Trump escalates strain on Venezuelan drug commerce. And, decide pauses shutdown layoffs

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Immediately’s high tales

President Trump confirmed yesterday that he has licensed the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela. He portrayed it as a part of a strain marketing campaign towards the nation’s drug commerce. On Tuesday, the U.S. navy struck a fifth boat that the Trump administration stated was carrying medicine. The U.S. has additionally constructed up forces within the Caribbean in a means that raises questions on whether or not this goes past interrupting the drug commerce and will probably be about regime change.

• 🎧 The president says the deal with Venezuela is not only about medicine. He stated that it is usually concerning the variety of Venezuelan migrants who’ve entered the U.S. in recent times. The strain between Trump and the nation dates again to his first administration when he tried to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, NPR’s Franco Ordoñez tells Up First. Trump expended appreciable political capital opposing Maduro, but he stays in energy. Some specialists imagine that Trump might even see this as unfinished enterprise. The White Home is defending these actions by saying Trump campaigned on a promise to tackle cartels and cease the move of medicine into the U.S., Ordoñez says.

A federal decide in San Francisco has briefly halted the Trump administration’s newest wave of layoffs within the federal workforce. This comes because the federal authorities shutdown has crossed the two-week mark. U.S. District Choose Susan Illston, who’s overseeing the case, expressed that she believes these layoffs are most likely unlawful.

• 🎧 Unions representing federal staff argue that the administration is illegally utilizing the shutdown to interact in politically pushed reductions in drive. NPR’s Andrea Hsu says the unions mentioned how, on high of a tumultuous yr for federal staff, those that have to go to HR employees for vital paperwork like info on well being care can not as a result of they have been furloughed. The federal government’s legal professional, Elizabeth Hedges, tried to persuade the decide that she should not be listening to the case in any respect as a result of federal worker personnel points are heard by a specific company, which is at the moment shut down.
• ➡️ This is what the shutdown means for you and your a part of the nation.

Army troops obtained their paychecks yesterday as a consequence of a last-minute intervention by the Trump administration. Over the weekend, Trump introduced the administration would transfer $6.5 billion in unused analysis funds to make payroll. Nevertheless, the repair did not resolve the underlying anxiousness felt by navy households because the shutdown continues.

• 🎧 Unemployment is a matter for navy spouses, since they transfer across the U.S. typically, says Steve Walsh with NPR community station WHRO. The Biden administration inspired spouses to hunt employment with the federal authorities, together with positions at their native bases. Now, these spouses are usually not getting paid together with different federal staff, which means their households are lacking out on a paycheck. Walsh says a number of sources be aware that this shutdown feels totally different from earlier ones. Army households are involved that the subsequent paycheck, which is due on the finish of the month, could not arrive on time.

Deep dive

A gasoline pipeline development crew in Wyncote, Pa. replaces older pipes which are vulnerable to leak climate-heating methane. Initiatives like this are rising gasoline buyer payments, at the same time as wholesale gasoline costs are comparatively low.

Jeff Brady/NPR

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Jeff Brady/NPR

Pure gasoline costs are comparatively low at the moment, however residential gasoline utility charges are nearing document highs. That development is being felt throughout the US. Costs are up as a result of prospects are paying extra for infrastructure, development, utility prices and taxes than they’re for the precise gasoline. The cash being spent on infrastructure, which can final for a few years, comes at a time when scientists say the world will shift away from fossil fuels, together with pure gasoline. Local weather activists at the moment are questioning why gasoline utilities are making this funding.

• 💸 Gasoline corporations normally do not revenue from the gasoline itself; as an alternative, utilities make their cash by constructing new infrastructure, like pipelines. Regulators enable corporations to get well the price, plus earnings, by prospects’ payments.
• 💸 Pipeline alternative applications have contributed to modifications in payments over the previous 40 years. Final yr, lower than a 3rd of buyer payments went to gasoline, whereas about two-thirds went to the opposite prices.
• 💸 Gasoline utilities level out that one purpose gasoline makes up a smaller share of payments is that it is comparatively low cost. Pure gasoline stays the most affordable technique to warmth properties within the winter, in accordance with the Vitality Info Administration. In the meantime, development prices have elevated.
• 💸 Activists are urging state utility regulators to contemplate cheaper alternate options to changing previous gasoline pipelines. This consists of repairing the strains or shutting down sections of gasoline pipelines and switching properties to electrical home equipment.

Study extra about what’s impacting the worth in your month-to-month gasoline invoice.

Image present

Pedro Tolomeo Rojas, generally known as Monky, enters his studio en Lima on October 21, 2025. Monky was a pioneer within the making of the posters that publicize cumbia concert events and at the moment are thought of chicha artwork. These colourful posters nonetheless cowl the gray metropolis of Lima and different cities promoting upcoming concert events. Some say the florescent colours had been impressed by the the clothes worn by the ladies within the indigenous communities.

Ivan Kashinsky

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Ivan Kashinsky

Cumbia Throughout Latin America is a visible report masking the individuals, locations and cultures that preserve this music style alive in six nations.

In Peru, the time period “chicha” can confer with a sacred fermented corn drink or to Peruvian cumbia music. It has additionally been used derogatorily to mock immigrant tradition in Lima, notably in the course of the mass migrations of Indigenous Andean individuals to the town within the twentieth century. In terms of music, the time period has turn out to be controversial. Alfredo Villar, an creator and artwork historian, says chicha “is the most complex moment of Peruvian identity, because it mixes everything — from its deepest roots to its most extreme and complex external influences. This is why it is so difficult to define … Chicha will always surprise you.” Study extra concerning the complexity of how cumbia has developed in Peru and see pictures of its affect within the nation. You can even learn the article in Spanish.

3 issues to know earlier than you go

Natalie Grabow of the US completes the 2025 Ironman World Championship Girls’s Race on Oct. 11, 2025, in Kailua Kona, Hawaii.

Ezra Shaw/Getty Photographs for Ironman

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Ezra Shaw/Getty Photographs for Ironman

1. Natalie Grabow, an 80-year-old grandmother, is being hailed as an inspiration after changing into the oldest girl to complete the grueling Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.
2. LitBox, a merchandising machine promoting books written by native authors within the nation’s capital, is offering hope to the literary neighborhood as writers battle with cuts to arts funding.
3. Greetings from the Rhône Glacier! This week, NPR’s Far-Flung Postcards collection takes us to the place scientists are conducting exams that embrace releasing shiny pink dye to see how briskly a glacier is melting.

This article was edited by Obed Manuel.