The number of people killed in a bombing in a volatile region in southwest Colombia rose to 20, officials said Sunday.

The attack happened Saturday when an explosive device was detonated on a bus traveling along the Pan-American Highway in the municipality of Cajibio. So far, 15 women and five men are among the victims, according to Octavio Guzmán, governor of the region of Cauca.

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He wrote on X that the attack injured 36 others, three of whom are in intensive care. Guzmán noted that five of the injured are minors who are expected to recover.

Colombia’s Institute of Legal Medicine said that specialists including dentists, anthropologists and forensic doctors are identifying the victims.

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People observe the aftermath of the attack in Cajibio, Colombia, Sunday, April 26, 2026. Colombian officials blamed dissident FARC factions for the bus bombing that killed 20 people in the volatile Cauca region. (AP Photo/Santiago Saldarriaga)

The bombing is the latest attack in the region, with more than two dozen incidents reported in the past three days in southwestern Colombia. The region is home to illegal armed groups who vie for control of coca leaf cultivation areas and for sea and river access routes to run drug trafficking operations to Central America and Europe.

Gen. Hugo López, commander of Colombia’s armed forces, has described the incident as a «terrorist act.» He blamed it on the network of a man known as «Iván Mordisco» — one of Colombia’s most wanted figures — and the Jaime Martínez faction. Both are dissidents of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that operate in the region.

A man looks at vehicles damaged in the bombing in Cajibio, Colombia, Sunday, April 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Santiago Saldarriaga)

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The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the attacks against the civilian population and called on authorities to investigate the incidents and «guarantee justice for the victims.»

Guzmán declared three days of mourning on Sunday in memory of the victims.

Un grupo de investigadores logró operar un sistema láser de alta potencia estable durante más de 8 horas, un desarrollo que podría transformar la manera en que se observan los átomos, según informó el medio especializado Geo. Este resultado promete reducir el tamaño y la complejidad de las instalaciones científicas para estudiar la materia a escala atómica, lo que abre nuevas posibilidades para la investigación en química, física y ciencia de materiales.

El nuevo dispositivo, presentado en la revista científica Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, funcionó de forma continua gracias a la integración de cinco sistemas de estabilización activos, que operan en paralelo y monitorizan de manera continua variables como el foco, la energía transmitida y la duración de cada pulso.

Este sistema, capaz de generar haces de electrones de 100 MeV a 1 Hz (es decir, electrones acelerados a 100 megaelectronvoltios que se emiten a una frecuencia de un pulso por segundo), mantuvo su funcionamiento estable durante 10 horas en condiciones experimentales controladas. Dentro de ese periodo, el láser demostró una autonomía comprobada de 8 horas sin necesidad de intervención humana, un logro que deja atrás las limitaciones previas de estos dispositivos en cuanto a estabilidad y operación continua.

Hasta la fecha, la observación de los movimientos atómicos se apoyaba principalmente en los láseres de electrones libres (FEL, por sus siglas en inglés), herramientas utilizadas para descifrar reacciones químicas, analizar propiedades de materiales y explorar fenómenos físicos fundamentales.

Los FEL tradicionales dependen de grandes aceleradores lineales y dispositivos llamados onduleurs, donde los electrones de alta energía oscilan a través de campos magnéticos alternos. Este principio técnico obliga a construir instalaciones que pueden extenderse por varios kilómetros, lo que dificulta la instalación y operatividad fuera de los mayores centros de investigación, como detalló el medio especializado Interesting Engineering.

En busca de alternativas más compactas, la ciencia ha dirigido sus esfuerzos hacia los aceleradores láser-plasma (LPA, por sus siglas en inglés). Estos emplean plasmas —gases compuestos por partículas cargadas— para generar intensos campos eléctricos que impulsan electrones a velocidades cercanas al 99,99% de la velocidad de la luz. Así, el sistema puede emitir flashes regulares de un pulso por segundo.

No obstante, la principal desventaja de los modelos LPA ha sido su falta de estabilidad, lo que hasta este momento había impedido su utilización como reemplazo efectivo de los aceleradores lineales convencionales en aplicaciones científicas exigentes.

La investigación incorporó, además, un “haz fantasma” de baja potencia —una réplica del haz principal— destinado a identificar fluctuaciones sutiles que el sistema central de control no detectaría por sí solo. Esta estrategia, sumada a los otros mecanismos de estabilización, permitió alcanzar una estabilidad inédita en el funcionamiento de FEL compactos.

En términos científicos, la consecuencia directa de este desarrollo es que, por primera vez, un sistema compacto de láser de 100 teravatios puede operar durante varias horas. De este modo, la tecnología de los FEL se aproxima a laboratorios de tamaño medio y así se reducen las barreras de acceso que imponía su escala hasta ahora.

Sin embargo, los autores del estudio advirtieron que este prototipo aún funciona en niveles de energía modestos. Para que los láseres de electrones libres alcancen todo su potencial en experimentos que exigen potencias superiores, serán necesarias nuevas optimizaciones.

El desarrollo reciente de un acelerador láser-plasma compacto y estable implica que la observación y manipulación de la materia a nivel atómico podría volverse más accesible para la comunidad científica, con impactos futuros en el desarrollo de nuevos materiales, la ingeniería cuántica y las ciencias químicas y físicas. Los autores subrayaron que este avance, aunque prometedor, no representa un punto de llegada definitivo sino un paso intermedio en el desarrollo de esta tecnología.

New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is «moving the goalposts» on poverty in the nation’s largest city with his newly unveiled racial equity plan to justify a massive expansion of government intervention, a top city policy analyst warns.

Mamdani released his «Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan» earlier this month, which quickly received pushback from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department as well as from the Manhattan Institute’s Santiago Vidal Calvo, who told Fox News Digital that when the report uses a «true cost of living» to claim 62% of New Yorkers can’t make ends meet in the city, it’s a ploy to declare a crisis that needs more government.

«What he’s essentially doing is moving the goalposts,» Vidal Calvo explained. «He’s essentially saying that what the federal government qualifies as somebody below the poverty line — which is essentially like $34,000, $35,000 a year, those might be like 2024 numbers, but it’s pretty close to that — we’re essentially moving the goalposts so anybody under $160,000 with children cannot afford to live in New York City.»

«Those numbers, in reality, if you live in New York City, they don’t sound crazy, they don’t sound, you know, high. But in all of reality, for any single person across America, $160,000 is, you know, a breadwinner. It’s essentially enough money to raise a family and to have children and to have a good life. So when we move the goalposts into that direction, without actually recognizing what are the underlying issues of the disease, what are the actual problems that make New York City expensive, then we’re just attributing a problem and throwing a dart at the board and saying, ‘This is it.’»

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The «reality» of the situation, Vidal Calvo says, is that you «don’t make a place more affordable by making people earn more» but instead the city needs to «ask the right questions» about policies that drive wage growth and new housing development. 

«So the issue here is that we are focusing on a problem that the socialists in City Hall want to believe—that if you give people more money, they essentially can access more things,» Vidal Calvo said. «But you’re not asking what is the tradeoff of giving people more money. And just by placing that the ‘True Cost of Living’ in New York City is $160,000 a year for people with children, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people, first, can afford that life or, second, they are able to get those salaries.»

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The high cost of living in New York City is driven by several factors, including housing, which is an area where Vidal Calvo says City Hall needs to «encourage more housing being built around the city.»

«That’s how you lower the price of housing,» he said. «It’s not by freezing rent, it’s not by stabilizing markets—normally what that leads is to more and higher prices.»

Rather than a giant administrative effort to grow government with more departments and staffers, Vidal Calvo explained that the city should instead be reforming zoning to build faster, slash permitting delays, make it easier to establish child care facilities, reduce administrative barriers, and create opportunities for employers to hire more people and recruit talent from across the United States.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during an event. (Getty Images)

Mamdani’s racial equity plan has drawn intense scrutiny from conservatives over its conclusions on race and efforts to base government action to address racial disparities, including from DOJ Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon who said she will «review» the matter.

Vidal Calvo, who recently published a New York Post op-ed on Mamdani’s plan, told Fox News Digital, «I feel like this is just another way to put DEI on the table without calling DEI.»

«And we have now found that in academia, in many government programs, in many existing architectures of social structures, DEI does not work, and unfortunately, this might be just another case in which it fails, and not because of the well-intended reason of trying to make everybody earn a living, because I feel like that’s a good intention that everybody can have,» Vidal Calvo explained. «But it’s about the solutions that they’re trying to actually approach. It’s about methodology of how they’re actually trying to approach this method. You cannot argue that just because somebody is a different race, it’s become insanely more unaffordable to make a living in New York City. That’s not how it works.»

Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani’s office for comment.