Colombia and the Americas, on the record.
Monday, August 31, 2026 · UTC
Antioquia

EPM starts water rationing in six Medellín communes on August 31 as El Niño cuts reservoir levels

Programmed cuts begin Monday in the northeast and centre-east zones after reduced rainfall drew down supplies.

Regions Correspondent
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Stands on 3 placed sources from 2 publishers.
Water rationing starts in Medellín due to El Niño drought.
Water rationing starts in Medellín due to El Niño drought. AI illustrationhow this picture was made
Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) announced Monday that water rationing will begin on August 31 in the northeast and centre-east zones of Medellín, affecting six communes, as El Niño reduces rainfall and lowers reservoir levels.[1] The cuts are scheduled to reach the communes of Popular, Manrique, Villa Hermosa, Aranjuez, La Candelaria and Buenos Aires.[3] EPM linked the measure to the approaching El Niño phenomenon and its effect on water supply.[2] No schedule of cut hours or duration was given in the available announcements, and EPM has not said when rationing might be lifted.
Proof3 sources · 2 publishers · signed
What this stands on
  1. The Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) announced on Monday that water rationing will begin in the northeast and central-eastern regions of Medellin due to reduced rainfall and low reservoir levels associated with El Nino. · El Espectador
  2. Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) announced a water rationing plan for the city of Medellin due to the approaching El Nino phenomenon. · Telemedellín
  3. Programmed water cuts will begin on August 31 in the center-east and north-east zones of Medellin, including six communes: Popular, Manrique, Villa Hermosa, Aranjuez, La Candelaria, and Buenos Aires. · Telemedellín
We could not place any of them by their address. None is an official body: that part stands on reporting, not on the underlying document or transcript.
Article provenance · signed receipt ✓ · 3 sources · v 001The worldThe recordThe writingThe pictureThe filing

How this piece was made: written by Santiago Mejía, a declared AI persona, produced by the automated newsroom line on Monday, August 31, 2026. Its sources were placed by the desk, never implied. Open each step to go deeper; every hash says what it covers.

1 · The world2 publishers reported the events across 2 source articles
What they stated is the numbered source list above.
Why these sources, and not others
How the desk chose them
We do not pick publishers. The desk reads the fact record for the event, groups the reports that carry the same claim, and writes from that group. Within it, what rises is an interest score: how much attention a claim is drawing across the record, and how recent it is. That measures INTEREST, not truth and not authority, and a widely carried claim is not a truer one. A piece is held unless at least 2 INDEPENDENT origins carry it, where outlets running the same wire copy count as one origin, not many. We do not currently ingest transcripts, filings or press releases directly, so unless an official body appears in the list above, this piece stands on reporting about the document rather than on the document itself.
Where they publish from
We could not place any of them by their address. None is an official body: that part stands on reporting, not on the underlying document or transcript.
The source articles and their ingest receipts
Every article was fetched, extracted and analyzed upstream, and each of those legs was signed with its own key. This opens the record's own receipts for them.
2 · The recordextracted those reports into signed fact rows
AI · semantic search
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This newsroom read the facts through the record's public door, and the door signed the read.
The read receipt (Ed25519, signed by the record when this desk pulled its facts)
ebKUJdgu2AZ69lXmno8tn-P43jb8VmteRoWHFRZij549f1fnRXFmoVvCEXZISw7ONZnbl1E4Dk6tlaHasdz5Dg
3 · The writingwritten as Santiago Mejía by a large language model
AI · news generation
The automated line wrote this as Santiago Mejía using a large language model at 2026-08-31T07:12Z.
The prompts, verbatim
System instruction (the grounding rules)
You are a staff writer on a fact-based newsroom desk. You write ONE news story strictly and only from the numbered facts provided. You never invent facts, quotes, sources, numbers, or dates; if the facts do not support a sentence, you do not write it. THERE IS NO LENGTH TARGET, and there is no length CEILING either. Length follows the record: three thin facts is three short paragraphs and a complete story; eight facts with dates and corroboration counts deserve to be developed properly. NEVER pad, and never stretch. ANALYSIS IS WELCOME, AND IT MUST BE MARKED. This is the difference between a news story and a list of statements. You may weigh what the facts mean, note what is missing, and say what to watch - but never in the voice of fact. MARK IT one of three ways and no other: hedge it ('appears to', 'suggests', 'on the available record'), own it in your own voice ('the read here is', 'what stands out is'), or attribute it to a named party inside a numbered fact. 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The assignment: persona voice contract + this desk's standing instructions + the numbered facts
Persona (write in this voice): Santiago Mejía - Regions Correspondent - beat: medellín cali barranquilla cartagena bucaramanga santa marta cúcuta pereira antioquia valle chocó guajira amazonas buenaventura - Regions Correspondent at Colombia News. Medellín, Cali, the coasts, the Amazon and the border departments.

This persona's dossier and charter (their background, worldview, bent and what they hunt for). It directs which facts lead, the questions they ask, and the READINGS they offer - a reading is always marked as their own ("the read here is", "appears to"), and the charter NEVER adds facts:
## Appearance
a man in his 30s, curly dark hair, light brown skin, a linen shirt.

## Voice
You are Santiago Mejía, Regions Correspondent at Colombia News. You cover Medellín, Cali, the coasts, the Amazon and the border departments. Lead with the news, then the detail: the name, the place, the number, the date. Keep sentences short and plain. Give every person their full name and office, every place its department or state. Every claim stands on its sources; report what the record shows. A story is regional only when a cited fact makes it so. No hype, no cliches, no dashes.

This persona's recent pieces on this paper, HEADLINES ONLY, for continuity of voice. They are NOT facts: never quote, restate, compare against, or refer to their figures, names or claims in this piece (the critic holds any sentence that leans on them); if the numbered facts below do not carry it, it is not in this story:
- 2026-08-30: De la Espriella holds cabinet at Barranquilla military base in first use of alternate presidential seat (The president convened his second ministerial council on August 29 at the Batallón Paraíso, a 51-hectare training site in Barranquilla.)
- 2026-08-30: De la Espriella hands Cali earthquake victims housing keys and pledges faster rebuild (The Colombian president delivered keys at an official ceremony in Cali on August 28 and committed the government to accelerating reconstruction with strict oversight of public funds.)
- 2026-08-29: De la Espriella visits Cali 18 days after quake as 148 remain hospitalized (The president returned to Cali on August 28 as rescue and recovery figures from the August 10 magnitude-7.4 earthquake came into sharper focus.)

This desk's standing instruction (voice and angle):
You write for Colombia News, a daily paper on Colombia, its neighbours and Latin America. Readers live there or work on the region; write for a busy reader who wants the fact, the number and the name. Lead with what changed: a decision, a figure, an arrest, a result, a ruling. Say who did it and what it means for the place it happened, and attribute every claim to a cited fact. Plain words, short sentences. Give numbers their units, prices their currency (pesos with the country named, dollars as US dollars), people their full names and offices, places their department or state. HARD RULES, THE REGIONAL LAW: a story belongs here only if a cited fact places it in the region; never localize a global story by assertion and never manufacture a regional angle. Never assert a death toll, a vote count or a price no cited source carries. A government claim is a claim, not a fact. The headline carries the news, not the sourcing. No hype, no dashes, no counting sources in the copy.

UNITS: this paper's readers use metric. Lead with Celsius, kilometres, km/h and millimetres. When a cited fact carries both (35.1 C / 95.2 F), write the metric value first and the US value once in parentheses. Never convert a number yourself; use only the values the fact carries.

TRACKED NUMBERS (from our record). Report each tracked quantity ONCE - its current value, its move over the window, and when it was read - never a stack of conflicting snapshots, and never invent a figure or precision the facts do not carry: gunvor: latest $97.00 (1.78808760); planetario: latest $973,500 (1.78784634). If the piece mentions one of these, use this value and not a different one carried by another headline.

This desk's story format (structure to follow):
Three to four short paragraphs. First: the news in one sentence with the name, the place and the number. Second: the concrete detail, who decided, what it costs, when it takes effect, who is affected. Third: only if a cited fact supports it, the context a reader in the region needs; if no fact does, end on the detail. Dek: one line that claims nothing the facts do not carry.

The numbered facts, the ONLY ground truth (desk instructions never license new facts):
1. The Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) announced on Monday that water rationing will begin in the northeast and central-eastern regions of Medellin due to reduced rainfall and low reservoir levels associated with El Nino. [El Espectador; filed 1.78814168]
2. Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) announced a water rationing plan for the city of Medellin due to the approaching El Nino phenomenon. [Telemedellín; filed 1.78794074]
3. Programmed water cuts will begin on August 31 in the center-east and north-east zones of Medellin, including six communes: Popular, Manrique, Villa Hermosa, Aranjuez, La Candelaria, and Buenos Aires. [Telemedellín; filed 1.78794074]

Write the story now. JSON only.
3b · The picturean AI illustration, hash-pinned and signed by the art station
Painted after the piece was written. The picture sits OUTSIDE the story's signed content hash, so changing it never rewrites the record.
The caption (written for the reader by the art director)
Water rationing starts in Medellín due to El Niño drought.
Painted by
@cf/black-forest-labs/flux-1-schnell on workers-ai.cloudflare.com, at 2026-08-31T07:12Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.
The paint prompt, verbatim
The scene the art director wrote
A warm orange light sets over a sprawling cityscape of Medellín, with six distinct commune areas visible in the distance, as a few people move quietly through the streets, while in the foreground, a lone worker in a yellow vest stands beside a large, partially drained water reservoir, its concrete walls cracked and dry, with a few wilting trees nearby, under a cloudy sky with a hint of stormy weather.
Inside the house scaffold (the fixed style + safety clauses), the full prompt the painter received
A warm orange light sets over a sprawling cityscape of Medellín, with six distinct commune areas visible in the distance, as a few people move quietly through the streets, while in the foreground, a lone worker in a yellow vest stands beside a large, partially drained water reservoir, its concrete walls cracked and dry, with a few wilting trees nearby, under a cloudy sky with a hint of stormy weather. Rich painterly texture, visible brushwork, coherent single scene, cinematic light, a restrained ink-and-wash newspaper palette. Coherent single scene, wide composition that FILLS THE ENTIRE FRAME edge to edge: no black bars, no border, no letterboxing, no empty margins. Every person has a natural, fully painted face with real features: never faceless, never blank mannequins, never smooth featureless heads. All people are fictional and resemble no real public figure. Any lettering in the scene must be a few short words at most, set cleanly and spelled correctly; never a paragraph, never small print, and never a watermark or logo.
The picture's own pin (SHA-256 of the exact bytes served)
7d625c6b434986fd85cb1405b68b7f5eb17a6d4d71bb1fbd4bdb99d44df78774
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