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Peru’s discontented voters face straight left-right choice in election runoff

Peruvians go to the polls on Sunday in an election runoff that pits a perennial rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori, against a leftist congressman, Roberto Sánchez. Amid rising crime, chronic political instability, corruption scandals and voter apathy, they are vying to become Peru’s ninth president in a decade. Fujimori, who is the daughter of the late president Alberto Fujimori, won 17% of the vote in the first round in April. Sánchez, a former trade and tourism minister, took 12 % of the vote, edging out Rafael López Aliaga, an ultra-conservative former Lima mayor. The stage is set for a polarised left-right replay of the country’s last election in 2021. It is the fourth presidential run by Fujimori and it may be her best chance yet. She was thrust into politics aged 19 when she was named first lady after her parents’ marriage imploded during her father’s authoritarian rule throughout the 1990s. A surprise second-round contender, Sánchez, 57, served as a minister for the populist leftist president Pedro Castillo and has claimed his legacy, garnering support from rural voters – even donning his trademark sombrero. Castillo was ousted in December 2022 after trying to dissolve congress and rule by decree. In November 2025, he was sentenced to 11 years and five months in jail for rebellion. Sánchez has picked up votes in the rural Andes, where many identify with Castillo and some believe he was unfairly pushed out of office. Pollsters predict an extremely tight vote in line with the last three election runoffs in Peru. The candidates are statistically tied, with Sánchez on 43.8% and Fujimori on 43.2%, according to an Ipsos poll published on Thursday. The election campaign, which started with a record 35 candidates in April, has ended with a choice between two candidates who represent just 29% of the vote. Voters are exhausted and deeply sceptical after a period of record instability in which Peru has pedalled through eight presidents since July 2016, only three of whom were elected. The other presidents fell into the role through the vagaries of an unrepresentative congressional system, and were – in most cases – unsuited to the country’s highest office. The last president to be ousted, José Jerí, 39, was accused of influence-trafficking in secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen. He was replaced by the current head of state, José María Balcázar, 83, who is best known for his support for child marriage. “Politicians have lost a lot of credibility, and very few people trust them any more,” said Santiago Pedraglio, a sociologist and professor at Lima’s Pontifical Catholic University. “If voting weren’t mandatory in Peru, the abstention rate would be much higher.” More than 6 million Peruvians did not turn out to vote in the first round in April, despite fines for failing to do so. Another 3 million spoiled their ballots in protest, leaving them unreadable or blank. The blank or spoilt ballots would have won the vote. “The level of popular discontent and mistrust was already high 20 years ago; now it’s through the roof,” Steven Levitsky, a political scientist and professor of government at Harvard University, told the Peruvian newspaper La República last month. Fujimori carries the legacy of her father, who spent 16 years in jail for authorising kidnappings and murders during his government’s “war against terrorism” before he died in 2024. Though she faces the strong anti-Fujimori movement, she has capitalised on her father’s mano dura (iron fist) reputation, promising a tough-on-crime stance as Peruvians face rocketing rates of extortion and murder. Pedraglio said some voters feared Fujimori would lead an “authoritarian government and that the separation of powers won’t be respected”. Her Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) party holds more seats than any other party in the country’s congress, which recently reinstated the bicameral system. Pedraglio said Sánchez had sparked fear among some that he would lead not just a “leftwing government” but a “bad government” like Castillo, who was widely seen as incompetent. Sánchez has pledged to free Castillo, whom he describes as the victim of a “coup plot”. He also says he wants to restore the government “to the people” and draft a new constitution. However, he has backed down from an earlier pledge to remove the head of the central bank, Julio Velarde. “The time has come for the true rebirth of our nation: a sovereign, just nation built from the foundations of the Peruvian people,” Sánchez told foreign reporters last month.

Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv unleashes hundreds of drones on Russia after Putin rejected Zelenskyy meeting

Ukraine fired hundreds of drones at Russia early on Saturday, leaving one person dead and setting an oil depot ablaze on the final day of Russia’s flagship economic forum in St Petersburg, officials said. Many of the drones targeted St Petersburg itself, the second Ukrainian attack on the city in less than a week, with Ukraine’s SBU security services saying it had hit a naval base. The strikes come a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, rejected Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposal for a meeting, drawing criticism from the Ukrainian president, who accused him of “choosing war again”. More than 140 drones were shot down over the Leningrad region, which surrounds St Petersburg, governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said. The city’s governor, Alexander Beglov, issued a rare call for residents to stay indoors during the attack. “Russian air defences prevented any damage. The condition of the three injured is assessed as minor and they have been discharged,” he said. Russian air defences intercepted a total of 376 drones over the regions of “Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula, the Moscow region, Crimea Republic, Abkhazia Republic, and over the waters of the Azov and Black Seas”, Russia’s defence ministry said. Ukraine’s SBU said it had targeted St Petersburg’s Kronstadt naval base, as well as “the Russian Navy’s 15th Arsenal in the Leningrad region”. The attacks also sparked a fire at an oil depot in the southern town of Ust-Labinsk, while drone debris killed a man in the western Tver region, according to local officials. Zelenskyy described the strikes as a “just response” to Russian aggression against Ukraine. “It is time to end this war. But Russia’s ruler wants to keep fighting. That is why Ukrainian sanctions against this aggression are working,” he said on X. “Any manifestation of injustice against Ukraine will receive a just response.” Russia renewed its strikes on Ukraine early on Saturday. A Russian drone killed a 64-year-old man in the southern Mykolaiv region, while a strike on the nearby Zaporizhzhia region wounded a 10-year-old boy and his father, regional authorities said. Russian drone and artillery attacks in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region killed one person and left three others wounded, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha wrote on Telegram. Russian forces also attacked two civilian search and rescue vessels in Ukrainian waters, causing injuries, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on Saturday. “The enemy launched strikes on two boats of the maritime search and rescue service which were carrying out a humanitarian mission within the Ukrainian sea corridor,” he wrote on Telegram, referring to a Black Sea route used to take vessels to Romanian ports. “Unfortunately, there are injured. Evacuation by boats of the Ukrainian navy is currently under way.” The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, will host Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war. The three countries meeting the Ukrainian leader are some of Kyiv’s staunchest allies. The UK and France are leading the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process.

China wants to suppress independent cinema. But young film-makers are undaunted by red lines

Class started at 9am. Assignments were doled out, ideas were pitched and scripts written, followed by a long day of shooting and editing. Twelve hours later, 20 aspiring and exhausted film-makers were sat in a crowded, makeshift studio, listening to their work being trashed. “The content is still too poor,” the course director, Nan Xin, remarked, after watching a two-minute film about boys on the loose who harass a stray dog. “I didn’t see any deep thought in it. What you did left me with no clue how to actually process it,” Nan told the film’s auteurs, who took the feedback with admirably straight faces. More films, more feedback. “Too cliched.” “Useless piece of dialogue.” Nan, a garrulous 36-year-old with an impish smile, seemed to relish in demolishing his students’ work. But he insists it is to help them grow as filmmakers. Nan, a self-taught filmmaker who left school at 15, says he wants to widen access to the craft through offering cheap or free workshops packed full of hands-on experience. Nan hosts several courses throughout the year. Each lasts about 10 days and hosts up to a couple of dozen of students who pay 50 yuan (£5.49) per day, or sometimes less, to attend. Nan is best known for Go Fishing, a 2022 low-budget production set in his home town of Lingbao, a tiny city in central China’s Henan province. The film, which was selected for a few international film festivals, tells the story of old friends who reconnect after a decade apart. One critic praised its depiction of “apparent banality … which now constitutes the common destiny of an entire generation”. But the film has never been released in China. That is because it does not have the longbiao, the “dragon seal” administered by the China Film Administration, which determines which films can be legally screened. The authorities rejected Nan’s longbiao application for Go Fishing on the grounds that it “does not align with core socialist values”. China’s censorship regime has tightened in recent years. Filmmakers have always needed to apply for a longbiao to release films domestically; a law passed in 2016 says the permit is needed to submit films overseas as well. Coupled with a crackdown on China’s once lively independent film festival scene, the impact has been profound. As China opened up in the 1990s and film-makers developed outside the state-controlled economy, “there was a lot of interest in ideas like civil society, the public sphere”, says Chris Berry, a professor of film studies at King’s College London. “When Xi Jinping came to power [in 2012] these things were said to be pernicious western liberal democratic ideas that were not appropriate to China.” The result is that films that critique society, of which there were several in the early 2000s, are rarely seen in China these days. “You never know what the criteria are,” says a leading independent documentary director, who asked to remain anonymous because of fears of harassment. “The result often comes down to one individual censor. If they think that something is problematic, then it is.” Still, in the age of iPhones and cheap, portable equipment, there is little to stop budding filmmakers from shooting their shot. Nan encourages them to focus on their craft rather than future hurdles. “I tell students not to think about censorship,” he says. “It’s not the young people’s responsibility that Chinese cinema has come to this situation.” Many of Nan’s students, who have travelled from across China for the workshop in Lingbao, insist they are unconcerned by China’s creative controls. Han Xizhu, a 24-year-old engineering graduate, says there are no limits to his creative vision. “I haven’t really felt a lack of freedom,” he says. China’s censorship requirements only restricts “negative things”. Han dreams of making “light and relaxed” films about personal relationships, like Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. “It doesn’t have to discuss some major theme, or link back to society and all that.” The choice to focus on the personal rather than the societal is one that many young filmmakers are making, whether or not they are consciously influenced by the censorship regime. “It’s really difficult to look outward. A lot of people just focus on their family stories,” says the documentarian. Seasoned filmmakers talk of a suffocating regime that the students have yet to encounter. Away from his students, Nan concedes: “They don’t have any issues right now. But the moment they decide to make a feature film, censorship will become their nightmare.” Guo Xiaodong, an independent filmmaker based in Beijing, says that the authorities show more leeway with short films, in part because they’re less likely to have a large impact. But for feature-length productions, “censorship will play a very important role in the creative process”. Some of Nan’s students have already had a taste of the red lines. Xu Shuai, 24, left a job at a theatre in Beijing last year, in part because he grew fed up with censorship. His job involved reviewing what could and couldn’t be staged. Much of it was guesswork, but themes that his team rejected included sex, suicide, government criticism, and anything Japanese. “I felt so bad. I was killing new ideas every day,” he says. Now he wants to make films about topics that are important to him. In particular, depression. Films that depict mental health problems may help sufferers feel less lonely, he says. “I don’t know if we could talk about [depression] in China,” he says, because the government may fear a social contagion. But he’s going to try anyway. Despite Nan’s harsh criticism, Xu says that he’s been inspired by spending time with fellow creatives. “I used to be a pessimist. I used to think there are a lot of people doing great things, and what I’m doing is shit. But there’s a huge difference now, I don’t think that way any more. Maybe the changes started here … it’s magic.” Additional research by Yu-chen Li

Palestinian baby shot dead by Israeli troops in occupied West Bank

Israeli troops killed a seven-month-old Palestinian baby in the occupied West Bank and injured his parents after opening fire on the family’s car, despite it having complied with an order to stop. Soldiers opened fire on Friday on a car carrying the infant and his parents in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. The seven-month-old, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, was critically injured, evacuated in critical condition to a hospital, where he later died. The boy turned seven months on Friday, the day he was killed. The Israeli military said troops had fired at a vehicle they believed was moving towards them, but an initial inquiry found those injured were uninvolved civilians. In an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the father, Fahd Abu Haikal, a lecturer at Bethlehem University, said that “a bullet passed through his hand and struck his son, Sam, who was being held by his mother in the back seat”. Abu Haikal said the family, which also included the couple’s 11-year-old son and Abu Haikal’s mother, had been driving through Hebron on Friday evening when soldiers signalled for the vehicle to stop, he said. He said it was still daylight and that the soldier who opened fire could clearly see the occupants were a family. “The soldier signalled me to stop. I brought the car to a complete halt and raised my hands on the steering wheel. Immediately afterwards, they opened fire on the vehicle,” he told Haaretz. The Israel Defense Forces said its troops “perceived a vehicle accelerating toward them” and one of the soldiers “responded with single shots toward the vehicle”. “As a result, three Palestinians were injured and evacuated for medical treatment,” the IDF said, adding that “the incident is under review” and expressed “deep sorrow for any harm caused to uninvolved individuals”. Abu Haikal rejected the military’s account. “The soldier was about 10 metres away from me. He saw me, he saw my wife and the children,” he told Haaretz. “The windows were not tinted, it was broad daylight and everything was clear. You can’t say he didn’t see that it was a family. “I stopped as I was instructed to, and then they simply shot at the car,” he added. “There was no clear checkpoint, just soldiers standing in the street. I stopped when I was asked to, and then the shooting started,” he said. Speaking at the boy’s funeral on Saturday, the father said “the soldier opened fire, then pulled back his unit and just walked away without a single word or a second thought”. “The car was completely stationary when he shot at us, it wasn’t moving at all. A seven-month-old infant killed in cold blood. He didn’t deserve this,” he added. Abu Haikal called for an investigation and said the soldier responsible should be held to account. “I demand and expect, if there is any conscience, any law, any morality, that the soldier who fired the shots will be held accountable for his actions. This case must not be closed without an investigation and without accountability. At the very least, I do not intend to give up.” Abu Haikal told the Associated Press that his wife was in critical condition, with shrapnel close to her heart. The family told her that her son was killed just before heading to funeral prayers. The baby’s body was wrapped in a Palestinian flag. His father carried him. The men placed the small bundle at their feet and bowed in prayer. The British consulate in Jerusalem said on X that it was “shocked and saddened” by the killing of the baby, calling for an “immediate and transparent investigation and accountability”. In a similar incident, Israeli troops operating in Tamoun, in the northern Jordan valley, opened fire on a vehicle travelling through the village on 15 March, killing a Palestinian couple and two of their children. The victims were identified as Ali Bani Odeh, 38, his wife, Waad Bani Odeh, 36, and their sons Othman, six, and Mohammad, five. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, soldiers removed two other children from the vehicle, Khaled, 11, and Mustafa, eight, both of whom suffered minor shrapnel injuries. The organisation said the troops then subjected Khaled to a violent interrogation at the scene. B’Tselem said the military initially prevented ambulances from reaching the area and allowed medical teams access only after a delay. The organisation added that soldiers later confiscated the family’s vehicle, which it said was riddled with bullet holes. The UN said last month that more than 1,000 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the war began, at least 240 of them children, and 49 people have been killed this year. Israeli soldiers accused of harming Palestinians are rarely penalised and were indicted in less than 1% of cases based on 2,427 complaints alleging wrongdoing between 2016 and 2024, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli strikes killed nine people on Saturday, medical sources and the territory’s civil defence said. Israel’s military said one of the dead was a Hamas “terrorist cell commander”. In Gaza City, a drone strike killed seven people and wounded 15 others in the Jawazat camp for displaced people, according to the civil defence, a rescue service that operates under the authority of Hamas. The city’s al-Shifa hospital also reported receiving six bodies. “We targeted terrorists in that sector,” the Israeli army told AFP, without providing further details. The civil defence announced in the evening a eighth person had been killed in an Israeli strike in south-east Gaza City, identifying him as a 37-year-old man. Farther south, Muhannad Othman Farwana, 25, was killed in the morning in a strike on a tent, the civil defence said. Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said the man’s body was brought in along with several wounded. In a statement, the Israeli army said Farwana was “a terrorist cell commander in the military wing” of Hamas, adding he was killed in a precision strike. The strike had hit his tent on the roof of his house. He was due to get married later in the day, his cousin Mohammed Farwana said. “The whole family was ready to celebrate his wedding. Now, we’re attending his funeral instead of his marriage,” he told AFP. Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

Starmer to host Zelenskyy and EU leaders for Ukraine talks

Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz for talks in Downing Street on Sunday to discuss support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities and Vladimir Putin’s rejection of his proposal of face-to-face talks on Moscow’s war. The three countries meeting the Ukrainian leader are some of Kyiv’s staunchest allies. The UK and France are leading the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process. A large-scale Ukrainian drone attack targeted St Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, on Saturday, underscoring Kyiv’s growing ability to hit deep inside Russia. No casualties were immediately reported. In Ukraine, one person was killed and three wounded overnight into Saturday in the Dnipropetrovsk region, as Russian forces struck three districts nearly 30 times with drones and artillery, regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said. Putin on Friday rejected a proposal by Zelensky for face-to-face talks on the four-year-old war, claiming he saw “no point” in a meeting. Donald Trump said it would be “great” for the two to meet, but his attention has largely been on talks with Iran. On Wednesday, Starmer condemned Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine in a phone call with Zelensky. Russian strikes on Ukraine earlier this week killed one person and injured 15 more, including three children, all while Kyiv has repelled hundreds of long-range drones launched by its enemy. Ukraine used long-range drones to strike an oil terminal in the Russian Baltic port city of St Petersburg. Last month, Starmer hailed a “generational uplift” in the UK’s defence relationship with Poland as he and his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, signed a new security pact. The UK prime minister said: “There’s no greater challenge for either of our countries than the challenge of Russian aggression, and we see that not just in Ukraine itself, but beyond Ukraine, impacting on our own countries. “So, that’s the context in which we sign what is actually a generational uplift in the relationship on security and defence between our two countries.” Additional reporting by PA Media

Pope Leo calls for leaders to reject polarisation as he begins Spanish tour

Pope Leo has urged political leaders to seek unity, rather than divide their populations for political gain, and said they must fight for peace, in the opening speech of his tour in Spain. The pope has made the marginalised a focus of his visit – his first tour of an EU country, apart from Italy – including meeting homeless people in Madrid and migrants in the Canary Islands. The pope, who has clashed with the US president, Donald Trump, over his immigration policies and war with Iran, said his visit was aimed at setting an example of respecting “every human being”. He was also due to meet survivors of sexual abuse by clergy in the Spanish Catholic church – an institution that is only now confronting its history of papered-over abuse. Leo said he would meet a few survivors, admitting that “abuses are still an open wound”. Thousands of people gathered in the streets of Madrid to greet the pontiff, who toured the city in the popemobile. It is the first time a pope has visited Spain since 2011. There has been a resurgence over recent years in Spain in the number of those who identify as Catholics, with 28.8% of young people identifying as such in 2025, compared with 17.6% in 2010. The pope is scheduled to give 20 speeches during his tour, with themes emphasising empathy for migrants, anti-demagoguery, and acknowledging what Leo said was a world crying “from its depths for peace”. “Today, the temptation to gain popularity by fanning the flames of polarisation seems to have grown rather than diminished, and human dignity continues to be violated,” he said in a speech attended by King Felipe VI at the royal palace in Madrid. “I invite everyone to set aside the divisive and polarising narratives of your societal reality and history so as to overcome sterile simplifications through the fruitful appreciation of complexity.” He suggested that technology and social media were playing a role in deepening divisions and preventing societal introspection. Leo recently released a letter focused on the dangers of artificial intelligence, suggesting that humanity was at a moral crossroads as AI technology rocketed forward. He pointed towards Spain as a country with a history of coexistence between different religions, referencing how Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together peacefully in medieval times and how they cooperated in their respective languages to advance knowledge. “Your own history suggests that a culture of encounter, not confrontation, is what fosters stability and prosperity. In reality, the message of peace, which at present, unfortunately, strikes some as naive and others as confrontational, is welcomed by those who do not shut themselves off in preconceived ideologies, but are rather open to the truth,” he said. Spain, under its socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has launched a mass amnesty programme providing about half a million immigrants with a pathway to legal residency. Spain’s policies are a contrast to much of Europe and the wider western world, which have seen a rise in xenophobia and anti-migration policies in recent years. In addition to meeting migrants in the Canary Islands, he will meet survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. Spain’s human rights ombudsman estimated in a 2023 report that there were hundreds of thousands of survivors of abuse over past decades. King Felipe told Leo, in an apparent reference to a recently launched church-state reparations system for some survivors of clerical abuse: “Your clarity and firmness, which I also wish to acknowledge, are essential in the process of healing and repairing the harm inflicted. They are essential for the victims, for the faithful, for the church and for society.” The Spanish church also suggested that the pope might meet the Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny, who is in the middle of a 10-date run of performances in Madrid. Leo joked that he faced an uphill battle when it came to competing with the pop star for young people’s interest. “If they were confronted with the question: do they want to see Bad Bunny or do they want to see the pope, I think many will go to see Bad Bunny,” he said on his flight from Rome, before adding: “But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope.”

Colombian far-right candidate is latest Trumpian figure in Latin America to ride anti-incumbent wave

Abelardo de la Espriella, the far-right lawyer who is leading the polls ahead of Colombia’s presidential runoff election, has marketed his rum, wine and menswear brands – as well as his novels and albums on which he croons popular classics – under the label “de la Espriella style”. His shift from business suits to T-shirts, baseball caps and a meticulously trimmed beard suggest the influence of El Salvador’s populist autocrat Nayib Bukele. But the similarities go further than just appearances. Like many far-right politicians in Latin America, de la Espriella has also vowed to follow Bukele’s mano dura (iron fist) approach against crime: the Salvadorian leader has imprisoned at least 2% of the adult population in his country as part of a controversial crackdown on gangs. De la Espriella has promised to end Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict in just 90 days, building private “mega prisons” and “wiping out” criminals “like cockroaches and rats”. On 21 June, he will face the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda in the runoff. Backed by the current president, Gustavo Petro, Cepeda advocates continuing the government’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the dismantling of all criminal groups, which has so far failed to stem rising levels of violence. De la Espriella is a criminal lawyer with a lavish lifestyle who has never held public office, gives military salutes despite never having served in the armed forces and has filed more than 100 lawsuits against journalists. Analysts interpret his lead in the polls as the latest example of a wave of far-right admirers of Bukele and Donald Trump who have been winning elections across Latin America in recent years. While comparisons to Bukele are the most obvious, de la Espriella appears to have taken notes from each of his neighbours’ playbooks. Following Trump, who this week granted him his “complete and total endorsement”, the lawyer delivers speeches exclusively behind bulletproof glass and has promised to sink vessels suspected of being used for drug trafficking – echoing the US airstrikes that have recently killed more than 200 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Echoing Argentina’s Javier Milei, de la Espriella has promised to adopt a “chainsaw” austerity plan of deep cuts to federal spending (although not to military spending); copying Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, he intends to embrace the use of states of emergency to crack down on gangs; and, inspired by Brazil’s Bolsonaro family, he has turned Colombia’s national football shirt into a symbol of the far right. But according to Tiziano Breda, a senior analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean at the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), de la Espriella has clearly modelled himself on El Salvador’s self-styled “world’s coolest dictator”. “He wants to be a Bukele,” said the analyst. But hoping to become Bukele and actually becoming him are two different things, Breda said, noting that, unlike the Salvadorian autocrat, who has a grip on his congress, de la Espriella – whose party will hold only four of the Colombian Senate’s 108 seats and just one of the lower house’s 188 seats – “would not have the legislative majority that allowed Bukele to dismantle the rule of law and concentrate power in the executive”. Even so, Breda believes the lawyer’s election could pose risks to Colombian democracy, as he has shown little regard for democratic checks and balances – or for human rights in general. “I fear that security operations could become more lethal, with little impact on armed groups but serious consequences in terms of retaliation and civilian exposure to the conflict,” said the analyst, who recently published a report showing that US pressure on Latin American and Caribbean countries to embrace the “war on drugs” drove an 18% increase in clashes between security forces and armed groups in 2025 – something he believes could intensify under de la Espriella. Breda said de la Espriella’s lead, more than a far-right groundswell, was part of an “anti-incumbent wave” that is removing from power leftwing presidents who, when elected four or five years ago, were seen as part of a leftist “pink tide”. There is also, he added, a “general dissatisfaction towards the political party system”, which tends to favour candidates who present themselves as “outsiders”, as well as increasing pressure from the US, which is “making clear that closer ideological alignment to Washington comes with rewards, such as economic assistance in Argentina or security cooperation in Ecuador”. Colombia is one of the few Latin American countries still governed by the left, alongside Mexico, Uruguay and Brazil. Peru, now under an interim president, will hold its runoff on Sunday between the far-right Keiko Fujimori and the leftwing Roberto Sánchez. Brazil will hold elections in October, in which the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will face the far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro. Last week, Flávio held a video call with de la Espriella. The lawyer has secured the endorsement of the third-place candidate, Paloma Valencia, as well as Trump. In Argentina, the US president’s endorsement – and his threat to withdraw a promised bailout – were seen as decisive in securing a win for Milei’s party in Argentina’s midterm elections last year, although the White House’s backing recently failed to help Viktor Orbán secure re-election in Hungary. Meanwhile, Cepeda’s first steps towards winning over voters were to initially amplify Petro’s allegations of electoral fraud, which have already been widely debunked, and to criticise de la Espriella’s use of the national football shirt. The political analyst Gabriel Cifuentes said Petro was “doing considerable damage to Cepeda” by acting as “his campaign chief”, even though electoral law prohibits a sitting president from openly participating in campaigns. “Cepeda’s campaign has made clear that it will not challenge Petro, but by failing to distance itself from him, they’re alienating important centrist sectors that see each of the president’s interventions as an authoritarian gesture,” he said.

Planned Parenthood to offer ‘just in case’ abortion pills at some US clinics

Planned Parenthood clinics in Washington and Hawaii will now offer “just in case” abortion medication, bringing wider attention to the option of receiving the pills in advance of pregnancy amid growing challenges to access. Leaders at the organization hope their name recognition will help community members understand their options for accessing care despite federal, state and personal challenges to getting abortion care. “It’s more than just an opportunity. It really is an obligation,” said Colleen McNicholas, chief of clinical transformation and medical affairs for Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky. “We need to be doing everything we can at this moment, and that means more than just holding the line – it means finding ways to expand access.” The announcement means abortion medication in advance has “gotten a lot of visibility,” said Amy Merrill, co-founder of Plan C, an organization that offers information about medication abortion, including on pills in advance. “It makes it more known, it makes it more normal, it destigmatizes it.” Some 41 states have banned or restricted abortion, and the US Food and Drug Administration is conducting a review of mifepristone, an abortion medication, with the possibility of restricting it nationally. Yet abortion in the US has largely remained steady because of telehealth and travel to states where abortion is still protected. Having abortion pills on hand prior to becoming pregnant can further ease challenges to accessing abortion, including geography, interpersonal dynamics, money, work and other obstacles, Merrill said. Getting an abortion in the US is frequently “confusing” and “chaotic”, she said. People facing intimate partner violence may struggle to get to the clinic in time; teenagers may not have their parents’ permission; others face challenges taking time off work, finding childcare and getting appointments with providers in time. “This movement is trying to think about how to ease the burden of this basic need in the face of so many existing challenges – political, but also logistical and financial and interpersonal,” Merrill said. It can be challenging to find timely, appropriate care even in states that protect access to abortion, McNicholas said. “Even if you are in a haven state or a protected state, that doesn’t necessarily mean access is easy for you.” “Needing an abortion is time-sensitive for patients,” Rebecca Gibron, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky. “Especially in parts of Washington and Hawaii that are very rural, where it is hard for folks to access timely sexual and reproductive healthcare and abortion care, offering this option to our patients really ensures their autonomy and their ability to have an abortion when they need it.” The Washington and Hawaii clinics are the first Planned Parenthood organizations to offer just-in-case medication, though other abortion providers have also offered pills in advance. “I think it’s super important for us to enter this space, because Planned Parenthood really is a household name, and we are trusted by millions of people across this country,” said Gibron, who was a Planned Parenthood patient as a teenager and is now a mother and grandmother from Idaho. “Our aim in launching this is really to ensure that more patients know this option is available to them.” The clinics will provide in-person and telehealth services to residents of Hawaii and Washington, but they won’t remotely prescribe to patients in other states. “We are making this service available in Hawaii and Washington specifically because of the state laws that support this model of care,” Gibron said. “We will continue working on the regulatory environment in other states where abortion is legal, so that we can offer this service there too.” Some other providers provide telehealth to patients in states with restrictions, using shield laws to protect them from liability, McNicholas said. They frequently refer patients across state lines to Plan C, which offers a state-by-state directory for providers. “The announcement that they were going to start with the states that they operate in made sense, and it doesn’t mean that people in restricted states don’t have options,” Merrill said. “They absolutely do if they want to get pills in advance.” Planned Parenthood has a “broad platform” and name recognition, “but also over the years they have built a trust – they have built themselves as an organization that is established to serve people’s health needs, that’s going to show up for people”, Merrill said. “They’re not saying, ‘Go get the pills, and if and when you need to use them, just figure it out.’ They’re saying: ‘We’re here for you all along the way.’”