The killing of CJNG leader “El Mencho” unleashed chaos across Mexico—but not all of it was real. This piece details how the cartel used a mix of real violence and AI-fueled disinformation to amplify terror nationwide. By @evodzoni.bsky.social & @liliasaul.bsky.social in @occrp.org buff.ly/PnynJIs

Lots of intel in this from mis compas @evodzoni.bsky.social & @liliasaul.bsky.social 👇

Great reporting on the combo of real attacks and fake images after the death of “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes. 👇 (I’m quoted in this, but you could take everything I say out and it’d still be great reporting.)

Five days on from the killing of El Mencho, the chaos briefly unleashed nationwide by Cartel Jalisco looks more like a spectacle designed to shape the public's perception of its strength. Your weekend read from @liliasaul.bsky.social and I for @occrp.org www.occrp.org/en/feature/f...

💥Trying to lift falling poll numbers, Viktor Orbán is staging a confrontation with Ukraine, sending a video message to Zelensky hoping Kyiv escalates. Note: Russia—not Ukraine—bombed the Druzhba oil pipeline and Orbán sent no similar warning to Moscow.

The ever-insightful @anndlandes.bsky.social on the difficulty to convey reality in Mexico when violence momentarily captures the whole world's attention

You read that right - US allows drug traffickers to obtain prívate jets to fly cocaine all over Latin America. Crucial investigation by the excellent @evodzoni.bsky.social 👇

NEW INVESTIGATION: While the Trump Administration threatens military action in Venezuela and Mexico over drug trafficking, the US has left loopholes wide open allowing traffickers to obtain private jets in the US, completely anonymously, for flying cocaine across LatAm www.occrp.org/en/project/n...

Truly a remarkable piece here in Bidoun by Ismail Ibrahim on his time as the sole Arabic-speaking fact-checker at The New Yorker. It's very well-written and ...the exceptions to standards editor David Remnick makes to protect Israeli interests in that mag is really quite something.

NEW: Chihuahua, Mexico's most sprawling state, is building a surveillance system. Once complete, it'll have almost 10K cameras, including some w/ facial recognition capabilities. Authorities offered to share access with US police—including Texas DPS. 🧵 www.texasobserver.org/texas-chihua...

I spent the day with Curtis Yarvin and the "dissident right" at a garden party in Surrey and wrote quite a few words about it. My cover story for today’s FT Magazine on.ft.com/4ooXS4t [GIFT LINK! 🎁]

Dear readers, we urgently need your help. Without at least 15,000 regular supporters, Meduza as you know it will cease to exist. But if you come through, you know we’ll keep working for you. Please, read our full statement here: meduza.io/en/feature/2...

Unable to extradite cartel capos due to legal processes but under pressure from the White House to take action, Mexico found a way to bypass a key human rights law by 'expelling' them north. Here, @liliasaul.bsky.social and I dig into the amparos behind the decision. www.occrp.org/en/feature/a...

Chomsky 🤝 CIA = helping you nail that next big performance review

My first report for ‪@al-jazeera-english.bsky.social ‬in a while- on the death of Jesús Alaín Vásquez, a student of the Mactumatzá Normal here in Chiapas & the demands of his classmates for justice. www.aljazeera.com/news/longfor...

"They’re starting to resist more now,” to which an officer replies: “We’re going to end up shooting some of them."

Zohran Mamdani is not only doing something different in politics – he's bringing the different parts of his identity into his campaign. I write about Ugandan Asian diasporic identity and coming from many places @nytopinion.nytimes.com ‪@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social‬ www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/o...

Hace unas semanas, la Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores de México intervino tres bancos mexicanos acusados por el Departamento del Tesoro de EE. UU. de presuntos vínculos con el crimen organizado. Hoy te presentamos otros hallazgos:

El inmenso Chaco paraguayo esconde muchos secretos. ¿Quieres saber cuáles descubrimos?

Spectacular, no notes.

Since 2022, Mexico’s customs have been controlled by the military as part of a vast expansion of its power [...] In that time illegal imports have exploded in volume. “Either they’ve been totally blind and incompetent or complicit.” ig.ft.com/mexico-fuel-...

On Tuesday night I was barred from entering Georgia, my home for the last three years. Official reasons were given as “other,” but from the circumstances of my departure in April it’s clear the refusal is directly tied to my work covering the country as a journalist. 1/ rsf.org/en/between-h...

The International School of Belgrade’s fees aren’t cheap — annual tuition costs more than the mayor’s salary. So how did Belgrade’s former mayor — and now Serbia’s Finance Minister — Siniša Mali fund his three children’s education there? www.occrp.org/en/investiga...

NEW: A major supplier to the global electric vehicle battery industry knew that its Indonesian nickel operations were polluting water with a carcinogenic chemical — and didn’t disclose it. 👇Here’s a quick overview of our findings with @thegeckoproject.org , Deutsche Welle and @theguardian.com

Gran investigación de @aristeguionline.bsky.social

Él consiguió un pasaporte nuevo aunque era buscado por la Interpol | 🧵

Es común que periodistas de investigación sean acusados de ser agentes pagados por una potencia extranjera. Los dictadores y cleptócratas lo hacen todos los días. Pero volverse parte de una teoría de conspiración es completamente distinto... te contamos: ✍️ Aubrey Belford

En el teatro de la guerra contra los migrantes, asegurar escaleras es la nueva incautación de toneladas aristeguinoticias.com/060225/mexic...

nb. Under AMLO funding for civil society organisations was cut, leaving only sources like USAID. Which are now being cut. From 2021: foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/05/w...

🧵 Víctor Cruz Weffer: de favorito de Chávez a imputado por corrupción tras la aparición de los #PanamaPapers:

Today's newsletter: www.readtpa.com/p/the-media-...

In their latest op-ed for @euobserver.com, DPC co-founders @kurtbassuener.bsky.social and @tobyvogel.bsky.social write that the EU's position on the mass protests in Serbia effectively amounts to siding with the regime and needs to be urgently rethought.

SCOOP: I found a document showing Canada's second-largest oil and gas company Cenovus quietly donated to nearly a dozen anti-climate groups. The donations came as Cenovus public portrayed itself as a 'net-zero' leader. www.desmog.com/2025/01/30/c... @desmog.bsky.social

Great thread on how in 2021 - when Prigozhin was given a special licence by the British government (whose sanctions he was under) to sue @eliothiggins.bsky.social - there was *a lot* of evidence that he led the murderous mercenary Wagner Group

I appreciate all the people recommending the Shock Doctrine. I've been thinking about what makes Trump's use of these tactics a little different. In recent decades, shock tactics were used mainly to rapidly impose neoliberal economic policies. But what Trump is doing goes way beyond that. a 🧵

The rise of plant poaching: how a craze for succulents is driving a new illegal trade https://www.ft.com/content/13af6c1a-9854-4420-9c15-673895c2ded3

It shouldn't surprise me at this point but this tech bro has your bank transfer history

Is there an algorithm that can filter out like 80% of US discourse? Everyone talks about bots, but the real singularity is not being in the US but still having every feed converge into conversations about the US. I shouldn't know more about Nancy Pelosi than I do about the entirety of Germany

From Mexico City, Madeleine Wattenbarger, Eliana Gilet and Axel Hernández investigate the brutal evictions that make the city’s transformation into a paradise for digital nomads possible: www.thedial.world/articles/new...

Fifty Years of Silence: Mexico Faces the Legacy of its Dirty War nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-boo...

Serbian authorities are using advanced phone spyware alongside mobile phone forensic products to unlawfully target journalists, environmental activists and other individuals in a covert surveillance campaign, a new Amnesty International report has revealed www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

NEW: I spent months digging into a pattern of Indigenous Mexicans being murdered, dissapeared & abducted by narcos when opposing mines owned by NYSE-listed mining @Ternium The reason, one narco told cops: "They were fucking with the mines" /1 www.occrp.org/en/feature/b...

They are taking down statues of Assad? Oh no, how will anyone know about this historical period?

This story is uh, insane www.cbsnews.com/news/police-...

We teamed up with Earth Genome to develop AI tools that detected 67 illegal narco airstrips in the Peruvian rainforests. These airstrips are located near Indigenous communities and in areas where more than a dozen Indigenous leaders have been killed in the past four years. What a great use of AI!

This is a story a lot of reporters have been chasing: Starting in 2015, a massive cyberespionage campaign targeted some of America's most prominent environmentalists. Now, we can reveal that the FBI has been probing whether a longtime Exxon lobbyist was involved. www.reuters.com/business/ene...

Por fin una buena noticia

If you want to understand El Salvador's 'state of exception,' skip the CNN propaganda and read this, by Carlos Martínez, about Juan Saúl—one of hundreds of poor Salvadorans abducted, starved, tortured and killed by the Bukele regime. My latest translation for El Faro. elfaro.net/en/202411/el...