A meeting due to take place today between acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez and Colombian President Gustavo Petro was cancelled at the last minute.

Venezuelan authorities yesterday pulled out of the meeting, which was scheduled to take place on the two countries’ shared border, citing security reasons. 

The encounter would have been Rodríguez’s first with a foreign leader since taking over from strongman Nicolas Maduro, who was ousted in a U.S. military operation in January. 

The planned meeting was due to take place at the Atanasio Girardot International Bridge, which connects Colombia and Venezuela. 

It had been initiated by Colombian authorities as an opportunity for the two leaders to discuss issues on the bilateral agenda, including interests in border security, drug trafficking and the potential for Colombia to import Venezuelan natural gas.

In a joint statement on Thursday, the Colombian and Venezuelan governments explained the cancellation was due to unforeseen circumstances but have not provided further details, reporting they intend to reschedule in the near future.

Following the cancellation of the planned presidential summit, ministers from Gustavo Petro’s administration travelled to Caracas to sustain diplomatic engagement and avoid disrupting recent progress in bilateral relations. 

Their agenda centred on reviving cross-border trade, advancing energy collaboration — including potential repairs to the Antonio Ricaurte gas pipeline — and continuing coordination on security matters along the shared border. 

The visit was intended to maintain momentum in cooperation, with relations between Colombia and Venezuela showing signs of improvement since Maduro’s ouster.

Venezuelans strike against Delcy Rodríguez’s regime

Shortly before yesterday’s cancellation of the planned meeting, protests were reported in Caracas demanding an increase in the minimum wage. Unconfirmed videos on social media purported to show elderly demonstrators breaking through police cordons during the demonstration.

Rodríguez was appointed acting president this year by Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice after the U.S. ousted strongman Nicolás Maduro and has served as the country’s vice president since June 2018. 

In early March, Rodríguez publicly reaffirmed her government’s commitment to diplomatic dialogue with the United States as part of efforts to ease tensions following the U.S. military operation that captured former President Nicolás Maduro.

Featured image description: President Gustavo Petro at a cabinet meeting, October 22, 2025.

Featured image credit: @InfoPresidencia via X.

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Medellín, Colombia – On Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced plans to begin fracking in order to more than double the country’s natural gas production and “strengthen national sovereignty”. 

Despite Mexico possessing 141 billion cubic feet of unconventional gas reserves, the country has hardly extracted it, instead importing more than 70% of its natural gas from the United States, making it the world’s largest buyer of U.S. gas.

Sheinbaum’s announcement signals a U-turn in her party’s traditional opposition to fracking due to its deleterious environmental impacts.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a method of extracting oil and natural gas by forcing water, sand, and chemicals into the ground to fracture deep rock formations and allow oil and gas to flow up to the surface. 

Fracking has long been controversial due to its environmental effects, such as causing earth tremors, air and water pollution, massive water consumption and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

However, in a press conference on Thursday, Sheinbaum, who is an energy and climate change scientist by profession, defended the plans to begin fracking, arguing that there are “new technologies which open the possibility of recycling water, that don’t use such powerful chemicals which are so hard to recycle”, therefore providing a sustainable alternative to traditional fracking practices. She emphasized that for all of her life, she has been “against traditional fracking.” 

Sheinbaum said that a technical committee will spend two months evaluating the feasibility of these new fracking technologies. 

The president’s announcement signals a departure from the historical rhetoric of her party, Morena. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and the founder of Morena, had previously attempted to impose a constitutional ban on the practice. 

The announcement will likely also prove unpopular with people who considered Sheinbaum’s previous position on fracking when voting for her; in February a spokesperson for the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking described a potential shift towards fracking as “a betrayal to those who voted for President Sheinbaum, who said fracking would not be carried out,” and suggested that the president was “only listening to the industry and fracking promoters,” according to El País. 

The spokesperson also highlighted the risks that fracking can have on indigenous communities, where it “fracture[s] the social fabric and create[s] risks for women.”

Although Sheinbaum recognizes that contracts with the U.S. for natural gas imports remain in place, the priority is to ensure energy stability in Mexico and reduce reliance on foreign powers in case of shortages caused by situations like the current war in the Middle East.

Featured image description: Claudia Sheinbaum in 2020

Featured image credit: Maritza Ríos via Wikimedia Commons

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It’s a healthy sign when consumers have the ear of a company that wants their ears. Marshall heard from the market that there was a desire for ultra-portable on-ear headphones with active noise cancellation, and the end product is the new Milton A.N.C. It brings familiar design language and flagship flourishes into what has typically been a less feature-packed form factor. Until now.

See It

At $229.99, the Milton A.N.C. is positioned between the Major V and Monitor III A.N.C. [literally in one of the pictures below]. It adopts the textured surface, brass logo, multidirectional control knob, and customizable M-Button of the Monitor III A.N.C. (for toggling ANC/Transparency mode, cycling EQ settings, or going directly to a Spotify playlist, etc.). But it does it in a foldable form factor similar in size to the Major V. That’s where the similarities to the Major V end, however. The build and built-in tech have far more in common with the bigger brother.

Larger, detachable, replaceable earpads with softer memory foam improve comfort and passive noise attenuation. Combined with six optimally placed microphones and a next-generation adaptive algorithm that adjusts noise cancellation in real-time, the Milton A.N.C. blocks out noisy environments so you can make the most of the new custom-tuned Hi-Res Audio-certified driver system. That certification means it can deliver a frequency range of 20Hz – 40kHz and handle sources up to 24-bit/96 kHz. To do this, Milton A.N.C. features audio over USB-C alongside Bluetooth 6.0 with LE-Audio plus support for SBC, AAC, and LC3, as well as advanced-resolution LDAC with a compatible source. Adaptive Loudness ensures the Marshall sound signature comes through clearly when ambient intrusions increase, and proprietary spatialization processing, based on the “True Stereophonic” spatial sound of Marshall’s Bluetooth speakers, widens the soundstage.

Completing the package is a replaceable battery capable of 80 hours of wireless playtime without ANC and 50+ hours with ANC. We’ll share more thoughts on listening and longevity once we’ve had time with a pair.

Milton A.N.C. is available to buy now at marshall.com and will become available at select retailers on May 27. 

In the market for something less portable but more colorful? Marshall has also released a purple crushed-velvet ACTON III Marshall X Hendrix 60th Anniversary Edition [$299,99, below left], as well as a matching, far more indulgent halfstack redesign of the 1959 HW and 1960AHW Cab guitar amp accompanied by a custom Jim Dunlop Fuzz Face pedal [$4,999, below right].

The post Introducing Milton A.N.C.: Marshall’s new Hi-Res, low-profile foldable headphones appeared first on Popular Science.

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Hong Kong’s top leader has defended a management firm’s delay in holding a meeting with owners displaced by the deadly Wang Fuk Court fire, saying those procedures must be carried out “in accordance with the law.”

Chief Executive John Lee said at a Tuesday press conference that Hop On Management “has always given people the impression that it is serious,” citing two briefing sessions held online last month and arrangements for maintenance fee refunds.

“My requirement is that they need to handle all matters in accordance with the law,” Lee added.

Lee replied to a reporter’s question about whether the government would take any steps regarding the Lands Tribunal’s decision to deny Hop On’s bid to extend the statutory deadline for an owners’ meeting.

After receiving a petition from Wang Fuk Court homeowners in late April, the firm originally had to call a meeting by May 13 and hold it by June 13.

The Lands Tribunal ruled last week that postponing the deadline would affect homeowners’ rights to have a meeting. Judge Gary Lam said in his ruling that Hop On remained in breach of its statutory obligations and added that it should “convene and hold the meeting as requested as soon as possible.”

Lee said that the tribunal had acknowledged difficulties faced by Hop On, from verifying the petition’s 247 signatures to putting together a complete register of owners’ particulars.

He said that some of the people killed in the fire may have been flat owners and that probate certifications would be needed to account for those cases.

“Hop On needs to make residents understand that it will handle all matters in accordance with the law,” he said, adding that the government would continue to assist the firm.

See also: Wang Fuk Court administrator to study ruling after court rejects bid to extend meeting deadline

Following the tribunal’s ruling, Hop On told HKFP last week that it “is doing its utmost to discharge its duties in accordance with the law, even in difficult times.”

“Hop On is currently conducting a thorough review of the judgment, and will continue with its work in verifying owners’ signatures and identifying a suitable venue, aiming at convening the owners’ meeting while safeguarding the rights and interests of all owners of Wang Fuk Court,” it said.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is going through her most delicate moment just as she reaches a year and a half in office. Faced with multiple open fronts, the president is showing signs of wear, with a seven-point drop in approval since last March. It is the steepest fall so far in her term, although approval ratings remain high at 68%, according to an Enkoll poll conducted for EL PAÍS and W Radio. To the crisis triggered by the indictment of the governor of Sinaloa, along with nine other senior officials accused by a New York prosecutor of collaborating with drug traffickers, is added a worrying economic weakness that threatens the viability of social policies—a flagship of the leftist Morena government. Insecurity, corruption and the economy are the president’s main shortcomings and the principal concern of Mexicans, with rates slightly up since the last poll in early March.

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May 16 to 19, 2026.

1,207 interviews with men and women aged 18 and over, with valid voter ID and resident in Mexico.

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