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Thousands of staff at Czech public broadcasters strike over funding plans

Thousands of public service media employees in Czechia are holding a 24-hour strike after the government of the billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babiš, pushed ahead with controversial plans to change the way the country’s public broadcasters are funded. Monday’s industrial action by staff at Czech Television and Czech Radio marks the biggest escalation yet in a months-long confrontation between the broadcasters and Babiš’s populist administration. “The reforms have been prepared without consultation and without guarantees for the independence of public service media,” said Pavla Kubálková, a member of Czech Television’s strike committee. “A large part of society remembers what the news looked like when politicians chose the content before 1989. We don’t want to go back there.” The legislation, approved by the cabinet last week, would scrap the licence fee system and finance Czech Television and Czech Radio through an annual state-budget allocation. According to the broadcasters, the changes would in effect return funding to 2008 levels, cutting about £14.3m from Czech Radio’s annual budget and £35.8m from Czech Television’s, despite the nearly two decades of inflation since then. Executives say the reductions would force hundreds of job losses and substantial cuts to programming. But the dispute is not just about money. Kubálková said it had evolved into a broader fight over the future independence of public service media amid concerns that direct funding from the state would expose broadcasters to political pressure. “What matters most to us is preserving independence and the direct relationship between Czech Television and its viewers,” she said. “The employees of both broadcasters are ready to defend their service to citizens, and we are determined to continue with even more vigorous protests,” she added. “We will do everything we can to defend public service media in their current form.” Her concerns were reinforced last week when Josef Nerušil, an MP for the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, which is part of the governing coalition, appeared to suggest that changes to funding should eventually lead to greater scrutiny of what public broadcasters air. “The point is to change the funding,” Nerušil told Czech Radio. “But if we’re talking about what public service media should broadcast, then of course, in a further step, we want to get to a broader discussion.” He added that the aim was “to control not only the financial side but also the content side”. The MP then accused the broadcasters of political bias. Presenting the legislation last week, the culture minister, Oto Klempíř, said the broadcasters should prove they could operate more efficiently with less money. In written comments to the Guardian, he rejected claims that the funding proposal threatened the independence of public service media. “Moving funding into the state budget changes nothing about the independence of Czech Television or Czech Radio,” Klempíř said. “Their legal status, the way their governing councils are appointed, their powers and the guarantees of editorial freedom remain unchanged.” He argued that the changes only affected the method of financing and noted that “an increasing number of European countries already fund public service media from public budgets. This is not a Czech experiment but a broader trend.” Babiš has also rejected suggestions that the changes threaten editorial independence. “We want you to save money, and you’re not,” the prime minister told a public broadcaster journalist at a press conference. Both broadcasters have reacted with alarm to the changes. Hynek Chudárek, the head of Czech Television, said the legislation would “effectively liquidate” parts of the broadcaster, while Czech Radio’s director general, René Zavoral, said cuts would hit regional reporting, children’s programming and foreign correspondents. The strike will be felt across both broadcasters. Czech Television said all channels except its children’s service would be affected, along with its websites, streaming platform and social media output. Czech Radio plans to merge some stations and alter programming schedules, with presenters explaining the changes on air. “The strike is a way of showing audiences what they stand to lose,” said Jan Herget, a member of Czech Radio’s strike committee. Media scholars say the dispute is unprecedented in recent Czech history. “A strike in Czech public service media is a highly unusual event,” said Marína Urbániková, an associate professor of media studies at Charles University and Masaryk University. She noted that Czech Television had not experienced a comparable strike since 2001, when journalists protested against political interference in the appointment of the broadcaster’s director general. František Talíř of the Christian Democrats, who chairs the parliamentary media committee, said on Czech Television: “We’re going to the barricades because this is a direct attack on Czech Television and Czech Radio.” The opposition would use every means to block the bill, he said, warning that the country was “copying Slovakia’s path”, referring to Czechia’s neighbour, where the government last year dissolved the public broadcaster RTVS. Zdeněk Hřib, the leader of the opposition Pirate party and a former mayor of Prague, said the funding plans would take the country “back not one year but at least 36 years, to when we had state media”. His party has referred the changes to the European Commission and the Council of Europe’s Venice commission, arguing that they may breach European standards designed to safeguard the independence of public service media. Those concerns have also drawn the attention of international media freedom groups. In a joint statement, a coalition led by the International Press Institute said the bill risked “financially weakening the broadcasters, eroding safeguards for their financial independence and violating the European Media Freedom Act”, and called on the European Commission to scrutinise the plans.

Ukraine war briefing: Dispute over second world war army unit threatens to divide Poland and Ukraine

A conflict between politicians in Poland ⁠and Ukraine is a strategic mistake that will harm both sides, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk ⁠has cautioned, ⁠as he seeks to defuse a rekindled dispute over events that occurred during the second world war. Polish president Karol Nawrocki on Friday ⁠stripped Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the country’s top honour, prompting three former Ukrainian presidents and other senior officials ⁠to return their state awards to Poland. Nawrocki revoked the Order of the White Eagle after ‌Zelenskyy angered many in Poland ‌by renaming a Ukrainian army unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, ‌nationalists who massacred Poles during the second world war. “Wading into a conflict between politicians in Poland and Ukraine ‌is a strategic mistake that will harm both sides: business-wise, geopolitically, and reputationally. And in politics, as we know, a mistake is worse than a crime,” Tusk wrote in a post on X. The pro-European Tusk was elected prime minister in 2023, after leading a coalition that defeated the nationalist Law and Justice party with which Nawrocki is aligned. Zelenskyy, in ⁠an interview posted on X, said Ukraine and Poland cannot be “anything but partners and friends,” adding that a political struggle could end in a “very dangerous escalation”. “Our service members choose a ‌heroic name for their unit themselves, and as president and supreme commander-in-chief, I must support them,” he said. “Without Ukraine, no one will be able to defend Poland. It is simply impossible.” Officials in Russia-occupied Crimea have suspended civilian gasoline sales as Ukraine increases attacks on fuel supplies. The Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea said Ukrainian strikes killed four people and wounded 28 others overnight. He said local petrol stations will now only sell fuel to government agencies. The Crimean peninsula has had periodic fuel shortages from Ukrainian strikes before, but the current crisis is the worst since its 2014 annexation. Social networks are filled with requests for fuel, and some speculators are selling gas at double the market price. Zelenskyy described the attacks as part of Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” against Russia’s energy infrastructure. Zelenskyy said in a statement that a Crimean oil depot, as well as an oil transport facility in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region were among the targets. “Russia understands only strength, and our long-range strength is certainly working for peace,” he said. Separately, overnight Russian strikes in eastern Ukraine killed three people. Ukraine has in recent months also stepped up drone attacks on energy facilities in Russia, striking targets deep behind the frontlines. Last week, it hit a large refinery in Moscow twice. Ukraine says the attacks are aimed at denting oil revenues that Russia uses to fund the war. Some petrol stations in Russia, the world’s third-biggest oil producer, introduced fuel rationing this month. Fuel exports have been banned since April. Energy Intelligence, a US-based energy research firm, said earlier this month that about a third of Russian oil refining capacity had gone offline because of Ukrainian strikes. Russia’s aviation authorities briefly closed Moscow’s four airports on Monday, after a flurry of drones were intercepted. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that 59 drones heading towards the city had been destroyed. Kyiv has sent drones into Russia in retaliation for Moscow bombing its cities, although Sobyanin did not specify that the drones were from Ukraine. Authorities announced at 5.39am that airports had reopened.

Mount Everest, a climber known only as ‘Green Boots’, and the mission to solve a 30-year mystery

Thirty years after he perished in a small limestone cave near the top of Mount Everest, the body of the climber known only as “Green Boots” may finally be heading home. If successful, the mission into Everest’s notorious “death zone” will also lay to rest any doubts about the identity of Green Boots. Since 1996, it was often reported – but never confirmed – that the climber was Tsewang Paljor, an Indian climber killed on Everest during a severe blizzard. But now that has been called into question. Indian authorities recently released a plan to retrieve Green Boots that contains information about the identity of climber – and also sets up an incredibly difficult recovery process. The plan identifies Green Boots as Dorje Morup – not Paljor. Both Indian climbers died near the summit on the same day. “That’s kind of a mystery to me, why all of a sudden the identity has changed,” says Alan Arnette, US mountaineer and prominent Everest blogger. “I’m glad that they’re bringing him down [but] it’s going to be a gruesome task.” For decades, Green Boots has been stitched into Everest lore. Named after his lime-coloured Koflach boots, Green Boots became a landmark for climbers tackling the tricky north-east ridge route, accessed from the Tibet and China side of the world’s tallest mountain. Curled up as if napping, Green Boots is fully clothed and lies nestled under a small rocky alcove about 8,500 metres above sea level and just 350 metres from the summit. A red fleece is pulled up over his face; perhaps a final act as he succumbed to -30C temperatures and hurricane-force winds in a storm that was documented in Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book Into Thin Air. Since 1996, climbers have used Green Boots as a macabre marker of their progress and timing up Everest’s 8,848 metres. Many radio back to base camp, informing support teams they have reached Green Boots. Others rest or seek shelter alongside the body. In 2006, on his first summit from the north side, Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa encountered Green Boots as he sought shelter from strong winds under the rocky outcrop. A light dusting of snow had mostly covered Green Boots, he tells the Guardian. “When I touch[ed] him, I clear[ed] the snow a little bit. Then I totally saw Green Boots lying down under that snow.” About 200 bodies remain on Everest. Grieving families make hopeful inquiries, but taking dead climbers down is often too hard or expensive, and helicopters cannot safely fly at such extreme altitudes. Use the slider below to show a picture of the body of the climber known as Green Boots where it lies on Mount Everest. Some readers may find the image distressing: A gruelling task India’s plan to bring Green Boots home is contained in a tender document, seen by the Guardian, asking companies to bid for the mission. The specialist team must have at least six Sherpas who have summited Everest multiple times. They must provide evidence of the mission, and transport the body to Delhi by October. The document explicitly names Morup as the climber called Green Boots. The identification of Morup “has been confirmed through a prior verification process conducted under an earlier tender/technical assessment”, the document states, without providing further detail. The tender does not state why authorities want Green Boots brought down. In 1996, Morup and Paljor were part of an Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) expedition attempting a historic first Indian ascent of Everest from the north side. Both men pushed for the summit on the same day, along with a third member of the team. None made it down. Tshiring Jangbu, the founder of Everest Sherpa Expedition, has been involved in numerous body recovery efforts. He says retrieving Green Boots will be arduous and dangerous, even for an experienced Sherpa team. With only a third of the oxygen available at sea level, activity above 8,000 metres requires huge effort and decision-making can become more difficult. An iced-up body in climbing gear can weigh up to 200kg, Tshiring Jangbu says. And limbs frozen solid at awkward angles make dragging or lowering the corpse down rocky and icy terrain exhausting and treacherous work. Sometimes, he concedes, they must amputate a limb that “we cannot bend” – a gut-wrenching act, “but there is no choice to do another way”. Such work takes a toll on the Sherpa, who are predominantly Buddhist, Arnette says. “They don’t believe in desecrating bodies, they really don’t even believe in touching bodies.” He believes a team would seek about $150,000 to carry out the expedition. Nepal-based Makalu Adventure says monsoon weather conditions, with its heavier snowfall, will complicate a recovery between June and October, the timeframe stipulated in the tender. It estimates the mission, from start to finish, could take 40 days. Guy Cotter is a New Zealand climber whose company Adventure Consultants operates expeditions in the Himalayas. In 1997, Cotter coordinated the retrieval from Everest of a climber who died the same year as Morup and Paljor. “It would have been a good thing to have done a long time before now,” says Cotter, of the attempt to bring down Green Boots. “For families to have a body returned from the mountain brings closure, as long as it’s not putting other people at undue risk,” Cotter says. “There have been situations with body recoveries where more people have died. It’s a very thin line.” A family wanting the body can complicate matters, Arnette says, because many experienced climbers wish to be left on the mountain if they die on a climb, but to be moved out of sight. In the past 10 years unconfirmed rumours suggest the body of Green Boots has been moved or buried. But Arnette says he has heard from climbers who insist Green Boots remains in the cave, “right where he’s always been”.

Western Australian poultry farms locked down after H5N1 bird flu discovered in wild birds

Poultry farms in Western Australia have gone into lockdown after confirmation the deadly H5N1 bird flu has arrived on the country’s mainland. On Monday, the Ingham’s Group – Australia’s largest poultry producer – announced a “complete lockdown” in WA, despite no commercial detections of H5N1. It came after a brown skua, found on a remote beach near Esperance, was discovered to have the “highly pathenogenic” H5N1 virus on the weekend. A giant petrel in the same area was also tested and returned a preliminary positive result, while there have been reports of more than a dozen cases of sick or dead birds along the WA coast. Before the confirmation of H5N1’s arrival, Australia had been the only continent free of the virus, which has killed millions of birds and thousands of marine mammals since 2021. Ingham’s said in a statement it would ask the state government to allow free-range chickens to be kept indoors, while all nonessential access to its operations would be stopped. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Australia’s chief veterinary officer, Beth Cookson, told ABC’s Radio National the virus had not been detected in wildlife, poultry or agricultural systems. But Cookson said authorities were trying to work out whether the infected birds had spread the disease into other populations. “Our approach is to really learn from the overseas experience and look at the practical actions that can be put in place to mitigate the impacts as far as possible,” she said on Monday. Shares in Ingham’s dropped as much as 14% on Monday, according to Bloomberg. The share price has been sliding for four months and was down more than 23% in the year to date, according to the news agency. The Australian Financial Review reported on 1 June that the $777m company was “deep in turnaround mode”, after a contract with Woolworths was restructured. The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, said Cookson and the threatened species commissioner, Dr Fiona Fraser, would brief state and federal environment ministers about the virus on Monday. “We’ve been working very hard with states, industry, environment groups [and] scientists over the last couple of years to make sure that we are as well prepared as we possibly could be,” he said. “As a government, we’ve invested $113m, including $11m in the most recent budget in those preparedness efforts. So I feel confident that we’ve got the systems in place, and that we’re working cooperatively with states, territories and others to make sure that we can manage this outbreak if it does get more serious.” – with Australian Associated Press

‘We want a new Albania’: protests against Jared Kushner-backed resort turn anger on government

For Ina Shkurti, like so many Albanians, the island of Sazan has played an outsized role. As a child she bathed in its “always calm and emerald green” waters, as a teenager it figured in her dreams and as an adult it was an indelible part of the memory and desire that drew her back, every summer, to Vlore, her home town across the sea. What Shkurti never imagined was that plans to build a mega-resort on Sazan – one of two luxurious resorts on Albania’s southern coast backed by Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner – would trigger a revolt, an uprising that has convulsed the Balkan state in a spasm of disgust over the perceived excesses of “a rotten oligarchic class” just as it hopes to complete accession talks with the EU. “Am I outraged? Of course I am,” the cartographer said as the contours of the uninhabited outcrop came into view from a speedboat scudding towards its shores. “Sazan is our only island. It’s a small paradise that holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Albanians. Having some rich couple come in, develop it, and then deny us access, would be a crime.” Not since the collapse of communism, more than three decades ago, has Albania been shaken by such collective fury. At 32, Shkurti, whose family emigrated to the US when she was 11, is typical of the tens of thousands, both in and outside the country, who have taken to the streets in what has become known as the “flamingo revolution” because of the threat posed by the proposed resorts to wildlife and delicate ecosystems on the sites. “This government no longer represents us,” she said. “It has chosen to represent oligarch investors like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. These protests are not going to stop, even if they’re no longer exclusively about them.” Every day, she said, friends from Albania’s diaspora were flying in to join the rallies. In the biggest so far, thousands converged on Tirana at the weekend, many travelling from the US and other parts of Europe, to add their voices to the wave of dissent. *** In a country with almost no tradition of civic unrest, the protests, both leaderless and non-partisan, have caught officials in Tirana and the EU off guard. Increasingly, demonstrators have in their sights a political establishment blamed for the country’s chaotic transition from repressive Stalinist rule. Fears of crisis are mounting. Amid daily calls for his resignation, Edi Rama, the prime minister, has chosen to respond with nervousness, humour and barely concealed ire. But the veteran socialist, previously feted in Brussels for his visionary policies and an artist with a jovial disposition in more peaceful times, has also refused to back down. Elected for a fourth term last year on a vow to get the once isolated country into the EU, he has described the €1.4bn investment as vital if Albania is to become the Mediterranean’s “most attractive high-end tourist destination”. “You have to ask where all of this is going,” said Afrim Krasniqi, the director of the Albanian Institute for Political Studies, who does not rule out demonstrators adopting “more radical” protest measures. “The government, it seems, doesn’t want to believe that all these people out on the streets are against it. This absence of dialogue, this lack of empathy, this refusal to want to find a solution, is dangerous.” Three weeks have elapsed since the protests first erupted after bulldozers began clearing clusters of forest and ancient dunes to make way for construction in a protected conservation zone across the water from Sazan. The Pishë Poro-Narta reserve, home to one of Europe’s last wild rivers, encompasses much of the Zvërnec peninsula, its sandy shores protecting an inland lagoon that is a major migratory route for hundreds of rare birds and more than 70 endangered species. Tensions rose here – the first site slated for development – when opponents confronted private security contractors who had hastily erected a fence to keep the public out. In the mayhem that ensued, as demonstrators tried to scale the barrier, a local landowner was filmed being dragged by guards, his handcuffed body bumping over the rocky terrain as witnesses looked on aghast. Police officers, controversially, chose not to intervene. In a podcast released the next day, Ivanka Trump waxed lyrical about the real estate venture and “this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other” that she and her husband, as lead investors in the project, intended to transform. “It’s massive in scale,” she said of the plans to develop Sazan, a former Soviet-era military installation whose verdant landscape of wild fig trees and flowers is dotted with derelict buildings once used by personnel and their families. “Not only the island, but we have 5 miles of beachfront directly across from [it],” the US president’s daughter enthused, referring to the shoreline within view of this month’s violent scenes. “People became very angry,” said Kostantin Xhaho, an environmentalist based in Vlore. “After all, Sazan is a historic monument. I’ve got friends who grew up in those buildings and both the island and Zvërnec are important habitats for flamingos, monk seals and loggerhead sea turtles. This idea of a 10,000-room resort being built on the peninsula sparked what I think you would call an explosion.” The prospect of what critics condemned as the “the worst kind of global elite” plundering natural reserves in a country that remains one of Europe’s poorest soon tapped into deep anger over depredations highlighting other inequalities. The development was granted preliminary approval after the Albanian parliament amended stringent laws safeguarding environmentally sensitive zones – although there is no evidence Kushner had any role in the change. Indicative of the perceived lack of transparency around the project, opponents claim the investors remain a mystery, their identities concealed behind a multi-layered shell company in the Netherlands. Continuing court cases over property disputes in Zvërnec have also played into popular anger. “What we want is a new Albania,” said Justina Prenga, 24, who recently travelled from the northern city of Shkodër to join protesters in the capital, where cries of “Rama ik” (Rama resign) are heard nightly outside the shuttered 1930s building that houses the prime minister’s office. “We’re gen Z and we’re saying ‘enough is enough’, our country isn’t for sale.” The outcry, she said, had gone “way beyond” the Kushners, even if her friends didn’t know “whether to laugh or cry” when in the podcast they heard Trump’s “Christopher Columbus-style” account of discovering Sazan. “We want this project stopped, but really, it’s about everything that is wrong with Albania. Sali Berisha should also resign. He made our country what it is today, so he should go to jail too,” she said of the main opposition leader, a former president and prime minister at one time barred from entering the UK because of his alleged links to crime and corruption. Draped in a giant red and back Albanian flag, Lizander Saraci agreed. A risk manager at a private bank, he is typical of an older generation that has also joined the movement. “It’s been more than 30 years and still our hospitals are terrible, our education system is shit, there are no jobs and everyone is leaving,” said the father of two, who frequently attends the rallies with his children. “The demonstrations are huge because people are tired of this injustice. They’re tired of all the corruption. One of our slogans is ‘stop the dictatorship of dirty money’ because we’ve learned from experience that similar projects only ever benefit a wealthy few.” Last week, the European parliament also weighed in. In a resolution, MEPs backed the protesters, urging the government to halt further construction in protected zones. Some decried the “predatory capitalists” who had exploited legislation allowing strategic investors to accelerate similar projects – a law Brussels has branded unfair and long asked Tirana to repeal. EU officials say that without agreement on the environmental laws, accession negotiations cannot be concluded. “We would expect Albania, a year and a half away from this target … to have aligned itself with these [EU] standards,” Silvio Gonzato, the EU’s ambassador to Albania, said. Again Rama stood his ground as he reacted to the EU parliament’s vote, pledging to continue the Zvërnec development “based on an environmental impact assessment according to European Union standards”. He has repeatedly called what is Albania’s biggest investment ever “a blessing” that will not only provide badly needed jobs but “ultimately result in approximately 25 % more trees and green space”. Last year the 3 million-strong country attracted about 12 million tourists, many lured as much by its natural beauty as its affordability. “This is also about direction,” said Shkurti. “Do we really want that kind of development when, clearly, the infrastructure can hardly cope?” *** But Rama has his supporters. Albert Pushka, the owner of a newly opened fish restaurant outside Vlore, is so enthusiastic he has named the enterprise Ivanka. When asked about the development, Walter Dimraj, 48, gave a Trump-like thumbs-up and said: “Albania has to grow up. It has to seize this chance. If we don’t do it, the Greeks will.” Elpiniqi Merkuri , a psychologist who heads Vlore’s municipal council, is convinced the resort will help boost confidence at a time when the older generation still “cannot find the courage” to talk about the brutality of the past. “People tend to feel calmer and more optimistic when they see development, new opportunities and well-designed environments,” she said, as cows and sheep sauntered around the area where construction workers recently broke ground. Standing by the salt flats overlooking the lagoon, Ledi Selgjekaj wishes she could agree. This is where the young ornithologist has come for the past five years, rising at dawn to monitor the behaviour and breeding patterns of shore birds. “Back then, they had just begun construction work on Vlore’s new international airport,” she said, looking through her binoculars beyond the wetlands towards its tower. “And that is when we began to see ecological corridors being disrupted and jackals and other predators targeting wildlife in the lagoon.” Flamingos and their egg-laden nests were especially affected, she said. “The airport, when it begins operating, is going to be a disaster. If these resorts go ahead it will be the kiss of death.”

Far-right millionaire wins Colombia’s razor-tight presidential election

The Trump-admiring far-right millionaire lawyer and self-styled “outsider” Abelardo de la Espriella has won Colombia’s presidential runoff, defeating the leftwing senator Iván Cepeda. With 99.99% of ballots counted in the preliminary vote tally, De la Espriella had secured 12.96m votes, or 49.66%, just 250,830 more than Cepeda, who received 12.7m votes, or 48.7%. A further 1.6% of ballots were cast blank. The margin was narrower than in the first round three weeks ago, when De la Espriella had beaten Cepeda by 673,000 votes. De la Espriella’s victory marks a sharp swing back to the right after four years under Colombia’s first and only leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, who was barred by the constitution from seeking re-election and therefore backed Cepeda as his successor. The result is also being seen as further evidence of a wave of far-right candidates sweeping presidential elections across Latin America, after recent victories by Nasry Asfura in Honduras and José Antonio Kast in Chile, while Keiko Fujimori currently leads the vote count in Peru. Like them, De la Espriella also received the endorsement of the US president, Donald Trump – although only after winning the first round. Trump shared news of the Colombian’s victory in a brief social media post, writing: “He Won, BIG!”. In his victory speech in Barranquilla, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, where both his law firm and campaign headquarters are based, De la Espriella promised to respect the constitution. Although he said during the campaign that he would “disembowel” the left – a remark he later described as merely a figure of speech – he said that he will be the president of “all Colombians”. “I want to speak especially to those who did not vote for me … Your rights, even if you did not vote for me, will be respected. Your opinions will be heard. You will never have to fear thinking differently,” he said from behind bulletproof glass, as he had throughout the campaign. In a video posted by the US Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar after the result, De la Espriella said: “To solve Colombia’s problems, we need to build a very close alliance with the US, which is not only our main trading partner but also our most important strategic ally in the fight against organised crime.” The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, posted that he had spoken with De la Espriella to congratulate him: “The Trump administration looks forward to working closely with your incoming administration to advance regional security cooperation, end illegal immigration to the United States and strengthen our economic ties. Colombia’s best days are ahead,” he wrote. When Petro leaves office in about six weeks, only Mexico, Brazil – which will hold elections in October – Uruguay and Guatemala will remain under leftwing governments in the region. In a post on social media, Petro alleged irregularities in the preliminary vote count released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising Colombia’s elections. Petro also wrote that he would only recognise the outcome of the official scrutiny process, which is expected to take about two more days. “No president can be declared yet. It is the scrutiny process that determines who the president is,” he said. In the first round, the president also alleged fraud in the preliminary count without presenting evidence, drawing widespread criticism from election experts. The difference between the preliminary count and the official tally was less than 0.1%. Following Petro’s lead, Cepeda declined to recognise the preliminary results and, likewise without presenting evidence, said in his speech that a team of lawyers from his party was “proceeding to challenge 33,000 polling stations across the country”. He added: “Once the final scrutiny result is produced and the corresponding verifications have been carried out, we will recognise the official result that emerges from that scrutiny process.” There were protests by Cepeda supporters: in Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, demonstrators burned US flags and clashed with police. In the capital, Bogotá, hundreds gathered outside Corferias, the country’s largest polling station. In his victory speech, De la Espriella called on Petro and Cepeda to respect the result: “Refrain from unleashing social unrest”. In a campaign dominated by the violence that has once again engulfed the country, De la Espriella prevailed on a promise to adopt an iron fist approach against criminal groups. Although security indicators remain far below the extraordinarily high levels recorded in the decades before the landmark 2016 peace agreement between the government and most of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the past year has been the most violent since then. The president-elect, who will take office on 7 August, has pledged to build 10 maximum-security “mega-prisons” and kill criminals “like rats and cockroaches”. Calling himself “El Tigre” (The Tiger) and having never held public office, De la Espriella has vowed to make a complete break with Petro’s “total peace” plan of negotiating the dismantling of all criminal groups. After four years of fits and starts – during which analysts say some armed factions took advantage of temporary ceasefires to continue expanding – the government managed to disarm the first criminal group only on Thursday, one with just 99 members, while experts estimate that more than 27,000 people belong to Colombia’s many criminal organisations. The new president, by contrast, has promised a return to full-scale military confrontation that has done little to curb violence in the past, and said he will seek US support for airstrikes against coca plantations. Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and drug trafficking is the main driver of the country’s violence. Born in the capital, Bogotá, but raised on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, De la Espriella rose to prominence as a criminal lawyer representing the leaders of a group at the heart of the decades-long armed conflict: the paramilitaries, private armies created by rightwing landowners to fight leftwing guerrilla groups. Later branching out into liquor, real estate and menswear businesses, and fond of showcasing a lavish lifestyle on social media, he announced his presidential bid in July last year, a month after the rightwing senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was shot during a campaign event – he died two months after the attack. Though long associated with Colombia’s rightwing political establishment through his legal career, De la Espriella presented himself as an “anti-establishment” candidate, following the example of many other far-right leaders who have risen to power across the region in recent years. His vice-president will be the economist José Manuel Restrepo, who served as finance minister under Petro’s conservative predecessor, Iván Duque. The president-elect said that Restrepo would be responsible for implementing the plan to shrink the state by 40%. They will take office with a minority in congress and what many analysts see as a deeply divided country after the most polarised election in years, in which the two candidates failed to agree on holding a single debate and instead traded a barrage of insults.

Trump faces fresh bipartisan criticism on Iran deal as Vance hails peace talks

US political figures from left and right voiced fresh objections on Sunday to Donald Trump’s provisional deal with Iran – even as the US president made new threats while Vice-President JD Vance hailed progress during the first round of direct peace talks in Switzerland. Negotiations in Lucerne between the US and Iran have already run into difficulties, after Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” Iran’s negotiators were reported by Iran’s state news agency IRNA to have walked out of the building where the peace talks are being held. “The delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, after meeting with the Qatari delegation as one of the mediating parties, left the building where the negotiations were being held,” IRNA said. “At the same time as the talks began in Switzerland, Donald Trump published a message on X in which he repeated his threats and remarks against Iran,” it added. In the US, bipartisan criticism of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding (MOU) continued on Sunday. Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who recently lost his primary battle for re-election, posted a line on X from a Wall Street Journal article on how rogue regimes evade US economic warfare. It said: “Iran’s ability to withstand sanctions so far exposes a hard fact for Washington: economic pressure has largely failed to cow rogue regimes, as they game out more ways to sidestep US restrictions.” This amplified remarks from two days ago where he said he had hoped that before striking a deal that involved releasing restricted Iranian funds that the US would have “finished the job” and eliminated Iran’s hostile nuclear capability, warning that “now they will use that money … to replace their ballistic missile assets and begin to enrich [uranium] again and that’s going to be a continuing danger.” On Sunday morning senior Democratic figure Susan Rice, a domestic policy aide to Joe Biden and former US ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser under Barack Obama, added to her recent description of the agreement between the US and Iran as a “jaw-dropping, horrific surrender” by Trump, by calling it “flimsy” and “egregious” because “so many concessions were granted up front”. Rice told ABC News This Week that the concessions to Iran in the MOU, signed by Trump in Paris last Wednesday, “wouldn’t normally be, and shouldn’t have been, granted until after there was not only a fully comprehensive deal to, at least, deal with their nuclear program, but also that those provisions that were negotiated had been agreed”. Rice pointed to a provision in the document that, chiming with Cornyn’s remarks, showed Iran “is now able to sell all of its oil and all of its oil products on the market unimpeded, and use that money to rebuild itself” ahead of any agreement on the nuclear issue. The bipartisan criticism came as Trump threatened to renew military attacks on Iran if it didn’t cooperate and rein in its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, including a forcible takeover by the US of control of the strait of Hormuz shipping channel. Rice said the previous deal with Iran negotiated by Obama when he was president and then scrapped by Trump during his first term did not lift sanctions on Iran until there was full agreement on a deal, not just an MOU prior to a full pact. Rice also said that Obama’s condition for Iran having access to frozen assets was that they could only be spent for humanitarian purposes, while under the Trump MOU is unrestricted. The New York Post tabloid, owned by the Trump-boosting Rupert Murdoch, published a withering editorial using the glaring headline: “With Strait of Hormuz held hostage, Trump’s Iran deal is worse than Obama’s.” Rice’s comments came as Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, rejected an invitation to offer Trump credit for ending the war. “That’s like literally an arsonist starting a fire and getting credit for running out of the burning building. This president has led this nation into a disaster. We have surrendered our power,” Booker told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We have capitulated to the enemy. And they now are mocking us.” Booker said that under the memorandum of understanding “Iran gets all of the benefits, literally billions and billions of dollars” and called it “an abject surrender”. As the first round of face-to-face US-Iran talks in Lake Lucerne in Switzerland wrapped up late on Sunday morning, Vance said negotiators had “already made great progress over just the last few hours, and I expect that we’ll make additional progress in the hours to come”. Regarding Israel’s continued military operations in Lebanon, Vance said “these things are always a little bit messy … but I actually feel great about where we are in Lebanon. There’s still some additional wood to chop, but we’re going to keep on working.” Last week Ted Cruz, the Republican senator of Texas, said Trump was getting bad advice on Iran. “History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea,” he said. Meanwhile the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday that the Lucerne talks would “set out what the Iranian goals are and what they think the tradeoffs they might have to make are. “We’ve just never been in this situation before,” he said. “The US military, both in the actions to destroy the Iranian military capabilities and to force a way through the strait of Hormuz, without any dialogue, have just put the Iranians in a massively different situation. They don’t have the leverage they’ve always had in talks before,” he said. Wright declined to predict when US consumers would see a return to pre-war gas prices in the US. “They will continue to head down,” he said. “Flows of oil and natural gas through the strait have already returned to normal, and they will continue that way, whatever happens with the negotiations with the Iranians.”