that impose huge costs on any companies from “unfriendly” countries that try to leave. Still, despite those obstacles, some 1,600 multinationals have done so.
240: The international drug trade is putting cephalopods behind the eight ball now, it seems, as Greek port authorities in Piraeus found 240 pounds of cocaine in a shipment of frozen squid this week. Across Europe, authorities are making record cocaine busts as soaring production from Latin America finds its way into the EU, now the world’s number one market for the drug.
11,000: The Biden administration has announced measures to help the roughly 11,000 small businesses that have formed in Cuba since the impoverished island’s communist dictatorship eased restrictions in 2021. The White House said it hopes the move, which includes access to US bank accounts, will help “stem irregular migration.” In a staggering exodus during 2022 and 2023, nearly 5% of Cuba’s population fled, mostly to the US. Despite the small business move, there’s no sign of further easing of the six-decade-old US embargo against the island.
2,000: A landslide in Papua New Guinea has killed as many as 2,000 people, according to local authorities. The disaster comes amid political turmoil in which Prime Minister James Marape has recently suffered a mass defection from his party and will likely face a no-confidence vote.
Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa looks on as his wife Lavinia Valbonesi (not pictured) takes part in a referendum that asks voters to support mostly security-related questions to fight rising violence, in Guayaquil, Ecuador April 21, 2024.
Ecuador votes to get tough on drugs
Ecuadorians showed overwhelming support for a government crackdown on drug-related violence in referendums this weekend in what could become a regional trend. Quito won support for joint police-military patrols, extradition of wanted criminals, tighter gun control, and tougher punishments for murder and drug trafficking, among other measures.
Cocaine boom: Ecuador had long maintained a reputation for tranquility despite being sandwiched between the major cocaine production hubs of Colombia and Peru. Coke is in the midst of a major resurgence, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, with seven straight years of growing use.
Consequently, traffickers are trying to ship more blow than ever to the US, and increasingly doing so through Ecuador’s conveniently located ports. With the drugs come weapons, money, and violence, tearing at the social fabric. In August of last year, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated after receiving death threats from gang leader Jose Adolfo Macias, who later escaped prison.
Iron fist: Ecuador is far from alone in experiencing a surge in drug violence, and leaders in Latin America are looking at Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “mano dura” (iron fist) crackdown as an example.
“Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa took from the Bukele playbook in realizing that citizens are open to more draconian type measures,” says Eurasia Group associate Yael Sternberg, though she emphasized that the actual policies and problems are different.
If it pays off for Noboa like it has for Bukele, Sternberg says Chile is the country to watch next, with a growing crime issue and elections next year.