Connect with us

World

Leader of Ecuador’s Los Lobos Crime Group Arrested in Mexico City

Published

on

Leader of Ecuador’s Los Lobos Crime Group Arrested in Mexico City

A leader of Ecuador’s Los Lobos crime group was arrested at Mexico City’s international airport, authorities said on Wednesday, in what regional officials called a significant blow to criminal networks spanning Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador.

Ecuador’s Interior Minister John Reimberg identified the man as Angel Esteban Aguilar, who is wanted in connection with the 2023 assassination of Ecuadorean presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a vocal critic of corruption and organized crime.

The suspect, known by the alias “Lobo Menor,” was the subject of an Interpol red notice and is linked to drug trafficking, extortion and homicide, Mexican Security Minister Omar Garcia Harfuch said in a post on X.

Mexican authorities said they tracked him in real-time upon his arrival in the country, where he attempted to use a fake Colombian identity under the name Juan Carlos Montero. Reimberg said he had planned to flee to Mexico.

Trilateral Efforts

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the arrest followed a manhunt in Colombia and was a result of trilateral cooperation between Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador.

Advertisement

“This result represents a significant blow against transnational organized crime and confirms the effectiveness of trilateral cooperation between Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico in the fight against multi-crime networks,” Petro said, adding that the arrest was made for extradition purposes.

Mexican authorities said they were communicating with the Colombian government over legal and immigration requirements.

Petro described the suspect as one of Ecuador’s most wanted criminals, with links to Mexican cartels and the leader of the largest dissident branch of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), known by the alias Ivan Mordisco.

Washington designated Los Lobos a foreign terrorist organization in September last year.

The case unfolds against a backdrop of regional tensions over drug trafficking, with Ecuador imposing hefty tariffs on Colombian goods, accusing it of not doing enough to stop drug trafficking around their shared border.

Advertisement

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump gathered a raft of right-wing-aligned Latin American presidents to a summit in Florida known as “Shield of the Americas” where leaders agreed to prioritize military tactics against organized crime.

The leaders of Mexico and Colombia were absent from the summit.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Writing by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Sarah Morland and Howard Goller)

Advertisement

World

Russian man who assaulted woman during Barron Trump FaceTime call sentenced to 4 years

Published

on

Russian man who assaulted woman during Barron Trump FaceTime call sentenced to 4 years

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

A Russian man convicted of assaulting a woman in London in an attack witnessed by Barron Trump, President Donald Trump’s youngest son, on a video call was sentenced to four years in prison by a London court on Friday. 

Matvei Rumiantsev, 23, an MMA fighter, was convicted by a jury on Jan. 28 of assault with bodily harm but was acquitted of rape and choking charges. He was also convicted of perverting the course of justice stemming from a letter he sent the woman from jail asking her to retract her allegations.

After the assault, Rumiantsev admitted he was jealous of his girlfriend’s friendship with the 19-year-old son of President Donald Trump.

BARRON TRUMP REPORTEDLY SAVED WOMAN’S LIFE AFTER WITNESSING VIOLENT ASSAULT ON FACETIME CALL

Advertisement

Barron Trump attends inauguration ceremonies in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool/Getty Images)

“Your lack of insight and empathy was apparent at trial,” Justice Joel Bennathan said. “You continue to try to blame the complainant for everything that has happened.”

Trump told investigators he had placed a late-night FaceTime call to the woman, whom he had met on social media, and had been startled when the call had been briefly answered by a shirtless man on Jan. 18, 2025.

“That view lasted maybe one second and I was racing with adrenaline,” Barron Trump said. “The camera was then flipped to the victim getting hit while crying, stating something in Russian.”

BARRON TRUMP SPOTTED ON NYU CAMPUS FOR FIRST TIME SINCE INAUGURATION

Advertisement

Barron Trump looks on ahead of the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2025. (KEVIN LAMARQUE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Barron Trump called the police in London.

“It’s really an emergency … I’m calling from the U.S., uh, I just got a call from a girl, you know, she’s getting beat up,” he told an operator. 

Police responded to the address and arrested Rumiantsev, a London-based receptionist.

At his trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Rumiantsev was acquitted of rape and choking related to the attack, as well as a separate rape and assault allegation from November 2024.

Advertisement

His attorney, Sasha Wass, said that Trump wasn’t aware the woman had a boyfriend and questioned how much he could have seen in just a few seconds of video. 

Barron Trump watches as his father, President Donald Trump attends an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event at Capital One Arena, in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Trump never testified in the case. However, the judge praised him for his quick-thinking actions. 

“Mr, Trump properly and responsibly, despite being in the United States, made sure the emergency services here were called, and he told them what he had seen,” he said.

Advertisement

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Continue Reading

World

EU Parliament unblocks key political hurdle in digital euro talks

Published

on

EU Parliament unblocks key political hurdle in digital euro talks

Published on

EU lawmakers have overcome a key political hurdle in the negotiations of digital euro, making the project closer to approval, according to a draft text seen by Euronews.

ADVERTISEMENT


ADVERTISEMENT

The Parliamentary rapporteurs involved in the legislation have found an agreement on the design of the digital euro, which will be able to function both online and offline.

Advertisement

The digital euro would be an electronic form of cash issued by the European Central Bank, designed to sit alongside banknotes and the payments services offered by commercial banks.

It has taken on new political weight as economic tensions between the EU and the US sharpen the debate over Europe’s reliance on American payment giants, such as Visa and Mastercard.

Under the European Commission’s proposal, digital euro users would have a wallet for both online and offline payments, with transactions designed so they are not trackable.

The situation in Parliament changed on Wednesday evening, when the centre-right politician Fernando Navarrete, who is the leading rapporteur on the file, announced the withdrawal of his position to reduce the scope of the digital euro to offline use only.

His position blocked the advancement of negotiations for months, jeopardising the whole legislative process, according to three sources familiar with the negotiations.

Advertisement

The political deadlock has pushed EU leaders to accelerate progress on the digital euro. At the European Council meeting on 19 March, they set a goal to have the digital euro legislation approved by the end of 2026.

With the Council, representing EU countries, having already adopted its position, the European Parliament is now the only institution left to advance the law.

“Thanks to our amendments and firm stance, we have finally broken the political deadlock on the digital euro. The distinction between online and offline has been removed, and it is now established as a single payment system,” Pasquale Tridico, the rapporteur for The Left, told Euronews.

However, lawmakers still need to agree on two key aspects: the “hold limits” and the “compensation.”

The hold limits determine the maximum amount a user can store in a digital euro wallet, while compensation sets out a model for reimbursing commercial banks that provide digital euro services.

Advertisement

Although negotiations are not yet complete, the text is expected to be voted on in the Parliament’s economy committee before the summer, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Continue Reading

World

Why Netflix Hiked Prices, Explained in One Chart

Published

on

Why Netflix Hiked Prices, Explained in One Chart

Why did Netflix just impose a price increase across U.S. plans? As the “KPop Demon Hunters” Oscar-winning hit song “Golden” says: “We’re goin’ up, up, up.”

It’s not rocket science. The formula is pretty simple: Invest in more content (Netflix is eyeing $20 billion in content cash spending in 2026, up 10%) to attract and retain streaming subscribers, and keep your profit margins ticking upward by increasing the retail price.

Under the new pricing, effective March 26 for new users and rolling out to current customers depending on their billing cycle, Netflix’s Standard plan (which has no ads and provides streaming on two devices simultaneously) is rising by $2, from $17.99 to $19.99/month. The ad-supported plan is going up a buck, from $7.99 to $8.99/month, and the top-tier Premium plan (no ads, streaming on up to four devices at once, Ultra HD and HDR) is increasing from $24.99 to $26.99/month..

But the question is: Why now?

First off, it would be difficult to imagine Netflix would have pulled this pricing lever — hiking fees for its approximately 86 million U.S. customers — if the deal to acquire Warner Bros. were still in play. That deal would have required approval by the Justice Department and other regulatory bodies, amid allegations by David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance (the winning bidder for Warner Bros. Discovery) that the combo of Netflix + HBO Max would create a monopolistic entity in the streaming biz.

Advertisement

Netflix strongly disputed that, asserting it would have had a roughly 21% share of the U.S. subscription-streaming market with the addition of HBO Max. However, the optics of a Netflix price hike as the WB deal was pending would be terrible, especially after co-CEO Ted Sarandos testified at a Senate hearing that “We will give consumers more content for less” through the Warner Bros. deal. (Sarandos meant Netflix would have bundled its service with HBO Max at a price discount.)

Without the need to worry about such appearances in the midst of a massive M&A deal, the reason Netflix feels confident in ratcheting up prices in its biggest market is illustrated by this chart from Wall Street analyst firm MoffettNathanson. It estimates revenue streamers generated in 2025 as a function of total number of hours viewed.

In a nutshell, it shows that Netflix delivers the best bang for the buck of this cohort — it pulls in 48 cents per hour viewed, lower than anyone else. That indicates Netflix not only has upside in ad revenue relative to the others but also that has room to raise its pricing from a competitive standpoint.

Even with the new price increases, Netflix will still have a sector-low revenue/hour viewed metric (call it in the 50-cents-per-hour range). As the MoffettNathanson analysts put it: “Netflix delivers significant value to its subscribers that has room to be better monetized over time.”

Advertisement

Note that all of Netflix’s competitors have also recently hiked prices. Disney+ and Hulu, HBO Max and NBCUniversal’s Peacock upped pricing last year, and Paramount+ raised prices in January. Next month, Amazon’s ad-free Prime Video tier (now called “Ultra”) is going up to $5/month.

And Netflix’s new pricing, while higher, keeps it roughly in line with the rest of the field. Indeed, its ad-supported tier remains cheaper than those from Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max and Peacock (and is now the same as Paramount+ with ads):

Netflix’s launch of the cheaper, ad-supported option, first introduced in November 2022, gave it an important tool to mitigate churn as it raises the price on its Standard (no ads) plans. Instead of presenting customers a take-it-or-leave-it price hike, Netflix can now steer those on the Standard package toward the lower-cost package with ads. In theory, the company is agnostic about which plan someone chooses: The ad revenue should make up the difference in subscription fees.

Netflix execs once swore they wouldn’t implement an advertising model, asserting that it’s a subpar user experience. But it’s clear people are willing to sit through ad breaks if it means paying less — and in the U.S., Netflix’s Standard With Ads plan is half the cost of the no-ads tier.

Advertisement

The streaming giant’s U.S. price increases reinforce its long-range strategy, according to MoffettNathanson’s Robert Fishman: It maintains a “wide gap between its highest and lowest tiers to simultaneously maximize monetization of its least price-sensitive subscribers while nudging more price-sensitive customers toward its still-nascent ad tier, driving engagement and, in turn, advertising revenue,” the analyst wrote in a research note Friday. “The result is a ‘best of both worlds’ approach that captures value across the full spectrum of its subscriber base and should drive even higher margins for the leading profitable streaming service.”

Will some Netflix customers cancel over the latest fee increases? Yes, of course. But the math indicates that overall, it will yield higher returns — letting the company dig an even wider moat against competitors.

Pictured top: Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield in Netflix’s “Stranger Things” Season 4

SEE ALSO: U.S. Household Spending on Streaming Video Services Remains Flat at $69 per Month, as 68% Now Pay for Ad-Supported Tiers

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending