colombia Archives

Tuesday

February 3, 2026

Cockburn

Prince Andrew asked Ghislaine for ‘bed for the night’ – on week of alleged Virginia Roberts Giuffre sexual encounter: emails

Cockburn takes a keen interest in the correspondence between former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s ex and consigliere. Back in 2019, readers will no doubt recall, Andrew took part in a disastrous interview with the BBC’s Newsnight in an attempt to smooth over the reports of his ties to Epstein and his alleged sexual encounters with a teenage Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Specifically, Andrew denied ever having stayed at Epstein’s house on New York’s Upper East Side on April 11, 2001 – during the trip when Roberts Giuffre says she had sex with the prince for a second time, when she was aged 17. “I wasn’t staying there. I may

Catherine Ellis

Colombia can’t give Trump the cocaine crackdown he wants

When President Donald Trump hurled abuse at Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro last month, branding him a “sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States,” it was strikingly audacious. Trump leaned into bombastic provocation: there is no evidence to suggest Petro himself makes cocaine. And yet, Trump’s claim didn’t come as a shock – the two leaders have spent the past year locked in a volley of barbs with one another. Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader, likes to fire back with ideological, often sermonizing lectures on imperialism and US hypocrisy. But tangled up in the rancorous exchanges – many of them about drugs – is a

Friday

January 9, 2026

Paul Wood

America’s new war on drugs will be tough to win

On New Year’s Eve a few years ago, I was in Medellín, Colombia, the city that gave its name to one of the world’s most notorious drugs cartels. Our taxi driver offered us some cocaine to fuel the party we were heading to: $10 for a gram; $15 for the “luxury” product. Our group decided to splash out and get a gram of the really good stuff. I’d tried coke a couple of times in London. It was like snorting drain cleaner. Whoosh… I found that half a line of Medellín’s best was enough to keep you going until sunrise. But the next day it was difficult to be within