
What’s behind the chaos in Ecuador?
CNN
Ecuador’s worsening security situation deteriorated further in spectacular fashion this week, with criminal groups seizing symbolic locations including a TV station and a university in a show of force against the government.
Ecuador’s worsening security situation deteriorated further in spectacular fashion this week, with gunmen armed with explosives storming a TV station during a live broadcast. The country has been rocked by blasts, police kidnappings and prison disturbances in a wave of violence authorities are struggling to contain. The immediate trigger was the prison escape of one of Ecuador’s most powerful drug lords but instability has been growing for years. Here’s what we know. Ecuador, home to the Galapagos islands and a tourist-friendly dollar economy, was once known as an “island of peace,” nestled between two of the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia. But the country’s deep ports have made it a key transit point for cocaine making its way to consumers in the United States and Europe. And its dollarized economy also makes it a strategic location for traffickers seeking to launder money. Ecuadorian gangs are working with foreign syndicates including Mexican cartels, Brazilian urban gangs and even Albanian mafia cells, fueling the ongoing conflict.

House Republican Leadership Chairwoman Elise Stefanik is criticizing Columbia University’s president over past comments that the congresswoman said are a potential violation of the Civil Rights Act, including her call to have an Arab person on the university board, as the university faces continued investigations into its handling of antisemitism on campus.

As a judge is poised to decide whether Bryan Kohberger can accept a plea deal that would allow him to avoid the death penalty in the 2022 killings of four Idaho college students, one victim’s father says he views the deal as a relief from the pain and spectacle of a trial, while two others say they feel blindsided and robbed of desperately sought-after answers in the killings of their daughters.

The debris arrives in the rockets’ wake: melted plastics, aluminum and pieces of blue adhesive. It all ends up stranded on the sands of Bagdad beach in northern Tamaulipas, Mexico, home to an endangered species of sea turtle. Just across the border lies Starbase, SpaceX’s launchpad and company town in what once was called Boca Chica, Texas.