Universal Music Group UK has launched Pause, a studio that turns stills from music videos into collectible, one-of-a-kind art prints.
The Pause player allows users to scan a music video, find a frame they particularly like, and have it turned into a print on either A3- or A2-sized paper. Every frame of a video is only ever used once, ensuring a unique collectible product.
Pause is launching with Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good, a track off the legendary artist’s second and final album Back to Black. For every print sold, UMG UK will donate to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, a charity that helps vulnerable and disadvantaged young people, with a focus on substance abuse. The charity says it has reached over 440,000 people since it was launched in 2011, in the wake of Winehouse’s premature death.
“Amy Winehouse’s legacy continues to resonate across generations, and we’re excited to give fans a new way to connect with her work. It’s about celebrating the creativity and artistry that went into her music videos, and recognizing music videos as an important cultural medium in their own right,” said James Wheatley, Senior Director, Commercial Development & Technology at UMG.
“The beauty of Pause and what excites us about the proposition is that it is easy to articulate to artists, management and fans alike, everyone gets it and recognizes the value. To be able to choose a favorite moment from the artist you love as a one-of-one art piece that no-one else can ever own feels truly special.”
Each print from the Pause studio comes with a certificate of authentication. Prices range from GBP £65 (USD $89) for an A3-sized print without frame, to £495 ($655) for an A2-sized Collector Edition with a walnut frame featuring a magnetic closing system.
“To be able to choose a favorite moment from the artist you love as a one-of-one art piece that no-one else can ever own feels truly special.”
James Wheatley, Universal Music Group
“Music videos are some of the most creative, emotional, and culturally influential pieces of visual storytelling we have. Yet too often they disappear into the digital ether after release,” Pause Co-Founder Steven O’Connor said.
“At Pause, our mission is to resurrect these moments as art, turning single frames from iconic videos into lasting, collectible artworks. We want to give fans the opportunity to own a piece of music history, and in doing so, help people rediscover and celebrate the artistry of the music video.”
Pause Co-Founder Wai Hung Young said the studio’s products are “a bridge between music, creativity, and the tangible world. Our goal is to elevate the music video from a transient screen experience to a collectible art form, inspiring a new generation of collectors while preserving the cultural and emotional significance of these works.”
Young added that the Amy Winehouse collection “is one of our largest launches in the UK and a significant step in building a broader category where visual music culture is valued as art.”
Other artists working with Pause are Norwegian singer Aurora, alt-rock band Keane, singer Self Esteem, and actor and singer Jeff Goldblum.
While its prints are at present focused on music videos, the company says it plans to expand its visual collectibles into film, gaming, TV, fashion, and sport.Music Business Worldwide
NBA 2K26 has released its newest ratings update, and several rising stars gained ground after strong recent play. The changes reflect real production across the league, and the biggest jumps belong to Donovan Mitchell, Cade Cunningham and Jalen Johnson.
Mitchell Reaches New High at 94 OVR
Donovan Mitchell continues to deliver elite scoring for the Cleveland Cavaliers. His latest stretch pushed him to a 94 OVR, up one point. Mitchell has averaged 32.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 6.4 assists over the last two weeks. The numbers match the best rhythm of his career, and the game now mirrors that surge.
Cade Cunningham also rose by one point, landing at a 93 OVR. His jump follows a massive triple-double: 46 points, 12 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals and two blocks. At just 24 years old, he continues to trend upward.
Detroit had several upgrades. Jalen Duren moved to 87 OVR after a three-point rise. Daniss Jenkins posted the biggest leap for the Pistons, climbing nine points to 79 OVR.
Jalen Johnson Continues Breakout Rise
Jalen Johnson’s stock has risen faster than almost anyone in the league. At launch, he barely cracked the top-100 players list. Since then, he has climbed four points and gained two more in this update. He now sits at an 87 OVR for Atlanta. Johnson has stepped into a major role with Trae Young out, and 2K rewarded that growth.
Young Hawks teammate Kon Knueppel also jumped to 82 OVR after a three-point boost.
Notable Movers Across the League
Devin Booker rose to 93 OVR, Tyrese Maxey reached 90 OVR, and Paolo Banchero dropped one point to 89. Lauri Markkanen moved to 88 OVR, while Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes both improved.
Rookies and role players saw major shifts as well. Grayson Allen climbed four points to 82 OVR, Derik Queen rose six points to 80, and Brandon Williams jumped four points to 77.
The update shows how quickly the league can change. Strong stretches keep pushing young players forward, and NBA 2K26 continues to mirror that movement.
If the listening experience inside your car just isn’t cutting it, perk up your ears: a UK-based hi-fi audio company has returned to its physics textbooks to build a new speaker system that makes your music sound like it’s playing in a space 10 times bigger than the cabin.
It specializes in electrostatic speaker technology, where you’ll see an ultra-thin, electrically charged diaphragm sandwiched between two perforated metal plates that act as electrodes. When an audio signal passes through these plates, it creates a varying electrostatic field that pushes and pulls the diaphragm back and forth, producing sound waves.
In electrostatic speakers, when an audio signal passes through a pair of ‘electrodes,’ a varying electrostatic field pushes and pulls the sandwiched electrically charged diaphragm, producing sound waves
Warwick Acoustics
This sort of speaker can be much thinner than conventional dynamic speakers that have cones and voice coils. In fact, Warwick’s approach for automotive audio involves speakers that measure just 1 mm in thickness, and are said to weigh 90% less than regular ones. The housing adds a bit of thickness, but even so, they’re basically just flat panels.
A conventional dynamic speaker (top), compared to a Warwick Acoustics electrostatic speaker for cars, measuring just 12 mm thick including its housing (bottom)
Warwick Acoustics
Interestingly, electrostatic speakers don’t contain any rare earth elements, and Warwick says it makes its speakers entirely from upcycled and recycled materials – so there’s a small sustainability win there. Warwick says it’ll be the first to produce an automotive speaker system using this tech. The company’s been working on this specifically for cars for years now, and it’s close to production.
So where does the magic of this 10x soundstage enlargement happen? First, we’ll need to understand in-car audio a bit. As soundwaves travel through the air, they flatten and spread out, and the human ear can perceive where the sound is coming from – and from how far away. With conventional speakers in the confines of a car, there’s not a lot of room for the sound to appear to be coming from anywhere but your immediate surroundings.
Warwick Acoustics says its slim speakers generate planar, or “near-flat”, sound waves that initially sound flat – without soaring highs or booming bass. “We then perceive this as a sound that has begun further away – in some cases up to 30 m (nearly 100 ft) – from our ears, and thus representative of a venue much bigger than the physical size of the car cabin. The speed and accuracy of Warwick Acoustics’ electrostatic speakers also reduces the need to manipulate sound using digital techniques giving the potential to reduce the size, cost and energy consumptions of the digital signal processing (DSP) components,” explains the company’s CCO, Ian Hubbard.
Warwick Acoustics expects to debut its electrostatic automotive speaker system in a luxury car from a major brand in 2026
Warwick Acoustics
Along with this, the tech allows for the flexibility of placing the speakers at or above ear level, such as in the A-pillars and the roof lining. This further enhances these electrostatic speakers’ ability to mimic the experience of listening to music in a large hall.
Getting the speakers into locations at or above ear level can help your music sound like it’s being played in a large space
Warwick Acoustics
That all sounds like a treat – and remarkably different than the descriptions of audio systems for most cars on the market today. We won’t have to wait long to hear this in action: Warwick says its tech will feature in a vehicle from a “global luxury car maker” sometime next year. My ears are ready.
It has been a whiplash-inducing month for the American rancher, one of United States President Donald Trump’s most steadfast voting blocs.
Starting with an October 19 quip from Trump that the US would increase beef imports from Argentina to the ensuing rancher backlash against the announcement of an investigation into the hyperconsolidated US meatpacking industry and the dropping of tariffs on Brazilian beef, ranchers have found themselves caught between the president’s desires to appease both them and the American consumer in the face of high beef prices.
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US ranchers have enjoyed rising cattle prices, largely the result of the lowest herd numbers for beef cattle since the 1950s. Other factors constricting supply include the closure of the Mexican border to live cattle due to concerns over screwworm and steep tariffs on foreign beef.
Cattle prices paid to ranchers are separate from consumer beef prices, which, as of September, were $6.32 for a pound (453 grams) of ground beef, an 11 percent rise from September 2024 when they were $5.67 a pound. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release economic data, including the consumer price index for last month, because of the government shutdown.
Trump had no patience for the typically loyal ranchers objecting to his plan to import more Argentinian beef, which they saw as a threat to their recent economic gains.
“If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years – Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that,” Trump wrote in an October post on his Truth Social platform.
While Corbitt Wall, a commercial cattle manager and market analyst, is clear that he “totally supports Trump and everything he does”, he also saw hubris and a misunderstanding of the cattle industry by the president.
“There was not a person in the cattle business on any level that was not insulted by that post,” he told Al Jazeera.
Wall religiously follows prices across the cattle trade from ranch to slaughterhouse and has watched the futures market for cattle slide down by more than 15 percent since Trump’s October 21 announcement.
Futures prices dictate what ranchers can expect to sell cattle for down the line and sway current sale prices as well. For ranchers’ sake, Wall said he hopes Trump leaves the cattle market alone.
“He doesn’t live in this world, in this cattle world, and doesn’t realise the impact that a statement can make in our business,” Wall said.
Years of rough seasons
Oregon rancher David Packham said that while cattle prices have jumped in ranchers’ favour, many are still struggling in the face of years of rough seasons.
Years of drought across the country raised feed costs for all and pushed some ranchers to sell off cattle. Sticker prices on farm equipment from tractors to pick-up trucks have ballooned as well, especially on the back of supply chain challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, and are expected to rise further on account of Trump’s tariffs.
Packham said he has regularly sold cattle at a loss and doesn’t want consumers to think ranchers are living high off the hog.
“I’m looking at a 40-year-old tractor that I use on a daily basis just to keep putting off replacing it, making repairs, although it’s difficult to find parts for now, just to keep it limping along because I couldn’t afford $100,000 for a new tractor,” Packham said. “When I say we’re not really making a whole lot of money, it’s because we have all this loss carryover.”
Cattle are sold at Nevada Livestock Marketing in Fallon, Nevada [Courtesy of Corbitt Wall]
Packham was a registered Republican until Trump’s first term. The president’s Argentina comments and the subsequent chaos for the cattle industry have propped open a door for ranchers critical of Trump, but they represent a minority within the community, he said.
“I’m noticing more and more of them [ranchers] that had been cautiously neutral, that are now kind of like me and just saying, ‘You know what? No. This is bulls***. He’s a train wreck,’” Packham said.
‘Perennial issue’
One action ranchers can support, however, is Trump’s November 7 announcement of a Department of Justice investigation into the big four US meatpackers – Tyson, JBS, Cargill and National Beef – “for potential collusion, price fixing and price manipulation”.
Historically, ranchers looking to sell cattle have held little negotiating power as the four companies control more than 80 percent of the market.
However, a prior Department of Justice investigation into meatpacker price-fixing was started under the first Trump administration in 2020 due to a gulf created by falling cattle prices and rising consumer beef prices. The investigation continued under President Joe Biden’s administration but was never publicly concluded. According to Bloomberg News, the investigation was quietly closed with no findings just weeks before Trump announced the November antitrust probe.
James MacDonald, a research professor in agricultural and resource economics at the University of Maryland, views the administration’s antitrust investigation announcement as “entirely for political consumption”.
“It is a perennial issue that p***es off ranchers, and you can gain some political ground by attacking the packers,” MacDonald said.
Packham would prefer the new investigation to come at a different time and said that given the squeeze from the tight cattle market, packers are operating under slimmer margins and not from a position of absolute power.
On Friday, Tyson announced the closure of a Nebraska beef-processing plant that employed more than 3,000 people. MacDonald called the decision a “shock” indicative of the depths of the US beef shortage. The current low cattle inventory in the US came from years of drought, which wiped out grazing lands and slowed herd rebuilding. Replenishing the cattle supply chain is a years-long process.
“That’s sort of a fact and a fundamental, and it’s not going to change for a while,” MacDonald said.
MacDonald also doesn’t believe the increased Argentina imports will ease this shortage or lower prices as the country largely sends lower-grade, lean beef to the US, accounting for only 2 percent of imports. He expected that while the reintroduction of largely lean Brazilian beef will impact the import market, it holds less weight on overall beef supply.
McDonald also cited heifer retention numbers, which indicate how many female cattle that ranchers hold back to produce future herds years down the line, which are still low.
Tyson likely factored in these numbers when making the decision to shutter its Nebraska plant, and it doesn’t seem like the industry is expecting herd numbers to rebound either, McDonald told Al Jazeera.
“It’s Tyson saying we don’t think cattle supplies are going to recover anytime soon,” MacDonald said.
While the actual mechanisms of Trump’s recent policies might not budge consumers’ bottom lines or change the cattle market for the time being, Wall is more concerned about the ripple effects from the news cycle, saying ranchers “live and die” by the cattle markets. While his faith is shaken, Wall regardless believes that ranchers, conservative as ever, will show up for Trump when election time comes around.
“You look at what the other side has to offer, and there’s no way people are going to go for that,” Wall said. “So in the long run, they’ll stick with him.”
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A group of 24 Nigerian girls who were abducted from their boarding school over a week ago have been released, the country’s president says.
Armed assailants stormed the school in Nigeria’s Kebbi State on 17 November, killing two members of staff and abducting 25 students. One was able to escape soon after.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu praised security forces for their “swift response” to the kidnapping – although the circumstances of the girls’ release remained unclear.
Africa’s most populous nation suffered a spate of abductions last week – with more than 250 children abducted from a Catholic school last Friday still missing, according to the school authorities.
Friday’s kidnapping, in Niger State, has been described as one of the worst mass abductions in Nigeria’s history. However, some officials say the number of missing children has been overstated.
Addressing the earlier abduction in Kebbi State, Bayo Onanuga, a special adviser to the president, confirmed on Tuesday that all the kidnapped schoolgirls had been accounted for.
Onanuga’s statement said the attack had triggered copycat kidnappings.
President Tinubu said more personnel would be deployed to “vulnerable areas to avert further incidents of kidnapping”.
In a post on X, he wrote: “The Air Force is to maintain continuous surveillance over the most remote areas, synchronising operations with ground units to effectively identify, isolate, disrupt, and neutralise all hostile elements.”
More than 1,500 children have been abducted from Nigerian schools since 2014, when 276 girls were taken during the infamous Chibok mass abduction.
The kidnapping of people for ransom by criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, has become a major problem in many parts of Nigeria.
In the north-east of the country, jihadist groups have been battling the state for more than a decade.
On Friday, at least 300 children and staff were abducted from St Mary’s, a Catholic boarding school in Niger state, according to the Christian Association of Nigeria (Can). The organisation says at least 250 people remain unaccounted for.
On Wednesday, Niger state governor Umar Bago told the BBC that 11 St Mary’s pupils had been found in a “farm settlement” and rescued by security forces. He refused to give any further details about the operation.
Bago also cast doubt on Can’s statement that 300 people had been abducted, saying the organisation had not presented any reliable data.
“They should declare their register available to the authorities,” he said.
Niger State’s police commissioner has also questioned Can’s figures.
The abduction at the school was the third to hit Nigeria in a week, forcing President Bola Tinubu to cancel his trip to the G20 summit, held in South Africa at the weekend, to deal with the crisis.
Dozens of people seized from a church in Kwara state, south of Niger, have since been freed.
UN education envoy Gordon Brown called on the international community to “do our utmost” to support efforts to return the abducted children.
Brown, a former UK prime minister, said: “It’s also incumbent on us to ensure that Nigerian schools are safe spaces for learning, not spaces where children can be plucked from their classroom for criminal profit.”
The Nigerian government has called claims that Christians are being persecuted “a gross misrepresentation of reality”.
The BBC was told that the schoolgirls abducted from the Government Girls Comprehensive Senior Secondary School (GGCSS) in Kebbi are Muslim. An official has said that “terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology – Muslims, Christians and those of no faith alike”.
Organisations monitoring violence say most of the victims of the jihadist groups are Muslim because most attacks happen in the majority-Muslim north of the country.
Hello, tech editor Alexei Oreskovic here, pitching in for Allie today. As you gather around the Thanksgiving table tomorrow, you may find yourself debating the state of the AI bubble with your guests. There’s plenty to chew over, from sky-high valuations and capital expenditures to circular business models and mouth-watering salaries.
So allow me to flag one new item on the table that may have gone unnoticed: Warner Music Group’s legal settlement with AI music startup Suno. The deal, announced on Tuesday, ends Warner’s copyright lawsuit against Suno and establishes a partnership that will let consumers create AI-generated music with the voices, compositions, names, and likenesses of any Warner Music artists who choose to participate.
This is a big deal not just for Suno, which raised $250 million at a $2.45 billion valuation earlier this month, and for its investors (including Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, and Nvidia’s NVentures), but for AI in general. I’m not making a judgement here about whether the deal is good or bad for musicians or for the future of music as an art form; I’m simply recognizing how remarkable of a statement it is about the business world’s attitude towards artificial intelligence.
Consider the marquee copyright battle of the last big technology shift, when Viacom sued YouTube in 2007 over users uploading clips to the video site. That case dragged on for seven years before finally settling in 2014.
In AI, everything moves faster. And so, just one year after Warner sued Suno, the music label is now ready to embrace the startup and AI. Warner and Universal Music Group also each settled with Udio, another AI-generated music platform, in recent weeks. These record labels are in the intellectual property business. IP is their most important asset, and they instinctively fight tooth and nail to stop others from getting anywhere close to it.
The fact that they’re folding so soon, instead of digging in for a long fight, suggests they don’t expect the AI bubble to burst anytime soon.
Joey Abrams curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.Subscribe here.
Venture Deals
– Range, a McLean Va. and New York City-based AI-powered wealth management platform, raised $60 million in Series C funding. Scale VenturePartners led the round and was joined by GradientVentures, CathayInnovation, and others.
– CoPlane, a San Francisco-based developer of AI software designed to streamline back office operations, raised $14 million in seed funding. Ribbit led the round and was joined by Stripe, OptumVentures, and Terrain.
– Mnzil, a Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based workforce housing solutions company, raised SAR 44 million ($11.7 million). FoundersFund led the round and was joined by existing investor COTUInvestors.
– Onton, a San Francisco-based AI-powered ecommerce platform, raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Footwork led the round and was joined by Liquid2, ParableVentures, 43, and others.
– Juo, a Warsaw, Poland-based developer of a dev-first toolkit for non-digital product subscriptions, raised €4 million ($4.6 million) in seed funding. MarketOneCapital and Peak led the round and were joined by SmokVentures, BADideas, and others.
– Monq, a London, U.K.-based AI-powered negotiation platform for sales teams, raised $3 million in pre-seed funding. OutwardVC led the round and was joined by CornerstoneVC, PortfolioVentures, OctopusVentures, and others.
– SportAI, a Oslo, Norway-based sports technology company, raised $3 million in funding from AltitudeCapital and others.
PRIVATE EQUITY
– CourizonPartners acquired AirBurners, a Palm City, Fla.-based provider of air curtain burner systems used for the disposal of wood and vegetable waste. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EXITS
– EMKCapital agreed to acquire ProjectInformatica, a Milan, Italy-based IT infrastructure and services provider, from H.I.G.Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.
OTHER
– S&PGlobal acquired WithIntelligence, a London, U.K.-based private markets data provider, for $1.8 billion from a group of investors led by Motive Partners.
Over the past two centuries, the United States has repeatedly carried out military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
Starting in the late 1800s, all the way into the early 20th century, the US conducted the Banana Wars, a series of military interventions in Central America, to protect the interests of US corporations in the region.
In 1934, under President Franklin D Roosevelt, the US introduced the “Good Neighbor Policy”, pledging not to invade or occupy Latin American countries or interfere in their internal affairs. However, during the Cold War, the US financed several operations aimed at overthrowing elected left-wing leaders in the region.
Many of these operations have been coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was founded in 1947.
As Washington builds a large-scale military presence close to the coast of Venezuela and continues air strikes on Venezuelan boats it claims are trafficking drugs in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, US President Donald Trump says he has not ruled out a land operation inside the country itself. Many observers believe that Trump’s allegations that Venezuela is responsible for drug trafficking are a cover for his real objective of regime change there.
We look at some of the US’s history of similar interventions.
1950s in Guatemala
In 1954, elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was toppled by local fighter groups backed by the CIA under US President Dwight Eisenhower.
Arbenz had sought to nationalise a company, stoking fears within the US of more socialist policies in Guatemala.
Under the CIA’s Operation PBSuccess, the agency trained fighters led by military officer Carlos Castillo Armas, who took power after the coup. A civil war raged in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996 between the Guatemalan government and military on one side, and leftist rebel groups on the other.
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman (centre), ousted as president of Guatemala in an anti-communist revolt backed by the CIA, speaks with a group of French reporters in Paris in 1955. He and his wife travelled to Switzerland, where he negotiated with authorities for recognition of his Swiss citizenship, based on the Swiss nationality of his father [Bettmann collection/Getty Images]
1960s in Cuba
In 1959, Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro came to power after overthrowing dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Under Eisenhower, the CIA devised a plan to train Cuban exiles to invade the country and overthrow Castro. US President John F Kennedy, a Democrat who won the 1960 election, was briefed about the plan during his inauguration.
Castro found out about the training camps through Cuban intelligence. In 1961, Kennedy signed off on the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a plan for the Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. However, the invasion failed when the Cuban military overwhelmed them.
Cuban exiles trained by the US landing at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba – and surrendering – in 1961 [Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images]
1960s in Brazil
In 1961, Joao Goulart came to office as president of Brazil, with a mandate to pursue social and economic reforms. He maintained good relations with socialist countries such as Cuba and nationalised a subsidiary of the US-owned International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT).
In response, the CIA funded pro-US politicians and supported anti-communist groups. This undermined Goulart’s leadership, culminating in a military coup in 1964, which established a US-friendly dictatorship that would last until 1985.
Troops guard the War Ministry in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, through the night on April 1, 1964, as a rebellion against the left-leaning regime of President Joao Goulart begins [Bettmann collection/Getty Images]
1960s in Ecuador
After going through 27 presidents between 1925 and 1947, Ecuador witnessed a rare period of stability in the 1950s.
It was not to last. By the early 1960s, the US was worried about the pro-Cuba policies of President Jose Velasco Ibarra and his Vice President Carlos Julio Arosemena, who advocated for closer relations with Soviet bloc nations.
The CIA, using US labour organisations as its conduits, financed the spread of anti-communist sentiment in the country.
“In the end, they [the CIA] owned almost everybody who was anybody [in Ecuador],” a CIA agent told analyst Roger Morris later, in a 2004 CIA-approved appraisal of the agency’s activities in Latin America.
Arosemena first staged a coup against Ibarra, and initially turned further to the left, before trying to moderate his positions. Then, in 1963, the military staged a coup against him, banning the Communist Party and severing ties with Cuba, aligning with US interests.
Student protesters overturn a car in downtown Guayaquil, Ecuador, on November 6, 1961, during a demonstration against the government of President Jose Velasco Ibarra [Bettmann collection/Getty Images]
1960s and 70s in Bolivia
Between 1963 and 1964, the US used covert funding, largely through the CIA, to influence Bolivia’s politics.
The funding backed leaders who were friendly to the US, and supported a military coup in November 1964 led by General Rene Barrientos Ortuno against elected President Victor Paz Estenssoro. The coup was successful and forced Paz Estenssoro into exile.
But the US was not done interfering in Bolivia.
By the early 1970s, Washington had its eye on another regime change. This time, the target was President Juan Jose Torres, who had come to power in 1970 and had nationalised multiple US companies in the country.
According to the US State Department’s official history, the US ambassador in La Paz, in June 1971, told Washington that it needed to support Torres’s opponents. The White House secretly sought, and received, $410,000 ($3.3m in today’s money) in what critics within the administration described as “coup money” to finance military leaders and political leaders opposed to Torres.
Two months later, senior military officer Hugo Banzer led a successful coup against Torres. The US continued to fund Banzer’s government, which ruled until 1978. Nearly two decades later, Banzer would return to power once again, after actually winning an election in 1997.
Bolivia’s President Hugo Banzer, whom the US supported, wearing a uniform and decorations at his desk in April 1978 [Keystone/Getty Images]
1970s in Chile
The CIA provided funding to help end the presidency of Salvador Allende, an elected leftist leader. Allende had planned to nationalise Chilean copper companies, many of which were owned by US interests.
The CIA funding was used to back Allende’s opponent and spread anti-communist sentiment. This spiralled into the 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Allende shot himself dead using an AK-47 rifle before he was captured: Doubts about the cause of his death lingered for decades before it was confirmed by an independent autopsy years later.
The brutal US-backed dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet lasted 17 years.
Edward J Gerrity, a senior vice president for corporate relations at the US-owned International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), tells US Senate investigators in 1973 that he talked with a CIA agent in 1970 about plans designed to create economic chaos in Chile after the election of Salvador Allende as president [Bettmann collection/Getty Images]
1970s: Operation Condor in six countries
In 1975, the CIA supported right-wing military dictatorships in six Latin American countries by setting up a transnational network called Operation Condor. This began during the US presidency of Gerald Ford.
Targeted countries included Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. The operation was aimed at crushing political dissidents, leftists and communist sympathisers. The dictatorships used a shared database to monitor dissidents and their families across state borders.
They used tactics such as exchanging intelligence, information, prisoners and torture techniques. Under the operation, at least 97 people were killed, according to Plan Condor, a joint initiative by Latin American organisations and the University of Oxford.
1980s in El Salvador
In December 1981, the Salvadoran military’s elite Atlacatl Battalion conducted a deadly massacre in the village of El Mozote, killing about 1,000 civilians, including women and children. This was during El Salvador’s civil war of 1980-92.
The battalion was trained and equipped by the US under its larger Cold War policy of suppressing leftist rebellions in Latin America. The US government greatly increased military aid to El Salvador between 1980 and 1982.
1980s in Grenada
It was a familiar story by now. Maurice Bishop, the prime minister of the tiny Caribbean island, had adopted Marxist-Leninist policies after seizing power himself in 1979 when the previous premier, Eric Gairy, was out of the country.
By the early 1980s, the US was worried about Cuban influence in Grenada. As bloody infighting broke out within Bishop’s party over a leadership struggle in October 1983, the US swooped in an operation codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, invading the country, capturing Cubans in Grenada and ensuring that the country’s future was aligned with US priorities.
US Marines take a break during the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury [Archive Photos/Getty Images]
1980s in Panama
The US invaded Panama in 1989 during the US presidency of George HW Bush, a Republican. The invasion was called Operation Just Cause.
The US underplayed the death toll and justified the invasion, saying it was carried out to remove President Manuel Noriega for alleged drug trafficking.
