Diana Baptista

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have endorsed vastly different visions for the U.S. economy and one particularly stark point of disagreement is how to treat the growing wealth of the richest Americans.

The top 1% of rich Americans controls a third of all the nation’s wealth – more than the combined sum owned by the poorest half of the population.

A year after Hurricane Otis ripped along Mexico's Pacific Coast, ghost resorts and dilapidation still dot the battered beaches.

Buildings stand empty. Breeze blocks strew the sands. And hotel bosses are busy clearing up last year's multi-billion-dollar mess even as they gear up for a new high season.

Filiberto Lares spends his days in a truck with no air conditioning restocking airplanes with food and drinks at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where temperatures inside his cab can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius).

Lares struggles to protect his soles from the scorching metal in the trucks, but is still often left with a painful burning sensation in his feet.

A two-year long drought in the semi-desert municipality of Colón, in the central Mexican state of Querétaro, has left many struggling with dead crops and water rationing.

But at the same time, the local government in Querétaro is giving incentives to companies to build data centres that generally use large amounts of water to cool their servers.

Artificial intelligence lives on power and water, fed to it in vast quantities by data centres around the world. And those centres are increasingly located in the global south.

One estimate from the University of California, Riverside says AI’s total water demand by 2027 could be more than half the total annual water withdrawal of the UK. But all we really have are estimates. Big tech firms have been secretive about the amount of public water used by individual data centres, and up to half of all data centres don’t even measure how much water they use, according to one survey.

After coming out as non-binary, Argentine artist Federico Adorado searched fruitlessly for two years to secure a formal job that guaranteed a salary and access to healthcare.

But thanks to a trailblazing 2021 quota law that reserved 1% of public sector jobs for transgender, transsexual and non-binary people, the artist found an administrative job at the national film institute.

As Venezuelan campaigners take to the streets demanding that President Nicolás Maduro concede defeat after a disputed election, digital rights campaigners say the government is using tech to target and intimidate its critics.

Officials have urged citizens to make online reports of "threats" from protesters, with rights expert Raisa Urribarri saying pro-government social channels widely sharing footage of arrests are also fuelling a "climate of terror".

Claudia Sheinbaum has made history as the first woman to be elected president of Mexico, but activists fear her win could be largely symbolic after a campaign short on promises to tackle high rates of domestic violence and unequal abortion access.

"Being a woman does not necessarily embody progressiveness in the women's rights' agenda," said Friné Salguero, director at the Simone de Beauvoir Leadership Institute, a feminist civil society group based in Mexico City.

It has never been hotter in Mexico - and the women and men who want to run the country have never tried harder to come up with solutions to the climate crisis. Nor ever fallen quite so short, according to analysis of their election policies. 

A dozen cities across the country have broken temperature records in the past month, reaching up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) and killing 43 people so far.

Natalia Lane's work is hybrid - like most jobs these days. So the 34-year-old graduate creates exciting online content for half her day then gives over the rest to in-person services.

Lane, though, is a sex worker, so her job comes without any of the basic rights, benefits or protections that jobs in Mexico routinely offer. Something she is desperate to change.