Open AI’s CEO has called for international coordination to address potential risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI). Sam Altman’s remarks come as Australia’s government reveals OpenAI’s AI agents hacked the country’s healthcare data tracking website.
Published On 24 Sep 202624 Sep 2026
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Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa says Donald Trump should give New Jersey to Israel, instead of the Golan Heights. During an interview on the sidelines of UNGA, he criticised Israel’s policy of attacking and occupying Syria since October 7.
Published On 23 Sep 202623 Sep 2026
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WASHINGTON — Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s wife used to spend her evenings cooking a big meal for her husband and waiting for him to return home from his job as a home builder. Now, his son told members of Congress, Salgado Araujo’s wife spends those evenings visiting her husband’s grave at the cemetery.
In a packed Senate hearing room, a rapt audience of dozens listened to the sons of Salgado Araujo, the mothers of Ruben Ray Martinez and Renee Good, as well as the woman who video-recorded the death of Alex Pretti and the lawyer for the family of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.
Salgado Araujo, Martinez, Good, Pretti and Durán Guerrero were shot and killed by federal agents since the start of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Some were U.S. citizens; others were immigrants.
“We still have so many questions,” said Lorenzo Salgado, one of Salgado Araujo’s sons. “What are the names of the ICE agents who killed our dad? Why do they get to be protected behind anonymity, while my brother and I stand before cameras, showing our faces, proudly saying our first and last name?”
The forum on Tuesday was led by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). It was the fifth such event that the two lawmakers have hosted since December, forums aimed at shedding light on what the lawmakers call the “lawless and abusive tactics” by immigration agents.
The forums are not official hearings because they have been organized without Republican support. Nothing has changed since the first forum, the lawmakers said, accusing the Department of Homeland Security of failing to fully investigate the deaths and prevent further ones.
Blumenthal noted that two days prior in Austin, Texas, another man was shot by ICE agents. Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan who was making a DoorDash delivery when ICE agents sideswiped his car, was seriously injured and placed in ICE custody with a bullet still lodged in his back.
Garcia said that, as of this month, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have verified more than 1,000 instances of abuse by immigration agents under this administration.
“Every community in America should be asking itself: How long will it be until ICE is in our city?” Blumenthal said. “How long will it be until we have a grieving family, until another loss of life?”
Rachel Reyes sobbed as she recounted the moments leading up to the death of her son, Martinez. She said his death came nearly a year before Good’s and Pretti’s “yet far fewer people know his name” because the family was denied access to investigative reports and video evidence showing he had been shot by an immigration officer.
“It’s deeply distressing to know that Ruben’s final moments were consumed by confusion, fear, pain and disregard for his life,” she said. “Though the circumstances surrounding his death and these other victims are distinctly different, the pattern is the same: lives cut short by the same agency, agents without body cameras, no warnings, no attempt to de-escalate, excessive force followed by deflection, and a lack of accountability after the fact.”
Donna Ganger, the mother of Good, said her daughter should still be alive. Ganger described herself as a Republican and a Christian. While Jesus teaches forgiveness, she said, she deserves accountability too.
“I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States,” she said.
“This is madness,” Ganger added.
Stella Carlson said that when she saw Pretti, she decided to become “his backup.” Instead, she watched him die and then watched the agents who shot him flee. Two masked agents returned “and began to manipulate his dead body, ripping open his clothes as if to provide aid, but instead moving him around like a rag doll.”
Later, Carlson said, she witnessed top government officials lie about Pretti, calling him a domestic terrorist who wanted to “massacre law enforcement.”
“I am just a regular person, but I care deeply about my community, my state and my country,” she said. “I believe there is power in ordinary people speaking the truth.”
Good and Pretti were killed within weeks of each other in January during a period of increased immigration enforcement in Minneapolis.
Sean Murphy, who represents the family of Durán Guerrero, said he and Durán Guerrero’s widow recently attended a meeting with representatives of the Maine attorney general’s office to retrieve some of his property that isn’t considered evidence.
One item that wasn’t returned was his 3-year-old daughter’s car seat, which had been pierced by a bullet.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) asked each speaker what they think justice would look like.
Reyes said an independent investigation. Brent Ganger said that true justice isn’t possible because his sister can’t come back, but that accountability is possible if federal agents are held to the same accountability standards as local law enforcement.
To Carlson, justice would mean getting ICE off the streets and letting detainees return home. Murphy called for prosecution for the agent who killed Durán Guerrero.
For Lorenzo Salgado, justice would take another form: getting to see his mom heal and finally getting a full eight hours of sleep.
The forum came as congressional Democrats are seeking to edge out Republicans in the Nov. 3 election, and at times the Democrats seized it as a way to criticize the other party.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) asked members of the audience to stand up if they’ve been affected detrimentally by ICE. Ronaldo Salgado looked around the room as about a dozen people stood.
“The reality is that there are so many more stories. There are so many more names that you will never hear,” she said. Later, referring to Republicans, she added, “It’s time to vote them out.”
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) noted that Reyes voted for Trump and asked her to say anything she would want him to hear now. Reyes said that, like many Latinos, she deeply regrets her vote.
“I haven’t heard anything from any Republican whatsoever,” she said. “I’m very disappointed, and he lied.”
Good’s brother Brent Ganger said his family has waited long enough for accountability for the damage caused by ICE. As a moderate, he said, he hoped that all members of Congress — even those not in attendance — were listening.
“We will not be quiet, and we will not go away,” he said.
Folks confuse the medicine with the symptoms when they ask for dollarization or argue against it, as if the magic wand of switching to the dollar would cure the deep debt and the fiscal imbalances of the broken State-led model that crippled Venezuela.
Marcos Planchart wrote on this site last week that “it is certainly not the paper where the bolívar is printed the element that corrupts people or destroys the economy: it is the system behind it.” I agree with that sentence entirely. However, dollarization is not the first decision. There is a sequence that comes before it, and it is the sequence, not the currency, that determines whether any of this holds.
Antonio Ecarri and Steve Hanke want to change the unit of account. Planchart wants to keep it and repair the institutions standing behind it. Both are arguing about the currency. The currency is the second question, and it answers itself once you have answered how to fix the fiscal imbalance.
Those imbalances have four fixes: a legitimate and credible government, a closed deficit, restored conditions for private investment, and an open and transparent market for trading bolívares and dollars. Or you can dollarize. Notice that the first four require no change in the unit of account at all.
Here is the simplified mechanism: A government running a deficit it cannot finance has the Central Bank issue bolívares to cover it. The new money goes looking for dollars and for hard assets, and the rate moves. Running an official rate alongside the market one does not stop that. It only decides who captures the difference.
Dollarization is a reasonable destination after the fiscal work and a ruinous substitute for it. Do the work and you may not need it, because the inflation it was sold to cure will already be gone. Skip the work and it will cost you more than the bolívar does. Redundant or ruinous. There is no third case.
Planchart lists what the case for dollarization claims: eliminating inflation, forcing fiscal discipline, eradicating corruption. Take them in that order.
First: it does eliminate inflation. This is Hanke’s most popular claim, and it is true. Ecuador dollarized in January 2000. Inflation averaged 39% a year through the 1990s and 2.9% from 2003 to 2024. The policy does achieve inflation reduction, and it does so quite fast.
Now notice what that concession costs the other side. Inflation is the entire platform. It is why the argument is popular in Caracas, and why anyone is listening to Ecarri in 2026. The harder thing to see is this: if we stabilize the fiscal accounts and jump-start private investment, inflation can be tamed and the case for dollarization goes with it. You cannot sell a cure for a disease the patient no longer has.
Second, it does not force fiscal discipline. Ecuador ran deficits in twelve of the thirteen years from 2013. The one exception was 2022, by four hundredths of a percentage point. Public debt went from 19% of GDP in 2011 to 64% in 2020, and Ecuador defaulted that year. It is 54% now. Growth averaged 6.4% a year from 2011 to 2014 and 1.4% from 2015 to 2019.
The mechanism is the one Planchart names himself. He warns that dollarization leaves a country “even more vulnerable to external shocks, such as a sudden plunge in oil prices.” That is precisely what happened to Ecuador after 2014. Oil fell, Ecuador could not devalue, and the shock had nowhere to go except the budget, and from the budget into debt and into lost growth. He states the fear and never uses the country it happened to. It is the best evidence in his own case and he leaves it on the table.
The deficit does not disappear when the currency changes. It simply has to be paid in a currency you cannot print.
Dollarization took away the printing machine, not the deficit, so the adjustment fell on debt instead of on prices. Ecuador does not show that dollarization is harmful. It shows that it is not enough. Of its two defaults, 2008 is the weaker example: it fell in a surplus year and was a choice rather than a financing crisis.
Third, regarding corruption, Planchart has already answered it, and I will not repeat a good argument badly. The exchange differential was never an oversight. It was an instrument. Change the currency and the people who built it still hold the pen.
Planchart says a failed dollarization would force the government into more debt and severe cash shortages. He is right. Here is the size of it.
We ran the model with the same economy twice from the same starting position, $13.4 billion of reserves in 2026, changing one thing. Dollarize now on today’s deficit, alter nothing else, and the state’s dollar position will fall through zero in the third year and reach minus $24 billion by 2034. Dollarize after fiscal consolidation, with private investment recovering, and the same position accumulates to plus $127 billion. Same reserves, same model, one difference.
The deficit does not disappear when the currency changes. It simply has to be paid in a currency you cannot print.
Planchart gives the number: inflation reached 576% year on year in July. The mechanism above explains the direction. It does not explain the size, and the size is the interesting part.
The bolívar base has collapsed; measured at the parallel rate, it was around $15 billion in 2011 and 2012. In July 2026, it was $1.7 billion. The base that can be monetised is a ninth of what it was.
In 2013, Gino Bettocchi and I wrote about a State running a consolidated deficit of 15% to 20% of GDP, including PDVSA and FONDEN. On the narrower central government measure that is still published, the deficit has roughly halved since then, from 9.9% in 2012 to 5.8% last year. A far smaller deficit now carries the inflationary force that an enormous one carried then, because there is so little left to dilute. That cuts against both camps. It is not evidence that the bolívar is cursed, and it is not evidence that only the dollar can fix it. It is arithmetic about a very small base.
Planchart wants to keep the bolívar permanently, in part to preserve room for industrial policy. The unit of account does not carry that weight, in either direction.
What breaks or holds a monetary regime is the deficit, private investment, and the institutions behind them. Those three decide the outcome, whether prices are quoted in bolívares or in dollars.
The argument about maintaining the unit of account in bolívares is about the State’s capacity to protect and nurture strategic industries. But industrial policy is paid for by a State with fiscal room, and Venezuela has neither. It becomes possible after stabilization, not instead of it.
Without credible rules, there is no private investment. Without investment, there is no oil and no tax base. Without revenue, there is a deficit. And a deficit breaks any exchange rate regime, whether it is denominated in bolívares or in dollars.
Planchart may well be right. His is a claim about what Venezuela becomes over the medium and long term; mine is about what stops the bleeding now. Our hope is that between the two visions, readers get the order of operations.
His best line is that starting dollarization under chavista rule is like handing the reconstruction of the oil sector to a man who helped destroy the electricity grid. I would make it structural rather than personal, because it is an argument about order.
Stage one is not monetary. It is a legal framework credible enough that private capital comes back. Without credible rules, there is no private investment. Without investment, there is no oil and no tax base. Without revenue, there is a deficit. And a deficit breaks any exchange rate regime, whether it is denominated in bolívares or in dollars. Once those policies are in place, they will open the market and the premium will close on its own. Then, the decision about Venezuela adopting the dollar formally can be taken calmly, from strength, rather than desperately as a rescue.
In 2013 we wrote that the choice was reform or hyperinflation. Maduro chose hyperinflation, and it ran from 2017 to 2021. The 2026 version of that choice is not dollar or bolívar. A currency is imported. A State is built.
“The Kangaroo Peg” was written by Gino Bettocchi and Jesús Bolívar, Second Year Policy Analysis, Harvard Kennedy School, 2013, advised by Ricardo Hausmann. The thirteenth year update, with both figures, the model and its sources, is available here.
You can also track all macroeconomic metrics in the UnoPago monitoring website.
TRAVELLERS face another day of chaos across UK airports today following a major tech outage cancelling flights yesterday.
Thousands of passengers were hit by flight cancellations and delays yesterday due to an air traffic control issue emerging around 1pm.
People reported being stuck on planes on the tarmac for hours and many travellers are currently stranded abroad with new flights home only available next week.
NATS has now warned that delays are expected to continue as it tries to “clear a backlog of flights” – but here is all you need to know if you have been impacted.
Contact your airline immediately and ask to be rebooked onto the next available flight.
Airlines must provide you with this option. Unfortunately, in a situation like this where so many flights have been cancelled, it may be that they offer you a flight well into the next few days.
Read more on travel inspo
You do not have to accept this. If you can find an alternative flight with a different airline that will get you to your destination sooner, you have the right to either have the airline book you onto this or book it yourself.
Use a credit card, keep all receipts and claim it back from your airline. In situations like this, the last thing you should do is simply get a refund if you have no alternative means of getting to your destination.
If you do this, your airline no longer has any duty of care and does not have to get you home.
Only request a refund if you are happy for the airline to no longer have any responsibility for your travel options. – Lisa Minot, Head of Travel
You will likely be contacted by your airline directly if your flight has been affected by the air traffic control meltdown.
If you are already at the airport or on your way there, the best thing to do is speak to someone on the ground.
Phones will be ringing off the hook right now so the check in desk or your airline help desk is your best bet.
Anyone who is at home and has not been provided with a satisfactory alternative flight or the option to a refund should either call the airline via the customer services number or make contact via the live chat option on the website.
Some airlines, like British Airways, will allow you to rebook within their airline app.
If the changes are complicated, however, phone or in-person is best. – Sophie Swietochowski, Assistant Travel Editor
If you have a holiday package booked, you have more protection than flight-only bookings.
This is because they are ATOL protected, which means your money is safeguarded by a a UK financial protection scheme (often needed for when holiday companies go bust).
If your flight is cancelled, your tour operator must offer an alternative flight or replacement holiday.
If neither work you, then you must be given a full refund – Kara Godfrey, Deputy Travel Editor
No. Airlines are only required to give you compensation if the delay or cancellation is the airline’s fault, as in a technical failure on a plane or issues with crew.
In this situation, where ATC is the reason for the chaos, there is unfortunately no compensation due.
Check your insurance policy to see if you have any redress if you have incurred additional costs like missing a concert or unable to pick up car hire. You may be able to claim for that.
Generally for delays, if an airline looks after you or provides you with food and drink or hotels, you cannot claim for the same costs against your travel insurance. – Lisa Minot, Head of Travel
If your flight has been cancelled strictly as a result of yesterday’s incident, you will not be entitled to compensation.
This is because the situation is deemed to be outside of the airline’s control and falls under the category of extraordinary circumstances.
Airlines do, however, still have a duty of care to their passengers and anyone experiencing delays of between two to four hours will be entitled to food and drinks vouchers.
These are usually handed out according to the distance you are flying.
For example if your trip is short haul then you are entitled to vouchers once the delay reaches two hours.
The delay must be at least three hours for mid haul or four hours for long haul.
If you are stranded and need to stay in a hotel, this also falls under duty of care and the airline should assist you in this.
As mentioned above, if you end up paying for anything yourself, you must keep receipts so that you can claim this back. – Sophie Swietochowski, Assistant Travel Editor
This is strictly down to what your insurance policy says. It really depends on the level of policy you paid for, so it’s worth checking the small print.
You’ll need to be covered for things like delay, travel disruption, cancellations and missed connections.
If you went for the cheaper option when booking your policy, it’s likely there may be some holes in your cover.
Always make sure you take out travel insurance and check the details before signing on the dotted line – instances like this are why it’s worth protecting yourself. – Caroline McGuire, Head of Travel (Digital)
It depends what you booked and how.
For a missed concert, theatre show or other event, check your travel insurance to see if it is covered because of the delay or cancellation – you may be able to claim.
The same applies for car hire or missed accommodation expenses but only if your travel insurance policy includes such disruption.
If you paid by credit card and the value is over £100 it may be worth calling your credit card provider and seeing if you can claim under Section 75 of the consumer credit act. – Lisa Minot, Head of Travel
If you’re due to jet off in the coming days and have not yet been contacted by your airline, take this as a good sign.
The specific issue that resulted in yesterday’s chaos was fixed within four hours and many airports have said that they are operating as normal today.
Despite this quick fix, yesterday still saw over 1000 cancellations across UK airports which has had a dramatic knock on effect that could continue for days.
Keep a look out for any changes to your flight and act immediately if a cancellation arises.
If your flight is not cancelled, be warned that it could be busier than anticipated, with airlines struggling to find space for passengers who are trying to reach their destination after a cancellation. – Sophie Swietochowski, Assistant Travel Editor
