World

Imagine living in your own holy fiefdom, with some of the strictest security on earth, and lecturing other nations about how to deal with illegal immigration. That’s Pope Francis for you. There he is in the Apostolic Palace, sentries at every door, wagging his be-ringed finger at Donald Trump’s America for its ‘mass deportation’ of undocumented aliens. Even for a Pope this is some next-level cant. You can’t help but marvel at the sheer sanctimony of Francis’s position The pontiff’s latest bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome came in a letter to America’s Catholic bishops. He said he is watching closely the ‘major crisis’ unfolding in the US, by which he

For all the efforts on every side to manage expectations, there is a sense that some kind of Ukraine deal – even if more likely a ceasefire rather than some comprehensive settlement – is coming. With the risk that this is, as Vladimir Putin would prefer, a decision made between Moscow and Washington, over Kyiv’s head, the Ukrainians are scrambling to gain traction on the process. We have already had Volodymyr Zelensky’s suggestion that the United States could get priority investment access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Now in a set-piece interview with the Guardian, he has offered a finely-balanced mix of flattery and entreaty in the hope that even a

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has hit out at the longstanding US ban on cocaine, in response to Donald Trump’s crackdown on the drugs trade. ‘Cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky’, Petro argued last week, adding that ‘scientists have analysed this’. He also suggested that the global cocaine industry could be ‘easily dismantled’ if the drug was legalised worldwide. Although I was not consulted directly by Petro, I am one of the scientists he was referring to who have analysed the harms of various drugs. In 2010, I was the lead author of a Lancet paper which argued for the first