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‘Bigger and better than ever’: how Durham Pride beat Reform’s funding axe with help from the miners

As the annual Pride parade weaved its way through Durham, the rainbow flags, trans rights placards and sequined cowboy hats filled the medieval city’s cobbled streets with a huge splash of colour. But this year, the rainbow flags were almost matched in number by trade union banners, as miners, postal workers, and train drivers swelled the parade’s ranks in solidarity, making it the biggest in Durham Pride’s history. When Reform UK won control of Durham county council last year, one of the party’s first moves in power was to take down the rainbow flag that flew over its headquarters. Soon after, it announced it was axing funding for the city’s Pride event. “Durham Pride won’t be getting a single penny from this council next year,” the deputy leader, Darren Grimes, said last summer. “Taxpayers shouldn’t be bankrolling it.” But in a testament to an enduring relationship forged during the miners’ strikes of the 1980s, this year’s event has returned bigger than ever, thanks to funding from trade unions. Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA), said that when it became apparent Durham Pride was under threat, he took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community”. That community “showed their heroism” during the miners’ strikes, he said. “They not only raised funds for us, but came to our communities, uplifted our spirits when they were down, and showed their solidarity.” He added: “That relationship’s prevailed ever since, [and so] the Durham Miners’ Association have decided to make this a priority in County Durham.” Mel Metcalf, who founded Durham Pride in 2014, said that while the event had lost about £2,500 in council funding, Reform’s move had brought in “about £25,000 from the unions and people who are supporting us more because of that decision”. He said the support had been “absolutely amazing”, adding: “I guess it’s a big thanks to Reform that our headliner is Claire Richards [from Steps] this year.” Metcalf continued: “I can’t stress how much people like CISWO [the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation], the Durham Miners’ Association, the TUC and the trades unions have [come] together and said: ‘Right, that money’s gone, but let’s find it.’ Not only did they find it, they’ve found more.” One of the single biggest donations came from Equity, the performing arts union. Its president, Lynda Rooke, said: “We are sending a message to Reform and any other group that is planning on attacking the cultural sector, which is: we see you, we will fight you, and we will succeed.” . The trade union presence at the event was bigger than it had ever seen before. The National Union of Mineworkers, Aslef, Unite, the CWU, and NASUWT the Teachers’ Union were among those who marched alongside the community with banners proudly raised. And in July, the LGBTQ+ community will in turn show its solidarity at the 140th Durham Miners’ Gala. “It was really important for us as a trade union movement to step in and make sure that Pride went ahead, and could be bigger and better than ever,” said Dave Pike, the regional secretary for TUC North East, Yorkshire & Humber. “I’m really proud that we managed to raise more money than Reform ever took away. I think it’s a really great example of solidarity in action. “This is normal for us as a trade union movement, but I think is especially important right now, given what Reform are peddling politically, and the way that they’re attacking LGBT people with their actions.” Mary Kelly Foy, the Labour MP for the City of Durham, donned a rainbow feather halo and angel wings to join the parade. “I think this is very, very special today,” she said. “We’re just showing that we’re here stronger than ever and we’re not going away.” “The trade union and Labour movement have been fantastic, we knew they would step up,” she added, dismissing Reform councillors as “silly, silly people in County Hall who just want divisive politics”. “We believe in rights and dignity and respect for everybody no matter who you are,” she said. “So I had no doubt that the trade union movement would step in and fund this.” Louise Brown from Gateshead joined the march wearing a rainbow wig, and carrying a sign saying: “Pride 1 Reform 0.” “When I heard Reform had said they’re not going to give a penny, as a lot of people here I thought well I’m definitely going to come,” she said. “You can’t just cut money for pride, I’m going to come and show solidarity.” “I think it’s disgraceful,” another marcher, Lisa V Hesling, said, adding: “I think an event like this that brings everybody together is exactly what we need, and a Reform council is not what we need.” “I’m from London originally so coming up here and learning the history, because I was very young with the miners’ strikes, so learning about how the gay community helped the miners, it’s brilliant.” The relationship between LGBTQ+ people and mining communities was immortalised in the film Pride, which showcased the work of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), which offered fundraising and practical support to the National Union of Mineworkers during the year-long strike in 1984 and 1985. Mike Jackson, a founder member of LGSM who was played by This is England’s Joe Gilgun in the 2014 film, said local Pride events such as Durham’s were even more important than huge marches in bigger cities. “People like me left home because you couldn’t be gay really in a little isolated town up north,” he said. “Now people are actually having Prides in little isolated towns up north, and that makes all the difference. “It’s beyond our wildest dreams that we would ever find an organisation like the Durham Miners’ Association absolutely and unconditionally standing up in support of LGBT rights in the face of a council that’s basically turning its back on the LGBT community. “That’s wonderful. That’s real good grassroots stuff, and it’s a reflection of that unity that was struck between the large section of the LGBT community and the mining communities.” A Reform spokesperson said: “Durham county council took the decision to withdraw taxpayer funding because residents expect their money to be spent on core local services. “If trade unions and private supporters now wish to fund the event themselves, that is a matter for them. This demonstrates that the event can go ahead without relying on council tax payers to foot the bill.”

‘I want my life back’: drugs shortages lay bare economic impact of diamond crash in Botswana

In late 2023, Boitumelo Mosege fell sick. Her neck swelled up, her whole body itched and she fainted frequently. She was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and had to give up her work as a farmer on the outskirts of Molepolole, a town about 30 miles north-west of Botswana’s capital, Gaborone. In Botswana, public healthcare is supposed to be universal and free. However, Mosege said she had only sporadically received medication since becoming ill. The 53-year-old relies on her four children’s occasional piecework (where a worker is paid a fixed rate per task or unit produced), and her mother’s 1,400 pula (£77) monthly pension, to afford 2,000 pula-worth of medication every month. In early May, she said it was three months since she had last bought medicine. “I felt like I had lost my life right there,” Mosege said, recounting when she was told she had to buy her medication herself. “I felt suicidal.” Nearby, Kelly Jansen cares full time for her 83-year-old father, Gerhardus Jansen, who uses a wheelchair. They spend a third of his pension on medication and supplies including a blood pressure monitor and compression stockings. Jansen, 39, is searching for someone to donate an electric wheelchair, which would give her more freedom. “I want my life back,” she said. Last year, shortages of essential medicines and medical supplies led the president, Duma Boko, to declare a public health emergency, 10 months after he defeated the party that had ruled Botswana since independence from Britain in 1966. Health procurement had long been dysfunctional. But a multi-year economic downturn caused by a collapse in demand for diamonds, which are 80% of Botswana’s exports, tipped it over the edge, Boko wrote in an opinion piece for the Guardian in February. Meanwhile, the economic malaise has pushed up unemployment in what has long been one of the most stable and wealthiest countries in Africa. Boko blamed the Central Medical Stores (CMS), the state health procurement agency, for raising drug prices. Thabo Lucas Seleke, a University of Botswana health policy lecturer, said the agency’s problems had been known since at least 2010, when a government report said it needed wide-scale reforms. “It is a breeding ground for corruption,” Seleke said. “It has not improved, it is getting worse.” Botswana’s health ministry did not provide a comment, after a spokesperson requested written questions. At independence, Botswana was one of the world’s poorest countries. The fortunes of the landlocked, semi-arid state were transformed a year later, when De Beers geologists found diamonds. For the next few decades, it was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. This wealth enabled Botswana to provide free primary and secondary education and become a world leader in tackling HIV/Aids. Its 2024 GDP per capita of $7,695 (£5,697) was the fourth highest in Africa, according to the World Bank. However, other healthcare outcomes haven’t kept pace with economic growth. Maternal deaths are higher than in similarly wealthy countries, according to the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, the crash in natural diamond prices – which have fallen 60% in four years and show no signs of recovery as consumers buy cheaper lab-grown stones – have dented Botswana’s relative prosperity. The IMF estimated that Botswana’s economy shrank 3% in 2024 and 1% last year. The rise in fuel prices caused by the US war with Iran will hit Botswana hard, as it is an oil importer, said Marisa Lourenço, an independent political risk consultant. “It doesn’t have much other buffer,” she said. “If we look at how much the economy contracted during Covid, it never really recovered from that.” Unemployment rose to 21% among its population of 2.5 million in the year to 31 March 2025, according to the most recent official data. Almost 29% of 15- to 35-year-olds were jobless. Oratile Olorato Kgatle’s eyes lit up as she spoke about wanting to work in public relations. But the 26-year-old, who lives with her aunt, has not had a single job interview in 18 months of applying. “I could feel that light just dimming with each day, until January when I went to [a psychiatric hospital] to seek help,” said Kgatle, who is limited to office work by Erb’s palsy, a condition that affects her strength and mobility. Botswana’s ailing economy has also affected middle-class families. Phenyo Tanka said her family stopped eating out and fired their domestic worker, after her husband was made redundant from his job as a mining engineer in December. Tanka, a 39-year-old mother of four, is also an example of Botswana’s failure to diversify its economy away from diamonds. She graduated with a degree in agriculture in 2011, but has never been able to find a job. Tanka hasn’t given up, though. She now sells homemade cakes and wants to set up a toilet paper factory. “I have two girls and I want them to know that they can also be independent, as ladies,” she said.

Why $1bn in Balkans energy contracts are going to an obscure company connected to Donald Trump

On a graffitied Sarajevo backstreet, a path leads past an overgrown patch of garden to a white door. Beyond is the registered office of a company that is on the brink of winning contracts worth more than $1bn. AAFS Infrastructure and Energy is close to securing a concession to build and operate a pipeline across the Balkans to allow fossil gas shipped from the US to replace supplies that come from Russia. “This could be the most important infrastructure project ever in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” says one of the country’s top officials, who, like others, asks to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive negotiations. The company has no record of even attempting anything close to this scale. What it does have is personal connections to Donald Trump. One of AAFS’s representatives is a Washington lawyer who has acted for the Trumps in political cases. The other is the brother of the president’s former national security adviser. Both were part of a campaign that is close to Trump’s heart: the effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. A Guardian investigation, based on interviews with current and former Bosnian and US officials, leaked documents and corporate paperwork, has examined the obscure company that has been thrust into the global struggle for energy supremacy. It offers a glimpse of how international relations are changing under a presidency that blurs the line between government policy and the enrichment of the ruling family and those around it. “There is a logic, in our current world, of having administration-connected people involved in big economic projects or investments,” says a former senior US official in the region. “It is unsavoury but so much of my country’s politics is unsavoury these days.” In the former Yugoslavia, the stakes are higher than just who might get rich. US intervention could undermine the peace deal it brokered in 1995 to end a war that killed 100,000, many of them Muslim Bosniak civilians massacred by Serb paramilitaries. A generation on, Bosnia’s ethnic leaders are still manoeuvring for advantage. US officials have left Bosnia’s leaders in no doubt about what the Trump administration wants: the go-ahead for AAFS’s pipeline. AAFS’s Maga connections When the Guardian knocks at AAFS’s Sarajevo address, a woman calls down from an upstairs window that its local representative will be back soon. Amer Bekan arrives a few minutes later. A large middle-aged man, he says AAFS’s office will be moving to a big building with 100 employees. Bekan’s online CV calls him an “investor and entrepreneur with extensive experience”. He has tried politics as well. After coming last with 116 votes in a 2016 run for mayor in central Sarajevo, another campaign in 2020 led to him being accused of abusing the elections for personal gain, an allegation he denied. Bekan registered a Bosnian company called AAFS in 2021. It was only after he brought in his American partners last year that it hit the big time. Neither he nor they will say how they were introduced. Bekan’s AAFS is now owned by a US company of the same name that was registered in November. Located in a tourist district by the Potomac River, the address AAFS gives for its Washington office sits between a Lebanese restaurant and an Irish pub. A sign identifies it as the premises of Binnall Law Group. Jesse Binnall is a leading lawyer fighting the Maga cause. He was an aide to the 2016 campaign that carried Trump to the White House. In 2020, he was a leading voice undermining Joe Biden’s victory. He declared: “Donald Trump won … after you account for the fraud and irregularities that occurred.” He defended Trump and his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr, against a lawsuit that sought to hold them responsible when rioters tried to overturn the result by storming the Capitol building. Since Trump’s return to power last year, Binnall has secured a $1.25m settlement from the justice department for Michael Flynn, who was briefly national security adviser in the president’s first term. Despite having admitted lying to the FBI about covert contacts with Russia, Flynn alleged wrongful prosecution. Binnall also came to know Flynn’s brother Joe, a healthcare entrepreneur. They were fellow campaigners in the effort to discredit Biden’s victory. Flynn served as president of one of the movement’s best-funded vehicles, the America Project. And he was an adviser to Trump’s 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns. The White House referred questions to the state department, which said: “The Southern Interconnection gas pipeline, which has been a [US government] priority for the past three administrations, will expand and diversify Bosnia and Herzegovina’s energy sector, giving BiH greater control over its energy supply by providing access to market-based natural gas and reducing dependence on a single, unreliable source.” Flynn and Binnall’s qualifications for a Balkans infrastructure venture are not immediately apparent. But since they joined, the project has enjoyed the full-throated support of the Trump administration. No competitive tender process Binnall, Flynn and Bekan’s initial discussions with Bosnian officials last autumn were about a $300m renovation of two airports. Then the Bosnian officials suggested they take on a much more significant project: the Southern Interconnection pipeline. The US has long supported the plan to connect Bosnia to a gas terminal on Croatia’s coast, which would reduce Vladimir Putin’s influence in southern Europe. During Biden’s time, the idea was for Bosnia’s state gas company to run the project. But the competing interests of Bosnia’s ethnic factions caused delay after delay. While some Bosnian officials were wary of handing the project to foreign private interests, others saw enlisting a company connected to Trump as a chance to break the deadlock. Time was running short. Bosnia is a candidate to join the EU, and Brussels has set a September 2027 deadline to cease buying gas from Russia, the source of Bosnia’s entire supply. Some senior Bosnian figures calculated that commissioning an American company could help not just energy security but safety more broadly in a region where war is a living memory. As Bekan says: “The US government protects its investments.” Yet some analysts fear Bosnia risks swapping one bully for another. No one appears to want to risk angering Trump, even if it means entrusting their hopes for a vital new energy artery to a venture with no demonstrated ability to get it done. Asked who AAFS’s shareholders are, Bekan says Binnall and Flynn plus others he declines to name. He suggests financing could come from “investment funds in the United States”, but says he cannot provide more information. Binnall says: “We are the right team for this. No other group combines on-the-ground presence in Bosnia with strong support in America. And we’re excited to take the leap because we believe Bosnia Herzegovina is the future.” A confidential AAFS proposal seen by the Guardian says the pipeline will cost €300m (£260m) with another €900m (£780m) for three power plants, with funding coming not from the Bosnian state but equity and debt. It does not specify what returns Flynn, Binnall and others involved expect for themselves. In March, new Bosnian legislation stipulated that AAFS should be the pipeline contractor. There has been no competitive tender, the usual way to ensure contracts go to a competent bidder for a fair price. Transparency International said: “Establishing such a practice in a country with one of the highest levels of corruption in Europe would lead to catastrophic consequences in the implementation of strategically important projects such as the Southern Interconnection gas pipeline.” Days later, as the Guardian revealed, the EU’s ambassador sent Bosnia’s leaders a private warning that they should be consulting with Brussels on any changes in energy policy to “avoid missing out on opportunities for further integration, as well as financial opportunities”. The US is undeterred. “This partnership strengthens energy independence and ends reliance on Russian gas,” its Sarajevo embassy posted on X in April. “A new era for energy security in the Western Balkans has begun.” Yet any new era will not begin until the Southern Interconnection is built. For that to happen, the Trump administration will need the friendship of the man who wants to break the country up. Ultranationalist wants to rip up peace accord Milorad Dodik, the ultranationalist leader of Bosnia’s Serbs, was until recently treated as a pariah by Washington. Biden’s administration accused Dodik of abusing public office “to accumulate personal wealth through graft, bribery, and other forms of corruption” and expanded sanctions against him and his family. “His divisive ethno-nationalistic rhetoric reflects his efforts to … divert attention from his corrupt activities,” a US Treasury statement said. Dodik called the sanctions “lies”. When Trump retook the presidency, Dodik embarked on a multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to cultivate the Trump administration’s support and have the sanctions lifted. The lobbyists styled Dodik’s Serb nationalists as Trump’s allies against Islam. One of them was Michael Flynn, who earned $100,000 for a month’s work. In October, without explanation, the Trump administration cancelled the sanctions. On 7 April, Donald Trump Jr, the custodian of the family business empire, landed in Banja Luka, the main city in the Serbian half of Bosnia, for an event in his honour. Dodik’s son, Igor, gave Trump Jr a warm welcome. “Your presence speaks volumes,” he said. “We depend on you and we rely on you. In return, you, America and the Republican administration led by your father will have a reliable, truthful and Christian ally in this part of the world.” Michael Murphy, a former US ambassador to Bosnia, says Dodik is currying favour in Trump circles as he seeks to rip up the 1995 peace accord by declaring the Serb region independent. “He wants them to embrace his larger agenda. In order to get that, he can’t screw with the pipeline.” Those embracing him, he adds, are “playing with fire”. Under Bosnia’s power-sharing arrangement, the Serbs could veto the pipeline. Dodik, who remains their leader despite giving up his official position, has every reason to do so. Like the recently defeated Victor Orbán in Hungary, Dodik is an ally of Putin. Not only does Bosnia’s existing pipeline bring Russian gas, magnifying Putin’s leverage in the Balkans, it also runs across the Serbs’ territory, giving them sway over energy supplies. But a senior Bosnian Serb politician says: “I saw this myself: Americans here have a number one priority and that’s the pipeline. They are very, very keen on this. Dodik, like everyone else, was told: Don’t play around with the project.” Trump Jr did not mention the pipeline or AAFS during his event. But he extolled the benefits of buying American gas. “That’s a no-brainer,” he said. “You can solve so many problems, both business-wise and, frankly, geopolitically on this one issue. I think it’s a major opportunity.” On 21 April, shortly after Trump Jr’s visit, Dodik indicated he would not obstruct Binnall and Flynn’s plan. That leaves the Trump associates’ takeover of a crucial European energy project close to complete. Additional reporting by Joseph Gedeon in Washington

Bound by blood: new film highlights Jamaica’s outlawed obeah belief system

A new movie from award-winning Jamaican film-maker Sosiessia Nixon shines a spotlight on Jamaica’s enduring west African-based magic and spiritual healing tradition known as obeah. Nixon’s tense, feature-length suspense, Stew Peas, tells of the story of Jamaican detective Tessa, who is obsessed with an old murder case. Tessa’s life begins to fall apart when it becomes clear that her husband, Neil, has fallen under the spell of her new maid, Marcia. The story takes a dark turn with the shocking revelation that Marcia has been adding a secret ingredient to Neil’s food – her menstrual blood. “This film focuses on the persisting Jamaican obeah belief, that a woman could ‘bind’ a man in a relationship by serving him a meal of the traditional kidney beans and meat stew, which becomes a potent love potion when her menstrual blood is added,” Nixon said. Nixon hopes the movie will spark a dialogue about the tension between Christianity and obeah, which is rooted in the country’s African heritage and still practised today despite being outlawed by colonisers in the 1700s – and still illegal today. “The practice of binding a man with stew peas remains very much taboo in Jamaica, and I wanted to open a conversation. I wanted to look at this belief system in depth. Jamaicans often say that belief kills and belief cures, meaning that whatever you believe, that is what is going to happen. So, does this thing really work?” Nixon said. Coming from St Thomas, an idyllic coastal parish on the south-eastern tip of Jamaica, sometimes nicknamed the “obeah parish”, Nixon said she was inspired by actual experiences. “Growing up in St Thomas, I was very much exposed to a lot of obeah,” Nixon said. Producer and actor, Ava Eagle Brown, who created Jamaica’s Black River film festival, said the film will resonate with Caribbean people everywhere. “There is so much of us in this film, the things that make us Jamaican – especially if you’re in the diaspora … it brings you back home.” Brown, who is also in the film, added: “It’s probably going to now have some men looking at their woman with suspicion and asking: ‘What did you put it in my stew peas?’” she said. “But on a serious level, I told my son to make sure he doesn’t eat any stew peas from any woman!” Sonjah Stanley Niaah, a Jamaican cultural studies scholar and the director for UWI’s Centre for Reparation Research, said the stew peas belief is linked to the African view that natural elements, including blood from menstruation, has an inherent potency. The idea, she added, was that the red kidney beans will mask the blood so the man being charmed cannot detect it. Stanley Niaah welcomed the opportunity to explore forms of African spiritualities, which she said are often misunderstood, after being vilified and outlawed by European colonialists who had linked them to resistance and rebellions among enslaved Africans. “People in this part of the world are people of African descent and there’s a pantheon of African spirituality that we have in our blood, that we have inherited … But [today], African spirituality has no attention, no substance, it’s not being taught in schools, we are so afraid of ourselves, we are neglecting it,” she said. She added: “What we now have is this very profound, alive and longstanding tension between Christian practices and African spirituality. Enslavement was sanctioned by the church. So, some aspects of the legislative architecture in the Caribbean were certainly driven by the need to have enslaved people not assemble, or gather for any reason, whether to worship their gods or to plan rebellions. This legislative architecture is very much present even today, when you see the Obeah Act still on the books in Jamaica.” Jamaica needs to keep making films that boldly represent the region, communities and cultures, even as it grapples with tough challenges such as rebuilding after Hurricane Melissa, Stanley Niaah said. Brown, who had to cancel this year’s film festival after Hurricane Melissa demolished parts of Black River, where the event is normally held, echoed Stanley Niaah’s sentiments, describing Stew Peas as “a ray of hope”, as Jamaica’s multibillion-dollar creative industry struggles to recover. “This year I had to postpone the Black River film festival, which was a real blow because it was part of how Jamaican creatives were starting to connect with the globe, including contacts from major networks like Canal+ and Netflix,” she said. She added: “The hurricane destroyed so much! It destroyed infrastructure, equipment and for some people it destroyed hope. And that is why we need projects like this that demonstrate the resilience of Jamaicans, and send a message to the world that we are still making music and movies and adding that quintessential Jamaican green, gold and black hue to entertainment.” Jamaica’s film commissioner Jackie Jacqueline Jackson said films such as Stew Peas are “a powerful testament to the resilience, ingenuity, and determination of Jamaica’s creative industry”. “It’s important to keep going and demonstrate that Jamaica is still open for business. By signalling this, it encourages international productions to return to Jamaica which positively affects jobs and film production expenditure,” she added.

Americans echo Pope Leo’s concerns about AI: ‘It threatens workers, privacy and human life’

In his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued a stark warning about the rise of artificial intelligence this week, denouncing the “culture of power” driving the AI age. Calling for the “most rigorous” ethical constraints on AI – which he described as one of the greatest threats facing humanity today – the first US-born pope also warned of “new forms of slavery” emerging through the digital economy. Speaking to the Guardian, readers in the US echoed the pope’s concerns, describing AI as an “unregulated” industry increasingly being used to the “detriment of too many people”, while also raising fears about surveillance, labor displacement, war and environmental harm. For Linda Given, a 74-year-old resident of Boston, Massachusetts, who ran a small gift store in Cambridge for nearly 40 years, the pope’s warning resonated deeply. “I think he’s right to emphasize the dignity of humans, and to warn that things in the AI field are moving both too fast, and without any significant oversight,” Given said, adding: “To use it as any kind of substitute for human interaction or human agency [is] awful … [and] the entirely likely possibility it could be manipulated to do destructive things.” Stephen Sincoskie, a 55-year-old print shop supervisor from Howell, New Jersey, expressed similar concerns. “Unregulated AI is a possible threat to workers, privacy and even human life. Unfortunately, the most corrupt family in politics … is making money to look the other way,” he said. “I’m concerned the use of AI will replace workers and assist in the ushering in of a fascistic surveillance state. I do not believe for one second the 1% are interested in paying out guaranteed monthly salaries for everyone to relax and enjoy a career and ‘debt free’ life.” Others focused on the effect AI is already having on education and critical thinking. Debra, a 58-year-old college professor in Massachusetts, said she worries students are losing critical thinking skills. “From my perspective, AI is robbing many students of the need to think critically, learn the ways of research and express themselves by writing,” she said, before adding: “I appreciate the perspective of the pope and just wish that the church could apply the logic used with respect to AI to their church’s positions on matters relating to gender and sexuality. For instance, it’s ridiculous that women cannot serve as priests in the church. That should be an easy one to fix, but unfortunately these supposedly holy men can’t see their way clearly to recognizing that inherent human dignity extends to women too.” For Scott Gibb, a 70-year-old retiree in California, the issue came down to moral leadership. “Someone needs to have some moral clarity around this issue and it sure isn’t Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. They are soulless,” Gibb, who is not Catholic but supports Pope Leo, said. Lauren, a Baltimore, Maryland-based reader who works in international aid and relief, also praised the pope’s intervention. “His encyclical and his remarks constitute much needed moral leadership in this time, especially when the tech leaders are interested mainly in profit at the expense of humanity,” she said. She also pointed to AI’s environmental costs and growing use in warfare. “Yes, AI is consuming natural resources and land at an alarming pace, for dubious benefits. At its best, if the product succeeds as tech leaders want it to, it will replace humans and make it difficult for regular people to earn a living. It is already used in war, and there are concerns it has accelerated conflicts and led to the killing of civilians. The expansion of AI is happening without any input from citizens, and the threat from AI is enormous.” Sam Bakkila, a 37-year-old computer science and instructional designer based in New York City, agreed with many of the pope’s criticisms. “AI is being developed and pushed by some of the worst leaders in the American technology and venture capital industries, whose whole strategy is to move fast, break things, and take advantage of government bureaucracy’s inability to regulate them in a timely manner to create hugely powerful monopolies before the government can catch up,” Bakkila, whose livelihood depends on helping students use AI professionally, said. “I don’t think it’s possible to understand anything happening in American politics right now without thinking through the impact of AI. I think that tech CEOs lined up behind Donald Trump knowing that this four-year period would be crucial for AI adoption, and that they supported him knowing that he would both avoid regulating AI and would secure hundreds of billions of dollars of government funding for AI infrastructure and integrating AI into defense networks.” Bakkila continued: “AI is pushing American corporations further towards monopolies … and these corporations have now realized that it is in their interest to secure a political environment that will not regulate them.” Paul, a 67-year-old former professor of ethics and logic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, compared AI to nuclear weapons, arguing that both possess the capacity for mass harm. “They both target everywhere and nearly anyone on the planet. Why have nukes never been used? Simply put: humans successfully applied commonly held ethical/moral rules to prevent their use. Absent my nation’s gross folly in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they’ve not been used since. We have, worldwide, invoked a shared ethical stance: we shall not use them,” he said. “AI has equal power to create conditions/actions to harm, even kill millions of humans. It is designed to enslave us. Yet, there isn’t a whit of ethical programming built in, except to serve a global oligarchy in domination of everything,” Paul added. Not all readers, however, agreed that the pope’s views should carry particular authority in the global debate on AI. “I don’t understand why the pope’s remarks should have any bearing on anything whatsoever. In an increasingly secular world, why does somebody who claims to speak for an alleged deity have any relevance?” said Charlie Hinkle, a 60-year-old tech worker from Charlotte, North Carolina. He continued: “The Catholic church might be the largest organized religion in the world, but its believers have long seemed to go their own way on issues (contraception, LGBTQ rights, women’s empowerment, etc). The pope, as far as I am concerned, is irrelevant.” A 76-year-old firefighter based in Oklahoma similarly dismissed the broader framing of religion versus AI. “I find the debate over AI versus religion, any religion, to be pointless, akin to arguing which is worse, Ebola or hantavirus, when both are equally odious. The insistence on a reliance on either religion or AI exposes a serious weakness in the human condition, that being the need for some external validation or support, which leads to manipulation and use of the individual by the purveyors of one or the other,” he said.

Colombia prepares to go to polls in election shadowed by resurgence of political violence

Mateo Pérez Rueda was one internship away from completing a degree in political science. The 24-year-old also worked as a bicycle delivery rider and sold fruit salads and juice to finance his passion: the Colombian independent digital magazine El Confidente. On 4 May he travelled to Briceño, in the western province of Antioquia, to report on the long-running conflict between the army, paramilitaries and dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). The next day, he stopped responding to his parents. Three long days of agony followed, with relatives and friends pressing the authorities for information, until a humanitarian mission confirmed what many had feared: Rueda had been kidnapped, tortured and killed by one of the Farc dissident groups, known as the 36th Front. His case became yet another symbol of the surging political violence that has reached its highest levels in a decade – and that has made the decades-long internal armed conflict central to this Sunday’s presidential election. The vote will be a contest between left and right – and two entirely contradictory proposals for dealing with the war that claimed nearly half a million lives. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who under the constitution cannot seek re-election, has backed the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda, 63, who is leading in the polls and is regarded as the architect of the government’s “total peace” effort to sign disarmament deals with all criminal groups. Many security experts consider the plan to have failed, noting that armed factions have taken advantage of temporary ceasefires to continue expanding, but Cepeda remains committed to the plan. The two main challengers, the far-right lawyer and “outsider” Abelardo de la Espriella, 47, and the rightwing senator Paloma Valencia, 48, promise a return to all-out war as soon as they take office. During the election period, there has been a surge in guerrilla attacks, homicides, kidnappings, forced displacement and massacres; and last year, the rightwing senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a campaign event and later died. The violence is widely seen as a reminder that although the landmark 2016 peace deal between the government and most of Farc dramatically reduced violence for years, it did not end it for good. Subsequent administrations slow-walked the implementation of the settlement, while some Farc factions and other rebel groups refused to sign any agreement, instead growing in strength and size. “Here in Antioquia, the war never ended,” said Jorge Rueda, Mateo’s cousin and godfather, who lived a few blocks away from the journalist in Yarumal, only 33 miles (53km) from where he was killed. Although the various rebel factions claim a political agenda, most of the violence is driven by competition over drug production, retail and smuggling (Colombia remains the world’s biggest producer of cocaine), illegal goldmining, logging and local corruption. “Here, the war is over micro-trafficking and another over the goldmines,” added Rueda. On Monday, more than 50 people were killed in clashes between two Farc dissident groups on the opposite side of the country, in the southern department of Guaviare. Many of them were children and teenagers forcibly recruited by the crime factions. Alejandro Chala, a researcher at the Fundación Paz y Reconciliación, argued that although the figures were high, the current moment was not comparable to the period before the peace agreement, when the homicide rate peaked at about 80 per 100,000 inhabitants; it now stands at about 26 per 100,000. “The violence now is much more territorially concentrated, largely entrenched in the main areas where illegal economic routes operate … It clearly generates a lot of media noise, but it does not have the national reach it had in the past,” he said. Even so, Espriella has argued that it is necessary to “save Colombia” from crime, while Valencia says that instead of “total peace”, the country needs “total security”. Until recently Cepeda remained firmly at the top of the polls, with Valencia in second place; but in the past two weeks she has been overtaken by Espriella. With a large share of voters still undecided, the outcome is uncertain: if no candidate wins more than half of the vote, a runoff will be held on 21 June. Valencia has been a senator since 2014, and is the granddaughter of the former president Guillermo León Valencia, and a loyal follower of the ex-president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, whose two terms between 2002 and 2010 were marked by an aggressive military confrontation with armed groups that produced limited results and became tainted by the “false positives” scandal, when innocent people were extrajudicially killed by the army and falsely labelled as enemy combatants. Espriella is a criminal lawyer and millionaire businessman with a lavish lifestyle who owns wine and rum brands and investments in cattle ranching and real estate, but has never held public office. He is an admirer of Donald Trump, and has courted controversy during the campaign, telling a radio host that he is winning female voters because of the size of his genitals. With his neatly trimmed beard, he has also modelled himself on El Salvador’s populist autocrat Nayib Bukele, who has imprisoned at least 2% of his country’s adult population as part of a controversial crackdown on gangs. Espriella promises to follow the Salvadoran mano dura (iron-fist) approach and build 10 maximum-security “mega-prisons”. Sandra Borda Guzmán, an associate professor of political science at Universidad de los Andes, said: “He also carries some elements of this new counterculture against political correctness, in the style of [Argentina’s president] Javier Milei and Donald Trump.” Despite Espriella’s openly declared admiration for Trump, the US president has so far refrained from endorsing either him or Valencia, unlike in other recent elections involving far-right candidates, such as in Hungary, Honduras and Argentina. Guzmán believes one reason may lie in Espriella’s recent past: he spent years as the lawyer for figures such as the Colombian businessman Álex Saab, widely regarded as the main financial frontman for Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela, who was recently deported to the US by the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez. “As a criminal lawyer, Espriella has long been linked to people prosecuted or extradited by the US and those close ties remain concerning for Washington. So he’s not really the ideal candidate for the White House,” said Guzmán. She believes another reason why the US has not openly tried to interfere in the election is that “they eventually realised those interventions produce the opposite effect to what they want”, noting that Trump’s attacks on Petro – calling him a “sick man” and “drug-trafficking leader” – ended up boosting the Colombian president’s popularity. Petro, a former member of a smaller rebel faction that signed a peace deal years before the Farc agreement, is Colombia’s first leftwing president. His approval ratings are widely seen as high for a president nearing the end of his term, something many analysts attribute to the expansion of the government’s social programmes and increases in the minimum wage, alongside falling poverty rates. Despite losing his godson Mateo to the internal armed conflict, Jorge Rueda believes Colombia is doing better. “I could say something different out of anger, but from the heart I believe Colombia has improved enormously in recent years … such as giving young people better opportunities so they don’t join the armed conflict. However, there are some regions that never improved,” he said. In those areas, he added, the absence of the state allows criminal groups to take control and drive away any prospect of private investment. “That is why I think it is so important that Mateo’s case receives attention, and that his death serves to show that there is a part of Colombia still forgotten and that neglect is what keeps the war so intense.”

‘We could hear the roof collapsing’: how Russian missiles devastated Kyiv’s cultural sites

For four years, Vitalina Martynovska and her team had been working on a complete transformation of Kyiv’s National Chornobyl Museum. The new sleek displays were designed to tell a fresh story about the reactor explosion of 26 April 1986 – the most serious nuclear accident in history, a factor that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and an event that continues to shape Ukraine’s identity today. The museum was to be devoted not just to the extraordinary work of the “liquidators” who did the initial cleanup after the explosion. It was also the story “of all the people whose lives changed after the disaster”, said Martynovska, the museum’s director. It reopened to visitors on 26 April, 40 years to the day since the nuclear disaster. Then, less than a month later, on the night of 23 May, a shock wave from a Russian missile engulfed the museum’s handsome historic building, a former fire station. Five days later, a still profoundly shocked Martynovska was standing among the museum’s charred remains. Firefighters toiled amid the absolute destruction of everything she and her team had worked so hard to create. “There is practically no room in the museum that has not suffered damage,” she said. “The building itself sustained significant damage, the roof was destroyed, the floor between the second and third storeys was destroyed, and collapsed; the exhibition rooms and the museum laboratory were affected.” About 40% of the irreplaceable artefacts on display, according to early assessments, were destroyed. Martynovska first heard that her building was on fire around 5am on 24 May. Through the night, Russia sent 60 missiles and 600 drones to Ukraine, most of which were targeted at the capital. The attack killed two people and injured 90 more and significantly damaged many of Kyiv’s museums and culturally significant buildings. “Twenty minutes later, I was already there,” she said. “The first thing I saw was thick smoke and flames on the roof. The windows, doors and gates that were part of this building were already lying on the ground nearby. “Given that I had been working on the restoration project with the team and on the project to build a new exhibition over the last four years, you can imagine what a heavy blow this was for me.” As soon as the emergency workers allowed, she and the chief curator plunged into the building to try to save what they could. “We began evacuating the artefacts while the roof was still ablaze and the firefighting operation was still under way,” she said. “We could hear the roof collapsing. We were constantly wading through water.” As she spoke, emergency workers were making safe a space that had housed a display about the Chornobyl area before the building of the power plant. The artefacts included old Bibles, books, icons and ceramics, most of which were destroyed. A text on the wall describing the room’s theme remained intact – translated, it read, “Lost worlds”. The museum stores – housing the bulk of the collection of 22,000 artefacts – were safe, she said. And she had some hope that the 40% loss of artefacts on display may be revised down a little. She was clutching a pretty earthenware jug that the emergency workers had found in the blackened wreckage. They had also found, she said, the tail of a missile. Across town, wind and rain were blowing into the elegant Doric-pedimented building housing the National Art Museum of Ukraine (Namu). Shock waves had blown out nearly all its windows, ceilings were partly down and panels from its huge wooden front doors had been flung across the foyer. The sculpture of Apollo that sits atop its pediment had cracked. Its collection – ranging from ancient icons to old masters and Ukrainian modernists – is in storage or out on tour abroad. During the full-scale invasion, it has been hosting temporary exhibitions: the current show, titled Sunrise, of works by the 20th-century painter Anatoly Limarev, was protected from the onslaught of glass and debris by the temporary walls erected in the exhibition space, which acted as baffle walls. Since the attack, the exhibition has been hastily uninstalled and taken to safety. In one of its elegant galleries, the head of exhibitions, a senior conservator and two students from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, attached to the institution for part of their art history degree, were shovelling rubble into carts. “It’s definitely an internship they won’t forget,” said the museum spokesperson Veronika Bublei. In the early morning of 24 May, she said, it was “stress, horrible – we were running about trying to do what we could and there was no time for emotion – or we turned the stress into trying to do something practical. “It felt like the epicentre of a tempest, with all the doors and windows blown out – as if a tornado had blown through the building.” “My initial feeling was one of shock,” said Namu’s director, Yulia Lytvynets, who, like the rest of her team, was dressed in workwear as the staff continued with the back-breaking cleanup operation on Thursday. “We understand that there is a war going on. Our halls are empty and our art is safe. But you’ll never be 100% ready for something like this. Even if you hide your collection, you can’t hide the building.” The museum had been preparing its next exhibition devoted to the modernist theatre designer Anatol Petrytskyi. That will now go ahead online, she said. The building is now closed to the public indefinitely. Numerous cultural buildings and institutions were reported damaged in the city after the night’s attacks, including the Zhytnyi market, a masterpiece of 1980s modernism. It was the latest attack to damage cultural buildings and cultural heritage in the country. According to Ukraine’s culture ministry, the Russian army has “destroyed or damaged 1,723 cultural heritage sites and 2,524 cultural infrastructure sites in Ukraine” since 2022. Fire had raged through a mall and market in the Lukianivka district of the city. At the Mala Opera, a performance venue across the street from the burned-out shopping mall, the venue’s chief technician, Oleksandr Buryma, was fitting plastic sheeting over blown-out windows as a temporary fix. The roof, he said, was damaged and a section of wall blown out at the rear. But the early 20th-century venue, once a cultural centre for tram workers and now a beloved small-scale stage for theatre and music, was still planning to go ahead with its performance on the evening of 29 May: Railroad, a play by the US writer Bryan Reynolds set amid the rise of nazism, he said. In this case, the show – if it possibly could – would go on.