“One more trip,” he says. “And then I’ll stop.”

He’s a fisherman by trade, born and raised in the coastal city of Manta — a place once known for tuna and tranquility. But these days, the fish are harder to find. The trips are longer. And the money, he says, just isn’t there anymore.

“As a fisherman, in a month you can make $300,” he says. “But with the drug, the white one… that’s the money, brother!”

One trip, running cocaine by sea to Mexico, pays $60,000, he says. Half up front. Half when you make it back alive. “I think that if I get one more trip, I would go, to try my luck,” he says, adding he wants to buy his mother a house. “And then I’ll stop.”

He agrees to take us out — not on a drug run, but to show us how it’s done. The routes, the tactics, the escape paths. He asks that we not use his name or show his face.

If this was his one last trip, he says he would have dozens of black sacks of cocaine — worth an estimated $500,000 in Ecuador but as much as $5 million on US streets, he says — hidden beneath the false floors of “pregnant” speedboats he and three others power across the Pacific. “We leave from here to get to one point over there in Mexico, where there’s a boat waiting for us. We don’t enter a port,” he explains.

Once the drop is made, they head back to Ecuador, this time with a cargo of fish as a cover story. “If I come back with nothing,” he says, “the people will quickly realize one is involved in something that’s not good.”

The fisherman says he isn’t proud of what he does. And he knows the risks: rough waters, failing engines, criminal rivalries, and coast guard patrols. “If we are stopped, we lose everything… we don’t know if they stop us to rob us or kill us.”

Still, he goes, moving with a youthful energy in his voice and a face weathered by decades at sea. They carry just enough to last: food, water, energy bars — “six sacks of supplies,” he says.

Now in his late 50s, he says fear doesn’t stop him. “Fear, only towards God,” he says. “I know it’s a crime. I know it goes against God… but I have to support my mother.”

She runs a small evangelical church and pleads with him not to go. “‘Don’t be involved in that,’ she tells me. But I tell her, ‘Mom, you can’t clean anymore… I’m the one who needs to care for you,’” he says.

When we meet him, the sun is dipping behind the Pacific. The dock is alive with fishing boats weaving between larger vessels anchored offshore. The water glows in the orange light and the air is thick with the sharp smell of gasoline.

As we pull away, another boat full of police officers drifts past. The fisherman smiles and waves, confidently.

The officers wave back.

Patrolling a paradise under siege

Several hundred miles from the Ecuadorian mainland, the waters off the Galápagos Islands glisten with postcard beauty. But this stretch of the Pacific has become a critical corridor in the cocaine trade — and a battleground in Ecuador’s fight against it.

“The area where drugs are smuggled is about 200 miles off the shore… right by the limits of the Galápagos exclusive economic zone with the high seas,” he says.

It’s only March, and already his crew has seized six tons of cocaine. “Last year, we caught 15 tons,” he adds — noting this year’s pace, if sustained, could nearly double last year’s haul.

The captain says their first responsibility is saving lives at sea — shipwrecks, distress calls, rescue operations. But close behind is the fight against organized crime.

“What’s happening is the boats (the drug runners) are using are not massive, so they need to refuel. Some of these refueling stations are in Galápagos, and they then continue onto Central America,” he explains. “That’s why our navy is looking for the fuel… because it’s one of the ways the narco-traffickers move drugs.”

What officials call the “gas stations at sea” look like fishing boats — nets tossed off the sides, poles out for show — but they’re part of a vast narco-logistics network. Quietly stationed near the Galápagos Islands, each contains up to 40 large canisters of fuel to supply the high-speed boats running cocaine north toward Mexico and the United States.

The strategy is simple: stay just outside Ecuador’s territorial waters, avoid major patrol routes, and supply the drug runners as they go. If they’re not intercepted, the vessels link up mid-ocean — often under cover of night — and continue their journey, undetected.

It’s a supply chain built for stealth — and for speed. And it’s helping fuel a wave of cartel-driven violence that’s turned Ecuador’s coastal cities into some of the deadliest in Latin America.

‘Our fishermen are mules not traffickers’

Many of those who take these trips never return.

In a modest home near the port, more than two dozen women crowd into Solanda Bermello’s living room — mothers, wives, and sisters of men who were arrested abroad or simply never came home. Some hold photographs. Others clutch letters, hoping someone might deliver them to husbands or sons locked up overseas.

Bermello founded the Association of Mothers and Wives of Fishermen Detained in Other Countries nine years ago — after her own son was caught running drugs and imprisoned. Today, she says the group includes 380 members and they’ve documented more than 2,000 cases in Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the United States since January 2024.

“We’ve sent letters to all those countries,” she says, pleading for repatriation of their loved ones.

Many don’t know where their relatives are being held or even if they’re still alive.

“Our fishermen are not drug traffickers,” Bermello says. “They are drug trafficking mules. Unfortunately, they are offered an amount of money that is so large for them… but at times they do not collect any of that money because they end up in prison and leave their families adrift and their children fatherless.”

She says economic desperation, not ambition, is what drives them. “They are not drug traffickers,” she repeats. “Unfortunately, they do it because of the economic situation in the country — we don’t have money, we don’t have work, we don’t have a way to subsist.”

Even those trying to fish legally, she says, aren’t safe. “Our fishermen are robbed by pirates. Not even making an honest living is possible.”

She supports the idea of a US security presence returning to a nearby military base, vacated in 2009 after Ecuador banned foreign troops on its soil. “The US used to help us,” she says. “We need that again.”

Newly re-elected president seeks help

The streets of Ecuador’s coastal cities are soaked in blood. In just the first few months of 2025, more than 2,500 homicides have been recorded according to national police statistics — on pace to make this the deadliest year in the country’s history. InSight Crime, an organization that tracks and investigates crime in the Americas, now ranks Ecuador as having the highest homicide rate in Latin America.

The surge in violence is fueled by a complex web of transnational crime: drug trafficking routes, turf wars, and brutal alliances between local gangs and foreign cartels. Ecuador’s location between Peru and Colombia, top producers of cocaine, and its efficient transport and export network has made it attractive to traffickers.

It’s a crisis unfolding beyond its borders but with real consequences for the US — from the cocaine flooding into American cities to the migration pressures reshaping its southern border.

“There are plans,” he said. “We had conversations, we had a plan, we had options… and now we just need another meeting, post-election, to consolidate it.”

But Noboa insists this won’t mean American boots patrolling Ecuadorian streets. “The control of the operations will be in the hands of our military and our police,” he said. US forces, he explained, would play a support role — focused on monitoring illegal operations and reinforcing Ecuador’s ability to stop them before they reach open waters.

Noboa, who was born and educated in the United States, has pushed to revive Ecuador’s cooperation with Washington across multiple fronts, including security, trade, and migration. He says he wants to fix conditions at home to keep Ecuadorians from fleeing north, while also stepping up efforts to intercept drug flows bound for the US.

He’s even expressed willingness to reform Ecuador’s constitution — potentially allowing for the formal return of a US military presence, like the one that existed from 1999 to 2009 at the now-defunct Manta Air Base.

“That would help to keep peace,” Noboa said. “Like we had in the past.”

As he heads into his second term, the young president is staking his political future on security. He has invited both US President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele — another right-wing populist who cracked down on gangs — to his inauguration in May. And he insists another meeting with US officials is just around the corner.

For Ecuador, the war is already underway — at sea, on land, in homes and streets. And for the fisherman who once cast lines for tuna, it’s a war that pays. His next drug run, he says, might be his last. But the system that pulled him in shows no signs of stopping.

It was unexpected, barely implemented and not even extended. But the Kremlin’s hopelessly short-lived Easter truce was aimed directly at US President Donald Trump and at shifting blame for his disastrous peacemaking efforts in the Ukraine war.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a surprise 30-hour ceasefire on Saturday, there was already skepticism in Ukraine and beyond that it was anything more than a cynical public relations stunt amid growing criticism that Moscow had become a foot-dragging obstacle to peace.

But it also revealed that Putin could suspend the conflict at any time, fueling hopes that the short putting down of weapons might be rolled over and become the start of something more substantial, perhaps even creating space for a serious peace process to take root.

Instead, the Easter truce simply expired at midnight on Sunday, exactly when the Kremlin always said it would. Ukraine called on Russia to maintain the ceasefire for longer. But as far as we know there weren’t even talks to extend. For Moscow, it seems, this was never going to be the beginning of the end of the war.

From the moment the guns fell silent — or were meant to — at 6 p.m. Moscow time on Saturday, there were reports of widescale violations on both sides. The Ukrainian military accused Russian forces of launching 2,935 attacks along the vast frontlines, including 1,882 instances of shelling and 96 Russian ground assaults.

But it’s the indignant Russian cries of foul play the Kremlin is gambling Trump will hear loud and clear.

Russian officials alleged nearly 5,000 Ukrainian violations, reiterating that a longer ceasefire, such as the 30 days proposed by Trump and already agreed to by Kyiv but rejected by Moscow, is not viable.

“Ukraine, by not observing the Easter truce proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has shown that it is not capable of ceasing fire even for 30 hours,” said the Russian foreign ministry’s ambassador-at-large for crimes of the Kyiv regime, Rodion Miroshnik, on Kremlin-controlled television on Sunday.

For the Kremlin, this was a goodwill gesture, in the form of a Russian ceasefire, which exposed the Ukrainian leadership, and their European backers, as the real roadblock to a Trump deal.

The White House has repeatedly echoed Kremlin talking points in the past and it may be correct to think it could do so again.

There has been growing unease in Moscow at what could happen if an unpredictable Trump really does walk away from his Ukraine peacemaking efforts, as he has threatened to do if there is not progress soon.

Putin’s biggest concern is that Trump will blame Russia, bolster US support for Kyiv and impose tough new economic sanctions on Moscow, spelling an end to the potential benefits of a reconfiguration of US-Russia relations.

The US remains “committed to achieving a full and comprehensive ceasefire,” a State Department spokesperson said Sunday, after Kyiv accused Moscow of repeatedly breaking the truce.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that Washington could end its efforts on ending the Ukrainian conflict within “days” if there weren’t any signs of progress.

Convincing Trump that Ukraine, not Russia, is responsible for any ultimate failure of his peace process is, therefore, an important Kremlin objective and was likely a key reason why the Easter truce was declared.

Before it ended on Sunday night, with the Kremlin explaining that no order was given by Putin to prolong the ceasefire, there were signs Trump remains engaged — for now.

“Hopefully Russia amd (sic) Ukraine will make a deal this week. Both will then start to do big business with the United States of America, which is thriving, and make a fortune,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday in capital letters, as he returned from a golf course he owns outside Washington.

The words were upbeat and Trump, for the moment, seems strangely optimistic there can still be a deal, despite the weekend’s dashed hopes of a breakthrough in the Ukraine war.

Following the death of Pope Francis, a cardinal from the United States has become acting head of the Vatican until a new pontiff is elected.

He is Cardinal Kevin Farrell, a Dublin-born cleric who became a naturalized American citizen after spending many years ministering in the United States. Farrell, a former Bishop of Dallas, holds the position of “camerlengo” (or chamberlain) which tasks him with “overseeing and administering the temporal goods and rights of the Apostolic See” following the death or resignation of a pope.

It is the camerlengo’s job to “officially ascertain the Pope’s death,” place seals on the pope’s bedroom and study and make funeral preparations. The camerlengo is also tasked with making practical arrangements for the conclave, to ensure the confidentiality of proceedings and orderly voting.

Wearing white choir dress and a red stole (a vestment), he presides over the ceremonial service of the certification of death, “a first moment of prayer” following the death of the pope, and the placing of the body into a wooden and zinc coffin, according to a liturgical book for papal funeral rites which Francis had updated last year. He draws up “the authentic act of death” which is then attached to the death certificate that has been drawn up by the Vatican’s Director of the Department of Health and Hygiene. On Monday evening, the Vatican press office said Francis died of a stroke and heart failure.

The camerlengo’s powers are limited to the day-to-day administration of the Vatican and he chairs a committee of three other cardinals as he carries out his duties. When serious matters arise, he must consult with the wider body of cardinals.

Nevertheless, during the papal interregnum – the period between the death of one pope and the election of another – the camerlengo can request financial information from Vatican departments including details of any “extraordinary business” taking place. He can also demand “the budget and consolidated financial statement of the Holy See for the previous year, as well as the budget for the following year,” according to the constitution of the church’s central administration. During a papal interregnum, all leaders of the Vatican offices cease to carry out their work aside from the camerlengo and two others.

Farrell is a well-qualified camerlengo. The 77-year-old is unusual for a high-ranking church leader in holding a Master of Business Administration degree (MBA), from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Farrell is the highest-ranking US bishop in the church’s central administration and known as a strong decision maker and organizer who has the advantage of being a fluent English and Spanish speaker, the two most widely spoken languages in the global church. He is also known to speak Italian and Irish Gaelic.

Farrell’s expertise caught the attention of Pope Francis who made him one of his most trusted collaborators. In 2016, Francis appointed the then Bishop of Dallas to be the leader of the Vatican’s family life, later making him a cardinal and then, three years later, choosing him for the important and sensitive position of camerlengo.

But they weren’t the only responsibilities Francis gave the cardinal. In 2023, the pope appointed Farrell as President of the Vatican City state supreme court while naming him president of both the Vatican’s “Commission for Confidential Matters” and “Committee for Investments,” the latter designed to guarantee to the ethical nature of the Holy See’s financial investments. Farrell was also chosen to sit on the boards overseeing the Holy See’s property portfolio and the administration of Vatican City State.

Born in 1947, he left Ireland as a teenager and joined the Legionaries of Christ, a religious order founded in Mexico in 1941 which would later be plagued by the revelations of abuse by its founder, Marcial Maciel. Farrell, however, left the group decades before Maciel was revealed to have sexually abused dozens of minors.

The future cardinal studied in Spain and Rome and then worked in Mexico and the US. In 1984 he became a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington DC and went on to hold senior positions in the capitol’s local church. He would later face questions about what he knew regarding the case of former cardinal and Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, found guilty by a church trial of abusing minors and of sexual misconduct against adult trainee priests. Farrell denied any knowledge of McCarrick’s behavior. “Did I ever know? No. Did I ever suspect? No. Did he ever abuse any seminarian in Washington? No,” he said.

While leading the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, the cardinal appointed two women to senior positions in his department and has said that his successor could be a non-cleric. “My expertise is getting people to do the job, people who are qualified to do the job,” he has said. Service at high-level in the church seems to be in the family blood with one of Farrell’s brothers, Brian, also a priest and a bishop and has spent many years working in the Vatican.

He backed the pope’s merciful approach to divorced and remarried Catholics, with Francis opening the door to them receiving communion. “Fundamentally, this is about meeting people where they are,” Farrell explained. The cardinal described opposition to the late pope as “vicious” and “unprecedented” but insisted Francis had bought the church closer to the fundamentals of Christianity.

As the church prepares for a new pontiff, Farrell will seek to ensure the transition is as smooth and seamless as possible.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he is open to the possibility of bilateral talks with Ukraine for the first time in years, as pressure from the United States builds on both sides to agree to a quick peace deal.

US, European and Ukrainian officials are set to meet this week in London after Washington warned that it could abandon its efforts on ending the conflict if there were no signs of progress.

Speaking to reporters, Putin said it could be possible to discuss the halting of strikes against civilian infrastructure directly with Kyiv.

“We have a positive attitude towards a ceasefire,” Putin also said, referencing Russia’s decision to implement a surprise 30-hour Easter truce – which both sides accused each other of violating.

“That is why we have always said that we take a positive attitude to any peace initiatives,” Putin said. “We hope that the representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way.”

Ukraine, which called for the extension of the truce before it expired Sunday, has repeatedly accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians with air and drone strikes, and President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Moscow to halt such attacks.

Putin acknowledged that recent Russian strikes had hit civilian facilities in Ukraine, but claimed that they were being used for military purposes.

“That’s what we need to look into,” he said. “It’s all a subject to be thoroughly investigated. Maybe bilaterally, as a result of dialogue. We don’t rule that out.”

“So we will analyze all of this and make appropriate decisions for the future,” he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Putin’s remarks to journalists, Reuters reported citing Russia’s Interfax news agency.

“When the president said that it was possible to discuss the issue of not striking civilian targets, including bilaterally, the president had in mind negotiations and discussions with the Ukrainian side,” the news agency quoted Peskov as saying.

Ukraine and Russia have not held direct talks since the early weeks of Moscow’s invasion in 2022.

Last Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US could walk away from its efforts to end the Ukrainian conflict within “days” if there were no signs of progress. Trump later confirmed the sentiment, but did not provide a timeline.

Asked what progress he would need to see to continue negotiations, Trump said he would “have to see an enthusiasm to want to end it” from both sides, predicting he would know “soon.”

The remarks came after a broad framework was presented by the US to both sides, Rubio and the State Department have said, to determine whether differences between Kyiv and Moscow can be narrowed.

There are still pieces of the framework to be filled out and the US plans to work with the Europeans and the Ukrainians during talks this week in London, the person said. The Trump administration is simultaneously planning another meeting between Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Russia to get Moscow on board with the framework, the source said.

Moscow has previously stalled on negotiations and rejected an earlier US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire agreed to by Kyiv.

Zelensky has not publicly commented on the latest US proposal. On Tuesday, he said Ukraine will send a delegation to the follow up talks in London.

“Ukraine, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States — we are ready to move forward as constructively as possible… to achieve an unconditional ceasefire, followed by the establishment of a real and lasting peace,” he wrote in a statement on X.

“An unconditional ceasefire must be the first step toward peace,” he said.

Zelensky has expressed willingness to agree to a peace deal with Moscow but said last month that his government would not recognize any occupied territories as Russian, calling that a “red line.”

Trump has declined to say whether he is prepared to walk away completely from the talks or whether the US would support Ukraine militarily if talks fall through.

Kosta Gak and Kylie Atwood contributed reporting

An old saying about papal elections goes as follows: “He who enters the conclave as pope, leaves it as a cardinal.” In other words, any candidate seen as the frontrunner before the voting begins should be treated with caution, and no cardinal should go into the Sistine Chapel assuming they will get the votes.

At the 2013 conclave, one of the favorites was Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan. The Italian bishops were so confident that he would be chosen that after the white smoke emerged from the Vatican chimney, a senior Italian church official sent a message to reporters expressing joy over Scola’s election. The problem was that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio had already been named pope.

This conclave is going to be crucial for deciding the future direction of the Roman Catholic Church, and the field of candidates is wide open thanks to Pope Francis’ reforms.

During his pontificate, Francis overhauled the composition of the body that will elect his successor, making it more representative of the worldwide church.

He threw out the old, unwritten rulebook that bishops of certain dioceses (several of them in Italy) would automatically be made cardinals and instead gave red hats to bishops in parts of the world that had never had them before, such as Tonga, Haiti and Papua New Guinea. Several of them are “outsiders” to the Roman system, so it makes it harder to predict how they will vote.

Nevertheless, only a few cardinals have the requisite skills, experience and personality suitable to taking on the role of leading the Roman Catholic Church.

Electors will need to consider the priorities of the church and the profile of the next candidate. They will also need to consider whether the next pope should continue the reforms started by Francis or take a different direction.

They will be looking for someone able to lead a global church and offer credible moral leadership on the world stage. Some see the church’s future as lying in Asia, which has led to speculation the next pope could be from Southeast Asia.

Age is also a factor, with the last two conclaves opting for older popes to ensure shorter pontificates.

Papal candidates are known as “papabile” or translated from the Italian, “pope-able.” The vast majority of the papabile were appointed by Pope Francis, although two were chosen by Benedict XVI. Here are some of the contenders.