| | | | | | | Hello. Just a couple of years ago, it would have been unthinkable for people in Ecuador to witness gunmen storming a live TV studio. Online editor for Latin America Vanessa Buschschlüter looks at how cocaine trafficking led the once relatively peaceful country to succumb to gang violence in the space of a few years. As Taiwan prepares to vote for a new president, Asia correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes explores how the island’s history shapes political preferences. Readers with arachnophobia should watch out for the spider in the big picture slot, but can scroll to the bottom to learn about the Noah’s Ark-style rescue of dozens of stranded animals on a Serbian island in the River Danube. |
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| | | | | | Questions Answered | | Ecuador’s spiral into gang violence | | | | The head of the armed forces said there would "no negotiations" with the gangs. Credit: Reuters |
| | Until recently, Ecuador was considered a relatively stable and tourist-friendly place. Then, in August, the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio became the most high-profile killing in a country where the murder rate had more than quadrupled between 2018 and 2022, and where gangs are now engaging in an “armed internal conflict”, in the words of President Daniel Noboa. | | | | Vanessa Buschschlüter, Online editor, Latin America |
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| | What spurred this latest outburst of violence? | | It kicked off on 7 January when police moved into La Regional, a prison in the port city of Guayaquil, where notorious gang leader Adolfo Macías Villamar, better known as "Fito", was being held. The plan had been to transfer Fito to a smaller prison. But when police entered Fito's cell, they found it empty. News of his escape triggered riots in at least six jails across the country, with a number of guards taken hostage. | | How did the government react? | | President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency on Monday and a nationwide curfew from 23:00-05:00. The state of emergency allows the president to send soldiers into prisons to restore order, and deploy them across the country to help police. On Tuesday, Mr Noboa ordered the armed forces to "neutralise" the gangs behind the violence. He also published a list of 22 gangs he said would now be considered "terrorist organisations". | | How did the gangs become so powerful? | | Ecuador is sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest producers of cocaine. After the Farc rebel group, which used to control many of Colombia’s smuggling routes, demobilised as part of a peace deal in 2016, transnational crime groups began exploring new ways to transport cocaine to Europe and the US. Ecuador, with its large ports on the Pacific coast and limited experiences in dealing with crime gangs, soon became an attractive transit country. | | | | | | |
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| AT THE SCENE | Taipei, Taiwan | | Identity at the heart of Taiwan's election | | | | John Chen was one of the people imprisoned during the period known as White Terror. Credit: Getty Images | | No matter who wins Taiwan’s election on 13 January, the very act of voting is a danger to China’s hopes of unification. Beijing views the self-governed island as a breakaway province. Here’s how different generations of people in Taiwan see the island’s past, present and future. | | | | Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, Asia correspondent |
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| Fan Hsun-chung, a sprightly 94-year-old veteran, left his home in Sichuan in 1947 to join Chiang Kai-Shek's army in the Chinese civil war. In 1949, Fan's unit was shipped to Taiwan to prepare for its use as a bastion. Six months later Chiang, his government and a defeated army of close to a million men followed. Fan says he never stopped feeling Chinese: "When we came here our country did not perish; we are still the Republic of China. Taiwan is a province, one of the smallest of more than 30 provinces."
During Chiang’s rule, any expressions of Taiwanese political identity were ruthlessly crushed. Many thousands were tortured, imprisoned and executed. "I don't consider myself Chinese. I am Taiwanese,” says 86-year-old John Chen, a political activist who was jailed for advocating Taiwanese independence. The era of military rule is long over, but Beijing's persistent claims, some argue, are making a bristling, younger generation rethink how they see themselves. LÅa Äng-hôa only speaks in Taiwanese, or English, but refuses to speak in Mandarin. To him, it is the language of a colonial oppressor. |
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| | The big picture | | Close up and personal | | | | Each photograph can be made up of 80 images stacked and edited together. Credit: Lee Frost |
| | Some of us (me) sensibly like to keep a safe distance from invertebrates with multiple legs. Not Lee Frost, a self-taught photographer who’s made it his mission to put the “alien world” of insects under the magnifying focus of his lens. | | | | |
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| | | For your downtime | | Forever footprints | | How to pick the right shoe - and make the pair last. | | |
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| | And finally... in Serbia | | An operation is under way to evacuate livestock trapped for days on a Serbian island in the River Danube. Some 60 animals - cattle, calves and horses - have been saved, but many are still stranded after water levels swelled last week. Here are some pictures of the rescue efforts. |
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