“As I write this, we are well into the second power outage of the day in this part of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city. We have experienced daily power outages since Russia began missile attacks.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is making it easier for refugees fleeing Russia’s war on Ukraine to come to the United States from Europe while trying to shut down an informal route through northern Mexico that has emerged in recent weeks.

El Salvador joined Nicaragua in abstaining from the U.N. General Assembly’s condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine. As El Salvador prepares to issue a billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin Bonds, Bukele implies the Russia clampdown underscores a key use-case for the cryptocurrency: sanctions evasion.

The government on Saturday issued a statement that blamed the U.S. for the current war in Ukraine. It referred to “U.S. efforts to continue the progressive expansion of NATO” towards Russia’s borders as the main provocation for its attacks on Ukraine.

If the United States wants Russia to keep its hands off Ukraine, or wants any nation to respect its neighbors, it must first practice what it commands.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — In his first visit to Latin America, Iran’s hardline president on Monday met with his Venezuelan counterpart and declared that both countries have “a common enemy,” alluding to the United States, before signing a series of cooperation agreements.

Coming a day after a pro-government May Day demonstration in the capital city of Havana on Friday, Cubans in the municipality of Caimanera, near the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, marched in protest against the government.

Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador’s nods to Russia and China are often read as a jealousy game in the U.S. bilateral relationship. Regional leaders claim sovereignty and multipolarity as their mantra. Experts say that non-ideological short-term calculus and a search for impunity are instead guiding their actions.

With the country no longer isolated as it was under Bolsonaro, who engaged with only a few international pariahs, President Lula da Silva has endangered Brazil’s return to the international scene by supporting Russian actions in Ukraine.

Monthly inflation was 7.7 percent in March, up from 6.5 percent in the same month in 2022. Analysts project annual inflation will come in at 110 percent in 2023, one of the highest rates in the world.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was in the Chinese financial hub of Shanghai on Thursday as he looks to boost ties and win political support for attempts to mediate the conflict in Ukraine.

Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has almost 4,000 low-orbit satellites across the skies, connecting people in remote corners of the Amazon. The lightweight, high-speed internet system has also proved a new and valuable tool for Brazil’s illegal miners.

With thousands of Bolsonaro supporters either in jail or under investigation for plotting against democracy in Brazil, the nation’s attention has shifted to the defense of the Amazon rainforest and its Indigenous peoples and the policy shifts under President Lula.

The Conversation asked Karen Musalo, an expert on refugee law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, to explain what the Biden administration’s new asylum rule change entails, what its impact will be and why it is so controversial.

A wrap-up of this week’s most important and interesting Latino news and views from around the world and the across the internet.

This week’s wrap-up comes to you from the cozy confines of quarantine, as senior editor Hector Luis Alamo has managed to catch COVID for only the second time this year.

In an attempt to shift negative attention away from the problematic and troubled agency, the National Border Patrol Council is deploying social media posts to spread misinformation and blatant lies.

Almost $9 billion in bad debt and a half-century of high electricity prices hang in the balance in Puerto Rico.

Colombia wants the Biden administration to grant temporary legal status to its citizens now living in the United States, noting its own efforts to address regional migration by hosting two million Venezuelans who fled their homes.

The first of a weekly column by senior editor Hector Luis Alamo in which he gives an overview of the most interesting and important things he’s read, seen, or heard during the past week, providing his thoughts on them.

My grandma votes Republican because she believes in three things: money, strength, and the rule of law. Whether the Republican Party stands for any of those things is beside the point because, to her, and to a lot of other people still, the Republicans represent those values more than the Democrats.