Police on the streets of Medellín.NATALIA PEDRAZA BRAVO

29 tourist deaths trigger alarm bells in Medellín 

In 2024, there has been one death every 6 days in the Colombian city, compared to one every 10 days in 2023. At least half of those killed have been Americans

29 muertes de turistas encienden las alarmas en Medellín

Jules Ownby
Bogotá, 24 June 2024

On Thursday morning, Matthew Watson Croulet got into a cab in Medellín. He was disoriented, remembering nothing but the name of his hotel, according to the police report. The driver took him to the tourist neighborhood of El Poblado and dropped him off. When the 25-year-old American entered his hotel, the staff noted that he looked drugged. It was clear he was not well. Concerned, they called an ambulance. Watson, meanwhile, went up to his room where he was found dead at 9.25 am.

Lisbon, a city dying from its own success

 

Tuk-tuks parked in Camões square await the arrival of tourists in Lisbon.

HORACIO VILLALOBOS 

Lisbon, a city dying from its own success

A traditional mix of authenticity, melancholy, rusticity and modernity, the Portuguese capital has become a mecca for international tourism. But it has paid the price in the form of gentrification and the loss of its essence

Lisboa muere de éxito

TEREIXA CONSTENLA

MAY 29, 2024 - 13:34 COT

The symbol of Lisbon, romanticism aside, is the tuk-tuk. There are those with tigers on the roof, with plastic floral decoration, painted bubblegum pink, or disguised as a streetcar: any element that helps to stand out among the tide of tricycles ready to show thousands of tourists the five, 10, 15 or 20 things they should not miss in the Portuguese capital. The streetcar dominates on postcards and magnets, but the tuk-tuk has taken over the streets. When the two meet on the steep, narrow streets that climb up to the castle of São Jorge, historic collisions sometimes occur. The streetcars are rigid transports, incapable of deviating a millimeter from their route, while the tuk-tuks go at a brisk pace, often flouting traffic regulations to facilitate a good photograph and giving their passengers that frivolous, holiday-like feeling that they are in a carefree republic where everyone does what he or she wants. And so, without realizing it,Lisbon has joined the club of charismatic cities that now only make visitors happy.

Japan’s tourism is a victim of its own success

Tourists take photos on the Mount Fuji Big Dream Bridge in Japan, which has been blocked by the authorities due to excessive crowds.FRANCK ROBICHON (EFE

Japan’s tourism is a victim of its own success 

Faced with the arrival of 33 million travelers taking advantage of the weak yen, the country is taking measures to curb visitor numbers

Japón quiere visitantes, pero no tantos: el país declara la guerra al turismo de masas

MONIQUE Z. VIGNEAULT

Madrid - JUN 24, 2024 - 10:22 

In a far cry from the isolationist Samurai era, the Land of the Rising Sun has become a victim of its own success when it comes to receiving visitors. A destination that was once considered off the map for the majority of tourists due to its remoteness and the language barrier, Japan has managed to multiply its tourist figures in 2023, making a quantum leap from three to 25 million tourists compared to 2022, according to data from the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO). And this tourist tsunami is expected to become even more overwhelming in 2024: the country has already welcomed around 12 million visitors and expects this figure to reach 33 million by December, surpassing 2019′s record of 32 million.

For hundreds of thousands of years, the woolly rhinoceros thrived in this landscape. The climate and human hunting pushed it to extinction

Humans and climate change drove the woolly rhino to extinction

Of the more than 60 species of megafauna that existed during the last ice age, only eight remain and most are in critical danger of disappearing

Miguel Angel Cruado

19 June 2024

It was what the military calls an encircling maneuver. After 2.5 million years thriving throughout Eurasia, the woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) retreated further and further east and further and further north, as they fled the unfavorable climate. The species was then finished off by Neanderthals and modern humans. In the end, when the Ice Age had passed and the planet was entering the present era, only a few remained in the extreme northeast of Siberia. They did not make it across the Bering Strait to America; they became extinct earlier. Now, the modeling of that retreat has made it possible to apportion the blame: climatic swings created their deathbed and human hunting put the nail in the coffin. The authors of the new study believe that four of the five remaining rhino species are also on the same highway to extinction. But they have a few ways out left.

Chimpanzees take their own antibiotics

Chimpanzees eat at least a dozen plants for their medicinal, not nutritional, value. In the picture, one of the studied chimpanzees eats fruits of 'F. exasperate.'ELODIE FREYMANN

Chimpanzees take their own antibiotics

Chemical analysis of several plants ingested only in specific instances show that they inhibit the development of pathogenic strains of bacteria such as ‘E. coli’

Miguel Ángel Criado21 June 2024

A few weeks ago, it was learned that researchers had seen an orangutan applying a poultice with leaves from a medicinal plant to a serious wound on its face. Now, thousands of miles away, on another continent, it has been revealed that another great ape — the chimpanzee — uses a range of plants, from leaves to tree bark, to treat its ailments. The analysis of these plants, some commonly found in traditional medicine, has shown that most have antimicrobial properties, while a third have anti-inflammatory properties. The authors of the work believe that great apes may one day help humans discover new drugs.

Elephants address one another with name-like calls

 

An elephant with two calves in Kenya.GEORGE WITTEMYER

Elephants address one another with name-like calls

New research has shown that the species use individual vocalizations to call specific members of the herd, which go beyond mere imitations of the addressee

MIGUEL ÁNGEL CRIADO

JUN 10, 2024 - 11:31 COT

Elephants don’t just trumpet. That sharp sound, like that of a trumpet, could be compared to a human’s cry to alert or warn others. But elephants also emit a range of low-frequency harmonic sounds, such as murmurs, that are specific to each animal. Now, assisted by an artificial intelligence system, a group of researchers has demonstrated that elephants use specific sounds to call each member, as if they were calling them by name.

 

Emma D’Arcy in ‘House of the Dragon’ and Morfydd Clark in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’

‘Rings of Power’ vs ‘House of the Dragon’: Which show is winning the popularity battle?

Audience and social media data give a sense of the results of the confrontation between the two epic fantasies

NATALIA MARCOS

Madrid, 3 November 2022

It wasn’t a battle, but it was. It wasn’t, because there didn’t have to be a victor and a loser – both could have triumphed (and lost). But the simultaneous release of House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power inevitably pitted them against one another. Now that the voyages back to Middle Earth and to Westeros have ended, and the first seasons are over, which has won in terms of popularity.

Suzanne Collins

Author Suzanne Collins announces fifth Hunger Games book

Sunrise on the Reaping, to be published on 18 March 2025, set 24 years before original Hunger Games novel

Gloria Oladipo

6 June 2024

Inspired by an 18th-century Scottish philosopher and the modern scourge of misinformation, Suzanne Collins is returning to the ravaged, post-apocalyptic land of Panem for a new Hunger Games novel.

Marina Abramović’s shocking Rhythm 0 performance shows why we still cannot trust people in power

This article is more than 8 months old

In 1974, Marina Abramović dared an audience to use chains, lipstick and knives on her body – and their willingness to abuse her revealed frightening truths about misogyny

Katy Hesse

Monday 25 September 2025

If you walk into the Royal Academy in London today, you’ll be confronted by a table. Set up like an altar, and draped in a white cloth, it has on it 69 objects. Some are associated with pleasure – a glass, a candle, a rose, a hairbrush, a mirror, a comb, a lipstick. Others administer pain – a gun, a bullet, chains, an axe, a saw, an array of sharp knives.

Aerial views of the mansion in Mallorca, Spain, featured in the final season of 'The Crown.'

The villa featured in ‘The Crown’ is located in Mallorca, Spain, and can be rented for €60,000 

The mansion, where the Princess of Wales once vacationed in real life, recreates the Al-Fayed family property in Saint-Tropez in the show’s final season

Lucía Bohórquez

Palma, 6 January 2924

Wearing a short red dress, Diana of Wales climbs the stone steps of a staircase that runs from a small private jetty to the entrance of a majestic villa with a yellow facade. Accompanied by her sons, William and Harry, the princess greets Mohamed Al-Fayed, who opens his arms to her as her children splash in a pool built on the edge of a cliff with the immense blue Mediterranean stretching into the horizon. The Al-Fayed family’s summer home in Saint-Tropez figures prominently in the first episodes of the sixth and final season of the hit show The Crown, which fictionalizes the life of Queen Elizabeth II. The splendorous villa, christened The Yellow Castle, is not actually in France, but rather in Mallorca, Spain, where Princess Diana of Wales had spent some summer days during her youth, before she married then-Prince Charles.

Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner at the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills (California).KEVIN MAZUR/VF23 (WIREIMAGE FOR VANITY FAIR

Kendall and Kylie Jenner’s vacation in Mallorca: Beer, walks and sunsets

The two little sisters of the Kardashian clan spent a few leisure days on the Spanish island on a megayacht with their mother, Kris Jenner

Lucía Bohorquez

Palma, 5 June 2024

A short viral video showing a couple of bottles of beer made by Spanish brand  put the millions of followers of sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner on track about the destination of their last vacation. The youngest siblings of the Kardashian clan spent a few days off sailing the waters of Spain’s Balearic Islands aboard the megayacht Rising Sun, owned by the tycoon David Geffen, who often plays host to Hollywood stars and other celebrities. It’s been a few days of sun and beach for the famous sisters, their mother Kris Jenner and her partner, Corey Gamble. The siblings left clues about their location last week in several photographs taken in between sunsets as they posed on the deck of the yacht. Between the two of them, they have almost 700 million followers on Instagram. The model Kendall Jenner, 28, has 293 million, and the entrepreneur Kylie Jenner, 26, has 399 million.

 

Mark Zuckerberg during his appearance in the U.S. Senate, in Washington, in January.THE WASHINGTON POST (GETTY IMAGES)

Mallorca, the destination chosen by Mark Zuckerberg to debut his $300 million megayacht

The Facebook founder gifted himself the vessel, which has a tennis court and helicopter, for his 40th birthday. The businessman is now sailing through the waters of the Balearic island with his family to celebrate his father’s 70th

LUCÍA BOHÓRQUEZ

Palma - JUN 19, 2024 - 05:29 COT

The group of megayachts that have been sailing the waters of Spain’s Balearic Islands since the arrival of good weather has welcomed a new member. While last year it was Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who debuted his $500-million toy called Koru, this year, it was tech entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg who is sailing the Mediterranean with his latest acquisition: a megayacht called Launchpad. The 118-meter-long vessel, made by Feadship from the Netherlands, is valued at $300 million. The luxury yacht was completed last March and was delivered to Zuckerberg on May 14, the same day that the Meta founder and owner turned 40.

Harry Collett, Emma D'Arcy and Oscar Eskinazi, in a scene from the second season of 'House of the Dragon.'THEO WHITEMAN

War comes to ‘House of the Dragon’: ‘It’s a story about two women and it will continue to be until the end’

The second season of the ‘Game of Thrones’ spinoff delves into the confrontation between two sides of the Targaryen house. ‘We want to reward the audience for sticking with us,’ says showrunner Ryan Condal

NATALIA MARCOS
Paris, 18 June 2024

The Dance of Dragons is about to begin. On one side, the Black Council, with Rhaenyra claiming her place on the Iron Throne. On the other, the Green Council, with Aegon on the throne, backed by his mother, Alicent Hightower. The rifts within the very broken Targaryen family have turned into gaping divides, accentuated by painful deaths. Tragedy struck at the end of the first season of House of the Dragon, the series that has returned to the phenomenon that was Game of Thrones to tell the past of this saga of dragon riders. The Dance of Dragons, the civil war in the Targaryen, is imminent and inevitable.

 

Kevin Costner in Cannes en 2024.STEPHANE CARDINALE - 

‘The high point of my life was not a movie’: Kevin Costner, a classic heartthrob in search of his last chance

The big star of the 1980s and 1990s hit rock bottom with ‘Waterworld’ and has been trying to climb back up for the past 30 years. His latest effort is called ‘Horizon: An American Saga’

EVA GÜIMIL
11 June 2024

In The Big Chill (1983), he was meant to rub shoulders with Glenn Close and Kevin Kline, but ended up being a corpse that only appears on screen for a few seconds. Just six years later,Kevin Costner was Hollywood’s biggest star and his name made any movie a success. The Bodyguard, A Perfect World, JFK and Dances with Wolves were back-to-back hits. But this period ended with Waterworld (1995), when the public decided they did not want to see him drinking his own urine or breathing with gills. That monumental failure pushed him off the throne, and he has never regained the spot.

The Charagua Manuscripts

THE CHARAGUAMANUSCRIPTS

Over decades, a Spanish priest, Lucho Roma, abused hundreds of Indigenous girls in Bolivia. He photographed them, recorded them on video and documented his crimes in writing. This is the second diary of a pedophile priest that EL PAÍS has managed to access. On this occasion, however, the Society of Jesus carried out investigations that confirmed the crimes. But then, after Roma's death in 2019, they kept them in a drawer, where they remained unpublished. Until today

Julio Núñez

Madrid, 20 June 2024

When the Bolivian ecclesiastical investigators entered the room belonging to the Spanish Jesuit priest Luis María Roma Pedrosa, they found photographs of dozens of half-naked girls in every corner: between the pages of his books, in his personal agenda and on the hard drive of his computer. Many of them were cut out by their silhouettes; others appeared as deformed compositions, like collages, in which the faces, legs and arms of different girls were combined.

Donald Sutherland was an irreplaceable aristocrat of cinema

 

Donald Shuterland

Donald Sutherland was an irreplaceable aristocrat of cinema

The late actor was a commanding and versatile presence on the big screen, perfecting everything from villainy to sensuality in films such as Don’t Look Now and Klute

Peter Bradshaw

Thursday 20 June 2024

Donald Sutherland was an utterly unique actor and irreplaceable star: possessed of a distinctive leonine handsomeness that the white beard of his latter years only made more majestic: watchful, cerebral, charismatic, with a refinement to his screen acting technique comparable perhaps only to Paul Scofield and his Canadian background (together with his early stage training and experience in England and Scotland) gave his American roles a certain touch of Anglo-international class. Sutherland was commanding and exacting, he gave each of his roles and films something special: he addressed his co-stars and the camera itself from a position of strength.

Donald Sutherland, Don’t Look Now and Hunger Games actor, dies aged 88

 

Donald Shutherkand as Casanova

Donald Sutherland, Don’t Look Now and Hunger Games actor, dies aged 88

The prolific actor appeared in more than 190 films and TV shows and was a vocal anti-war activist

Andrew Pulver

Thursday 20 June 2024

Donald Sutherland, whose acting career spanned six decades and included starring in such highly acclaimed films as Don’t Look Now, M*A*S*H and The Hunger Games, has died aged 88.

Donald Sutherland dies at 88

 

Actor Donald Sutherland receives the Donostia award during the 67th San Sebastián Film Festival on September 26, 2019.CARLOS ALVAREZ

Actor Donald Sutherland dies at 88

Kiefer Sutherland, the son of the performer known for a career spanning more than six decades and his recent role in the ‘Hunger Games’ saga, announced his death in a message on social media

Five essential novels by Paul Auste

Paul Auster, at his home in Brooklyn on December 29, 2006.TIMOTHY FADEK (GETTY IMAGES)

Five essential novels by Paul Auster

New York City was a fundamental character in the work of the American writer, whose plots played with the idea of chance and spoke of love and friendship

ANDREA AGUILAR

1 May 2024

He published his first book of poems half a century ago and his first essay, The Invention of Solitude, in 1982, but it was with his novels throughout that decade and the following ones that the Paul Auster phenomenon took off. His stay in France in his youth marked his literary vision, but few authors are so deeply associated with a city, with a place as diverse and legendary as New York, as Auster was. The author, who died on Tuesday at the age of 77, devoted his work to New York — and not just his novels but also essays like the one he wrote about the poet and writer Stephen Crane, or films like Smoke. Chance, loneliness, love, melancholy, fear, madness and friendship are essential elements in Auster’s stories, in which there are nods to great works of literature and meta-literary games, but without digressing or scaring away the reader.

Paul Auster / 1947-2024

Paul Auster during a promotional photo session in Venice, Italy on September 2, 1996.

LEONARDO CENDAMO (LEONARDO CENDAMO)

Paul Auster 

(1947-2024)

Paul Auster

The novelist and film director Paul Auster at his home in Brooklyn, New York.TIMOTHY FADEK

Barbara Kingsolver, pictured in London, when she received the Women’s Prize for Fiction for 'Demon Copperhead,' in June 2023.DAVID LEVENSON (GETTY IMAGES)

Barbara Kingsolver, writer: ‘You buy a book to take a break, not to be taught a lesson’

In ‘Demon Copperhead’ the American author builds a saga about the impoverished Appalachian region and the opioid crisis. Inspired by Charles Dickens, the book won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver / Review

Top 10 books of eco-fiction

Barbara Kingsolver / ‘Middlemarch is about everything, for every person, at every age’

Andrea Aguilar
Madrid, 4 May 2024

She was going to be a pianist, but ended up changing course, studying biology and ecology instead. She was in her thirties when she published her first novel. And, since then, Barbara Kingsolver, 69, has published 17 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her best-known works include The Poisonwood Bible (1998) — the story about a family of American missionaries in the Congo, where she lived for several years as a child (her father worked there as a doctor) — and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), about a project that she undertook with her husband and daughters. For a year, they only fed themselves with the food obtained from either their farm or their own neighborhood.

90 years of Donald Duck: Why Disney’s grumpiest character has been such a success

 

90 years of Donald Duck: Why Disney’s grumpiest character has been such a succes

EL PAÍS enters Walt Disney Studios to dive into the archives where millions of scripts, posters and objects from its films and characters are kept, looking specifically for the famous cartoon figure, which made its first appearance nine decades ago

Ariel Dorfman, co-author of ‘How to Read Donald Duck’ / ‘Disney wanted children who would compete and embrace a fierce individualism’

María Porcel
Los Angeles, 24 May 2024

When Walt Disney first thought of Donald Duck, the world’s most famous animation studio was just a small workshop for creating drawings. It was 1931 and Donald’s name was mentioned in an illustrated book called The Adventures of Mickey Mouse; there was also a duck on the back cover. It was three years before Donald, having become a character, appeared in a short film called The Wise Little Hen. He was going to be a secondary character, but it soon became clear that his comic vision made him the star. From then on, he appeared in more shorts, books, cartoons... and the rest is history.

The cover of the most recent Spanish-language edition of 'How to Read Donald Duck'.SIGLO VEINTIUNO EDITORES

Ariel Dorfman, co-author of ‘How to Read Donald Duck’: ‘Disney wanted children who would compete and embrace a fierce individualism’

On the 100th anniversary of the entertainment company, the Chilean writer analyzes the validity of his 1972 work, which points out how iconic cartoon characters have been utilized as means of American propaganda

90 years of Donald Duck: Why Disney’s grumpiest character has been such a success

Caio Ruvenal
Madrid, 29 October 2023

The Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman in Madrid circa 2009, when he staged his play 'Purgatory.'ULY MARTÍN

How to Read Donald Duck (1972) is a study by Chilean author Ariel Dorfman and Belgian sociologist Armand Mattelart about how Disney comics have transcended their literary value to become symbols. The work deals with decolonial thought and anti-imperialist discourse; it was published at a time when Latin America was seeking to economically and politically emancipate itself from the United States.