AFP USA

Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny enjoyed a victory lap Thursday night at the Latin Grammys, the biggest celebration of Spanish and Portuguese-language music.The reggaeton star won five awards from 12 nominations, including the coveted best album prize — a category in which he is also competing at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards in February.Bad Bunny also won for Best Urban/Urban Fusion Performance, Best Reggaeton Performance, Best Urban Music Album and Best Urban Song.The awards triumph for “Debi Tirar Mas Fotos” (“I should have taken more photos”) marks another chapter in a year in which the 31-year-old — whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio — has swept the entertainment world.A barnstorming residency in his native Puerto Rico has just ended, with a world tour set to kick off this month in the Dominican Republic.The reggaeton breakout made headlines when he said the tour would not include any dates on the US mainland because he was concerned his fans might be targeted by US President Donald Trump’s immigration raids.The one exception to his self-imposed ban will be the Super Bowl halftime show on February 8 in Santa Clara, California.The performance, which comes midway through the NFL final, is routinely one of the television events of the year, watched by well over 100 million people in the United States alone, with millions more tuning in around the world.Bad Bunny faced competition from Argentinian duo Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, who took home five awards of their own.They are the first nominations for the explosive hip-hop duo, who recently opened several concerts in Latin America for Kendrick Lamar, a strong favorite for the 2026 Grammys.Edgar Barrera, who as a producer and songwriter has garnered more than 70 nominations at the Latin awards, also competed for Song and Record of the Year for his work with Karol G on “Si antes te hubiera conocido” (“If I Had Met You Before”).The album’s single “Tropicoqueta” also earned the Colombian singer a nomination for Best Tropical Song. Karol G is set to be one of the headliners at Coachella next year.Brazil’s Liniker, who in 2022 became the first transgender artist to win a Latin Grammy, received seven nominations for her album “Caju,” including the top three prizes.Other nominees for the best album award include Alejandro Sanz, Carin Leon, Gloria Estefan, Joaquina, Rauw Alejandro, Vicente Garcia, and Natalia Lafourcade, who has a total eight nominations.The Latin Grammys returned to the MGM Grand Garden Arena after editions in Spain and Miami. The show featured performances from Bad Bunny, Karol G, and Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, as well as by Alejandro Sanz, Carlos Santana, Rauw Alejandro, Kacey Musgraves, Edgar Barrera, Joaquina, Christian Nodal, Nathy Peluso, Elena Rose, and Grupo Frontera.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket on Thursday with NASA twin spacecraft destined for Mars aboard, and in a breakthrough nailed the landing of its booster.The launch was stalled for days over weather both on Earth and in space, but it was worth the wait: in the rocket’s second-ever flight, Blue Origin managed to recover the booster for reuse.Ecstatic cheers rang out at the launch site in Florida’s Cape Canaveral as the booster gracefully stuck its landing on a floating platform. Prior to Thursday, only Elon Musk’s SpaceX had managed to accomplish such a maneuver with an orbital-class rocket.Blue Origin’s accomplishment comes amid intensified rivalry between the two billionaire-owned private space companies, as the US space agency NASA recently opened up bids for its planned Moon mission.”Damn that was exciting!” said Jared Isaacman — a Musk ally who President Donald Trump recently nominated again to head NASA — on X, congratulating Blue Origin.A handful of figures at SpaceX also had praise for their rivals, including Musk himself: “Congratulations @JeffBezos and the @BlueOrigin team!” he said on X.The launch was repeatedly delayed, on Sunday over weather on Earth, and on Wednesday over weather in space.The second postponement was over “highly elevated solar activity” that NASA was worried could impact or damage its spacecraft.And multiple glitches meant delays yet again on Thursday — hold-ups Blue Origin did not explain. But at 3:55 pm (2055 GMT), New Glenn finally blasted off.The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket now has the task of sending NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars, in a bid to study the Red Planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.Applause resounded once more as the spacecraft successfully deployed.Joseph Westlake, a NASA heliophysicist, explained during Thursday’s webcast how the twin spacecraft named “Blue” and “Gold” will first finding a “benign, safe parking orbit” to make “measurements about the space weather here on Earth.”Then, once the planets have reached the ideal alignment in the fall of 2026, the spacecraft will get a boost from Earth’s gravity and begin the journey to Mars, where they will arrive in 2027.This type of launch could allow for more frequent missions in the future, because they could proceed outside the window of direct alignment of Earth and Mars that happens approximately once every two years.- ‘Launch, land, repeat’ -New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January also was marked a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, was lost during descent.Thursday’s achievement signals that Blue Origin is on its way to reducing costs by reusing boosters rather than allowing them to plummet into the ocean.”Launch, land, repeat — it starts today,” said Eddie Seyffert, among Blue Origin’s webcast commentators.And it comes as US President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with China.George Nield — a senior aerospace executive whose work promotes the commercial space industry, and who has flown with Blue Origin in the past — told AFP this launch was a big win for Blue Origin.Nield called it “a major confidence booster for Blue Origin, and it’s going to give the company credibility and the confidence to move forward with supporting the Artemis program, going to the Moon and on Mars and other things that are happening in low Earth orbit, like commercial space stations and many other projects.”

Big tech platforms, including TikTok and Netflix, are all looking to add video podcasts to their content, a rapidly growing format that attracts a young audience prized by advertisers and where YouTube dominates.Roman Wasenmüller, the head of podcasts at Spotify, said that the development “marks a new chapter for podcasting,” as he announced a partnership with Netflix in mid-October.Google-owned YouTube is now the leading destination for podcasts in the United States, with 33 percent market share according to Edison Research, and more than one billion consumers worldwide.YouTube even offers audio show producers the ability to generate video using artificial intelligence to better illustrate their show on the platform.Spotify is now moving in, and by the end of September, 390 million users of the Swedish streaming service had watched at least one video-version of a podcast.”Podcasting is correctly seen as a medium that is growing in usage considerably faster than a lot of legacy media, and that’s attractive to investors,” said Martin Spinelli, a podcasting professor at the University of Sussex.- Connect with Gen Z -The rise of the podcast is particularly pronounced among young people, noted Yoram Wurmser, an analyst at Emarketer.”Gen Z are heavy podcast listeners and viewers, so it’s good to connect with them” as much as possible, Wurmser said.Donald Trump’s podcast tour during his US presidential campaign helped increase his popularity among young adults.Democrat Zohran Mamdani, recently elected mayor of New York, also gave significant attention to podcasters.A latecomer to this space, Netflix has already announced the release, in early 2026, of a dozen programs licensed from Spotify.But according to Business Insider, Netflix aims to quickly offer more than 50 and eventually up to 200 in total that will include new productions made for Netflix.TikTok announced Monday a collaboration with American radio giant iHeartMedia, aimed at launching up to 25 programs hosted by influencers.”We’re combining our vast networks to deliver relevant content on a massive scale,” said Rich Bressler, iHeartMedia’s number two. “It’s a win for creators, fans, and brands alike.”TikTok will not broadcast entire episodes but excerpts, similar to what most successful podcasts already make available, some garnering several million views each time.The Chinese-owned social network doesn’t produce its own videos, any more than YouTube does, but Martin Spinelli expects streaming services to “amplify the content that they’ve already monetized” using podcasts.Even before launching its offensive, Netflix had already produced audio extras for several of its hit series, from “The Crown” to “Heartstopper.”Disney has also heavily invested in this niche and announced in early September the arrival of podcasts spun off from series like “Only Murders in the Building” and “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”For existing podcasts, access to new audiences using video should increase revenues, said Emarketer’s Wurmser, whether through advertising, subscriptions or merchandise.Spinelli sees it as a victory for independent podcasts, which “will be able to expand their audience.””It’s much easier to find” a podcast based on its content “on YouTube than on Apple Podcasts,” said Spinelli, who himself hosts the program “For Your Ears Only,” “and I think it will be the same for Netflix and TikTok.”

Is it still the economy, stupid? US President Donald Trump has floated a string of sometimes outlandish policy ideas as he seeks to fight back on the cost-of-living issue that is causing jitters in his Republican Party.While bristling at suggestions that he is the latest US leader facing an economic problem, Trump has also suggested plans ranging from $2,000 dividends for Americans to half-century mortgages.- Affordability – The cost of living has been on the minds of Americans since Democrats scored big wins in off-year elections last week in New Jersey, New York and Virginia, fueled by voters angry over rising prices.Billionaire Trump insisted afterwards that “I don’t want to hear about the affordability,” lashing out at reporters — including an AFP journalist — when asked about the issue, instead opting to blame inflation on former president Joe Biden.Yet Trump’s MAGA movement has pushed him to react, and there are signs that Trump and the White House recognize the issue could damage Republicans in the 2026 US midterm elections.The White House this week highlighted what it said were Trump’s moves to lower prices on essentials like gas and eggs, and pointed to an announcement last week of a deal to lower the prices of some weight-loss drugs.Trump meanwhile is set to “ramp up” his domestic travels in the near future to push his economic message, a White House official told AFP.The 79-year-old tycoon has always made a big play of his economic prowess, and will recall the words of Democratic strategist James Carville, who famously explained what was behind Bill Clinton’s presidential win in 1992 with the phrase: “The economy, stupid!”- Dividends – One of Trump’s most eye-catching suggestions came on social media over the weekend as he proposed dividends of $2,000 for each American, funded by the sweeping tariffs he has imposed around the world.The scheme is reminiscent of the Trump-branded stimulus checks he sent out during the Covid pandemic, but economic figures suggest that it may be a while before any tariff dividend checks arrive in the mail.Trump said tariffs were bringing in “trillions of dollars,” but US Treasury Department data showed customs revenues — which includes tariffs — rose by $179 billion in the January to September period of this year.The US Supreme Court is meanwhile examining whether the levies are even legal.Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt insisted that the White House was “committed” to the dividends and exploring legal options, but said there was “no timeline” for Trump’s scheme.- Mortgages – Trump’s most controversial suggestion — again posed on social media — has been to give homeowners the option of 50-year mortgages, instead of the normal maximum of 30 years.”It’s not even a big deal,” Trump told Fox News this week. “All it means is you pay less per month, you pay it over a longer period of time.” But the idea has again enraged some in the MAGA movement, as it would end up with homeowners paying more interest to banks in the long run.US media have reported that even key White House staff were furious with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte for suggesting the 50-year mortgages without more consultations.- Healthcare – Trump has also suggested that the subsidies the government pays to health insurance companies under the so-called Obamacare program should instead go directly to Americans.Extending subsidies was a key issue in the record US government shutdown that ended on Wednesday, and they will also likely be a big focus in the midterms.In yet another proposal made on his Truth Social network, Trump said this direct payment would allow Americans to choose and purchase their own healthcare instead of the money going to “money sucking insurance companies.”Trump has however given very few details of how the plan would work.

Roads and sidewalks in the US capital Washington were again clogged as thousands of federal employees returned to work Thursday following the record-breaking government shutdown — but some, like management analyst Lee Hardwick, never left. Hardwick had to work the entire 43-day shutdown — unpaid. “I’m pleased that my colleagues, the ones who haven’t gotten paid, or the ones who haven’t been working, that they actually at least get to come back to work,” the 62-year-old told AFP. The shutdown — a uniquely American phenomenon that happens when Congress cannot agree on a budget — impacted more than a million government employees.Those deemed essential, such as air traffic controllers, kept working. The others were furloughed and left waiting for news. After 43 days, the waiting came to an end Wednesday, when President Donald Trump signed a bill funding the government through January — the result of a deal brokered by Republicans and a handful of moderate Democratic lawmakers. Many federal workers approached by AFP declined to be interviewed, a reflection of the political tension behind the shutdown. “It was stressful as it relates to the unknowing” of what was going to happen, Hardwick said of the shutdown, adding that people were “annoyed and frustrated” by the impasse.Scenes of federal employees waiting for food handouts in the Washington suburbs showcased the hardships some faced while on furlough, their incomes slashed to zero.- ‘Lesson learned’? -Things began to get back on track Thursday, with air traffic returning to normal levels after shortages of controllers forced thousands of flights to be delayed or cancelled. Museums in Washington, many of which closed during the shutdown, are set to reopen on Friday. “I felt bad for my other colleagues and friends at other agencies,” said Steve, a government worker in his 50s who asked to use a pseudonym. One federal worker at the Office of Personnel Management, who requested anonymity, said they had to work throughout the shutdown. “It was a little sad to see all my federal comrades not being able to come to work, and then taking the bus for some of them that had to come to work and not get paid. It was sad,” the worker told AFP.”There’s an African proverb that says: ‘When the elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers,'” the employee said. “And I think that both (political) parties bear some responsibility, because we, as the grass, suffered during that argument.” Though the bill funded the US government through January 30, another possible shutdown is possible in 2026. “Hopefully…this was a lesson learned, and I’m hoping that even if it happens in January, that it would be a short one,” said Hardwick.”Hope it won’t happen again.” 

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket on Thursday with NASA twin spacecraft destined for Mars aboard, and in a breakthrough stuck the landing of its booster.The launch was stalled for days over weather both on Earth and in space, but it was worth the wait: in the rocket’s second-ever flight, Blue Origin managed to recover the booster for reuse.Ecstatic cheers rang out at the launch site in Florida’s Cape Canaveral as the booster gracefully nailed its landing on a floating platform. Prior to Thursday, only Elon Musk’s SpaceX had managed to accomplish such a maneuver with an orbital-class rocket.Blue Origin’s accomplishment comes amid intensified rivalry between the two billionaire-owned private space companies, as the US space agency NASA recently opened up bids for its planned Moon mission.”Damn that was exciting!” said Jared Isaacman — a Musk ally who President Donald Trump recently nominated again to head NASA — on X, congratulating Blue Origin.A handful of figures at SpaceX also had praise for their rivals, with their VP of Launch, Kiko Dontchev, saying the feat “moves the country and industry forward.”The launch was repeatedly delayed: on Sunday over weather on Earth, and on Wednesday over weather in space.The second postponement was over “highly elevated solar activity” that NASA was worried could impact or damage its spacecraft.And multiple glitches meant delays yet again on Thursday — hold-ups Blue Origin did not explain. But at 3:55 pm (2055 GMT), New Glenn finally blasted off.The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket now has the task of sending NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars, in a bid to study the Red Planet’s climate history with the eventual hope of human exploration.Applause resounded once more as the spacecraft successfully deployed.Joseph Westlake, a NASA heliophysicist, explained during Thursday’s webcast how the twin spacecraft named “Blue” and “Gold” will first finding a “benign, safe parking orbit” to make “measurements about the space weather here on Earth.”Then, once the planets have reached the ideal alignment in the fall of 2026, the spacecraft will get a boost from Earth’s gravity and begin the journey to Mars, where they will arrive in 2027.This type of launch could allow for more frequent missions in the future, because they could proceed outside the window of direct alignment of Earth and Mars that happens approximately once every two years.- ‘Launch, land, repeat’ -New Glenn’s inaugural flight in January also was marked a success, as its payload achieved orbit and successfully performed tests.But its first-stage booster, which was meant to be reusable, was lost during descent.Thursday’s achievement signals that Blue Origin is on its way to reducing costs by reusing boosters rather than allowing them to plummet into the ocean.”Launch, land, repeat — it starts today,” said Eddie Seyffert, among Blue Origin’s webcast commentators.And it comes as US President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House has seen the administration pile pressure on NASA to accelerate its progress to send a crewed mission to the Moon amid a race with China.George Nield — a senior aerospace executive whose work promotes the commercial space industry, and who has flown with Blue Origin in the past — told AFP this launch would be an “indicator” of the company’s progress.It could show “whether they can play increased roles in near-term lunar exploration,” he said.

Colombia’s leftist president backtracked on a threat to cut decades-old intelligence ties with the United States Thursday, a move the country’s ex-spy chiefs had dubbed “unthinkable” and “absurd.” Gustavo Petro caused shock in Bogota and Washington by abruptly ordering his government to suspend communications and “dealings with US security agencies” at all levels Tuesday.His announcement deepened a bitter personal row with President Donald Trump over US strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Several former US and Colombian security officials expressed shock and anger at Petro’s announcement, warning it could lead to instability at home and more cocaine being exported overseas. But on Thursday, Interior Minister Armando Benedetti — a close aide of Petro’s — said intelligence sharing would continue. He claimed there had been a “misinterpretation” of Petro’s comments.Petro then told new police officers that intelligence would be shared with the United States as long as “they commit to not using it in violation of human rights treaties.”Colombia’s security services said they were blindsided by Petro’s initial order, which was issued in the evening on social media. Petro is well known for his late-night social media posts containing typos, factual errors or announcing initiatives that never materialize. – ‘Makes no sense’ -“You know how the president is — he sends a message on X, but it’s not that easy,” one lieutenant currently serving in the armed forces told AFP. The move elicited fierce reactions from Colombian ex-military and intelligence bosses.The decision was “absurd” and “makes no sense,” according to one former head of police, who spoke on condition of anonymity.He expressed fury that Petro’s decision could aid drug trafficking groups and cause the amount of cocaine exported from Colombia to “overflow.” “How much mourning? How many widows? How many orphans? How much pain do we carry  — personally, institutionally, and patriotically — because of drug trafficking?” Forged from a decades-long war against insurgents and cartels, Colombia’s military and intelligence services are seen as highly capable. They also have close ties with US agencies, from whom they have received hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. One former US intelligence official said information gleaned by Colombian officers was often vital in supporting American eavesdropping and satellite intelligence.Petro’s announcement followed a months-long personal spat between him and Trump, who, without providing evidence, accused Petro of being involved in drug trafficking.The United States has since hit the Colombian leader and his family with financial sanctions. Petro, for his part, has gone out of his way to criticize Trump’s bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific that have sunk 20 boats and killed at least 76 people. The Trump administration is close to the right-wing opposition in Colombia, which has high hopes of winning legislative and presidential elections next year. 

US President Donald Trump plans to take his economic message on the road, a White House official said Thursday, a week after voters hammered his Republican party in elections where affordability emerged as a key issue.The senior official told AFP that Trump’s domestic travel “will continue to ramp up”, following a CNN report that the administration was weighing up more travel and speeches to seek to boost his standing on the subject.The billionaire president has faced pressure from the right wing of his party, including firebrand ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, to spend more time on the “home front” instead of foreign trips and peace negotiations.”Cleaning up Joe Biden’s inflation and economic disaster has been a top focus for President Trump since Day One,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.Desai added that Trump was “implementing a robust economic agenda” to lower prices on essentials like gas and eggs, and pointed to an announcement last week of a deal to lower the prices of some weight-loss drugs.Trump, 79, has bristled at suggestions that he is vulnerable on the issue of affordability, after Democrats won elections in New Jersey and Virginia and Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York.”The country has never been in better shape,” he said as he signed a bill to end the longest government shutdown in US history on Wednesday.But in recent days he has appeared to lean into the issue, unveiling a series of plans including a possible $2,000 dividend for Americans funded by his sweeping tariffs on other countries.Inflation has been a recurring problem for US presidents since the Covid pandemic, with Biden also having hit the road in a failed bid to persuade Americans that his economic fixes were working.

More than 3,000 striking Boeing defense workers on Thursday voted to end a strike over wage increases and retirement benefits, one of the longest work stoppages in the company’s history.”We’re proud of what our members have fought for together and are ready to get back to building the world’s most advanced military aircraft,” District 837 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said in a statement.Striking workers in the midwestern states of Missouri and Illinois had walked off the job on August 4.”We’re pleased with the results and look forward to bringing our full team back together on Nov. 17 to support our customers,” Boeing said in a statement.After rejecting four previous offers, workers accepted a wage increase and a $6,000 upfront payment.The average annual base salary will increase from $75,000 to $109,000 at the end of the five-year collective bargaining agreement.The Boeing machinists work on F-15 and F-18 combat aircraft, the T-7 Red Hawk Advanced Pilot Training System and MQ-25 unmanned aircraft in factories in Missouri and Illinois.Union leaders had pressed for a higher bonus more in line with the $12,000 received by IAM members in the Pacific Northwest last November, following a strike that lasted more than seven weeks.The Seattle-area strike shuttered two major Boeing commercial airline manufacturing plants.IAM representatives recognized that they were unlikely to garner a similar bonus for midwestern workers in light of the higher cost of living in the Seattle region as compared with St. Louis, leading union representatives to push for $10,000 during the talks.Ahead of the vote, IAM District 837 leaders recommended the latest proposal from Boeing.

The president of Panama denied Thursday that US military exercises on its soil were in any way a “hostile act against Venezuela.”US forces have carried out survival and combat exercises in Panama’s Darien jungle bordering Colombia this year, and at a police base on the Caribbean coast.They have coincided with a US military deployment against drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific, which Venezuela claims is really a maneuver to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro.Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino insisted Thursday the Central American country was not “lending out its territory for any type of hostile act against Venezuela or any other country in the world.”US strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America have claimed at least 76 lives since September.Washington has provided no evidence the boat occupants were traffickers, and rights groups say the strikes are illegal even if they were.The US military exercises in Panama were made possible by a security agreement signed by the allies in April.It sparked protests by Panamanians who oppose any perceived infringement of their country’s sovereignty after a 1989 US invasion to depose then-leader General Manuel Noriega.The agreement allows Washington, with Panamanian authorization, to use air and naval bases for “training” purposes for a renewable period of three years. The agreement was signed amid pressure from US President Donald Trump, who has threatened to “take back” control of the Panama Canal that the United States built and controlled until 1999.”There is no unauthorized military presence in Panama,” said Mulino.