America

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

So, did they speak? How often? What about? The very coyness around the question of whether Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone – Trump says so, maybe more than once, while the Kremlin is neither confirming nor denying – suggests that pre-discussion discussions on the war in Ukraine are indeed already taking place. General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the war, has stated that no peace plan will be unveiled at next weekend’s Munich Security Conference (the Davos of the security set). But in some ways that is disingenuous. As one Foreign Office staffer suggested, ‘It’s not necessarily the time and place for a public reveal,

Say what you like about President Trump – and people very much do – but there is little doubt that, at the outset of his second term, The Donald has behaved like a man in a hurry. Not a day seems to go past without a blizzard of executive orders closing this and shuttering that, and generally attempting to Make America Great Again. Yet amidst all the threatened deportations of the undesirable, there is one particular high-profile resident alien whom the President has decided to allow to remain in the country: none other than everyone’s favourite Montecito dweller, Prince Harry. Few would disagree with Trump’s comments on Meghan There had

The mood of Keir Starmer’s foreign policy advisers was funereal as they contemplated the return of Donald Trump. The weeks since Trump’s inauguration have shown that the government doesn’t know what to do with an American president who is hostile, capricious and, let’s face it, more than a little mad, except humour him as one might humour a screaming toddler. Labour cannot attack Farage’s Trump worship for fear of alienating Washington Who knows? Maybe that will work. Maybe all Starmer needs to do is flatter Trump, toss in a visit to Buckingham Palace and a banquet with the King, and the rheumy Eye of Sauron will move away from Britain

I thought Donald Trump was a woman-hater? The Guardian told us he’s a ‘far-right misogynist’ whose return to the White House would strike ‘visceral horror’ into the hearts of women everywhere. He’s the ‘misogynist in chief’, said CNN. Perhaps someone could explain, then, why he just signed an executive order in favour of women’s rights while surrounded by a joyous throng of beaming girls? The order is searingly feminist. It’s a manifesto against misogyny The scenes in the White House yesterday were extraordinary. Trump signed an order titled ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports’. It commands every educational institution and athletic association that receives federal funding to keep blokes, however

Mexico and Canada have been given a last-minute reprieve from Donald Trump’s tariffs. China has offered only the most half-hearted response to them. At this rate, even the European Union may be off the hook. Equity markets have rallied strongly as the trade war which seems about to crash the global economy appears to have been averted. But has it really? Investors are kidding themselves if they think the crisis is over.  Trump is clearly a leader who likes to get his own way In the end, it turned out not to be a re-run of the Great Depression, at least not for now. After President Trump slapped punishing 25

He did it, Joe! Following on from the $79 billion worth of tariffs he implemented in his first term – which went largely untouched by Joe Biden’s Administration –  last night Donald Trump made good on his election promise to opt for another round of tariffs: this time, a 25 per cent tax on imports from Canada and Mexico, with China facing an additional 10 per cent levy on its goods. Despite whispers that the President might water down his plans in the last hours, he carved out very few exceptions for his new tax orders, which include Canadian oil and energy supply. It is now expected that America will