The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has been taken into custody after the international criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest for his so-called “war on drugs”.

The president’s office said Duterte was arrested on Tuesday morning at Manila airport after flying back from Hong Kong.

“Early in the morning, Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the presidential palace said in a statement. “As of now, he is under the custody of authorities.”

Duterte, 79, had responded to recent speculation that an arrest warrant was imminent, saying on Sunday: “If this is really my fate in life, that’s OK, I will accept it. There’s nothing we can do.”

Duterte became president in 2016 after promising a merciless, bloody crackdown that would rid the country of drugs. On the campaign trail he once said that there would be so many bodies dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them.

Since his election, between 12,000 and 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in connection with anti-drugs operations, according to data cited by the ICC. Most of the victims were men from poor, urban areas, shot dead in the streets by police officers or unidentified assailants.

The ICC’s investigation into the anti-drugs killings covers alleged crimes committed from November 2011 to June 2016, including a wave of extrajudicial killings in Davao City, where Duterte was previously mayor, as well as across the country during his presidency up until 16 March 16 2019, when the Philippines withdrew from the court.

This is a developing story …

Soon after his election in 2016, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte launched his so-called “war on drugs”, a bloody campaign in which as many as 30,000 civilians were killed.

Most of the victims were men from poor, urban areas, who were gunned down in the streets or their homes by police, or in some cases, unidentified assailants.

The authorities routinely claimed police had killed in self-defence. However, groups documenting the killings have challenged this claim, alleging the police regularly falsified evidence, including by planting drugs and guns at the scene. Witnesses frequently stated that victims were unarmed and did not pose a threat. The type of wounds sustained by victims also contradicted police claims: many were shot multiple times, and in some cases in their backs or the back of their heads.

Duterte has been arrested on a warrant issued by the international criminal court, after being investigated for crimes against humanity over the killings. He has been accused of encouraging and even incentivising the killings, and allowing police to act with impunity.

After taking office, Duterte publicly stated that he would kill suspected drug dealers and urged the public to kill addicts. Even as the killings prompted international alarm, Duterte remained committed to the campaign, saying “many will die, plenty will be killed until the last pusher is out of the streets”.

It has been alleged in parliamentary committee hearings in November that Duterte’s office paid officers up to 1m pesos (£13,200) per killing during the crackdowns, depending upon the target.

He has denied that such payments were made, or that he authorised extrajudicial killings. However, he has admitted to maintaining a death squad of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as a mayor.

Duterte told a senate hearing in October that he took “full legal responsibility” for the crackdown.

Soon after his election in 2016, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte launched his so-called “war on drugs”, a bloody campaign in which as many as 30,000 civilians were killed.

Most of the victims were men from poor, urban areas, who were gunned down in the streets or their homes by police, or in some cases, unidentified assailants.

The authorities routinely claimed police had killed in self-defence. However, groups documenting the killings have challenged this claim, alleging the police regularly falsified evidence, including by planting drugs and guns at the scene. Witnesses frequently stated that victims were unarmed and did not pose a threat. The type of wounds sustained by victims also contradicted police claims: many were shot multiple times, and in some cases in their backs or the back of their heads.

Duterte has been arrested on a warrant issued by the international criminal court, after being investigated for crimes against humanity over the killings. He has been accused of encouraging and even incentivising the killings, and allowing police to act with impunity.

After taking office, Duterte publicly stated that he would kill suspected drug dealers and urged the public to kill addicts. Even as the killings prompted international alarm, Duterte remained committed to the campaign, saying “many will die, plenty will be killed until the last pusher is out of the streets”.

It has been alleged in parliamentary committee hearings in November that Duterte’s office paid officers up to 1m pesos (£13,200) per killing during the crackdowns, depending upon the target.

He has denied that such payments were made, or that he authorised extrajudicial killings. However, he has admitted to maintaining a death squad of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as a mayor.

Duterte told a senate hearing in October that he took “full legal responsibility” for the crackdown.

Canada’s incoming prime minister, Mark Carney, has met with Justin Trudeau as the pair discuss a transfer of power after the former central banker’s landslide victory at the Liberal party’s leadership race.

The meeting on Monday sets the stage for an imminent federal election and gives Canada a fresh leader to square off against the United States president, with the two countries locked in a bitter trade war provoked by Donald Trump.

Briefly speaking to reporters, Carney said he was “honoured” to receive nearly 86% of the vote, one of the most decisive wins of a party leader in decades.

But, the 59-year-old former banker said he had “a lot of wood to chop” as he prepares to assume the reins of a country tearing on the verge of economic calamity.

Carney is widely expected to call an election within days, reflecting both the urgency of Canada’s trade war with the United States, and the awkward reality that as prime minister without a seat in parliament, he is unable to attend sessions of the House of Commons.

First, however, Trudeau must visit the governor general – the largely ceremonial representative of King Charles – and officially tender his resignation. Carney will then swear oaths of office and allegiance and form a cabinet. This is expected to happen in the coming days.

After his meeting with Trudeau, Carney said the transition “will be seamless and it will be quick.’

Under Canadian law, an election period must be at least 37 days and no more than 51 days, with the vote falling on a Monday. Party insiders have indicated Canadians will probably vote on 28 April or 5 May.

The former governor of the Bank of England and of Canada takes the job of prime minister as Ottawa finds itself at odds with its closest ally and largest trading partner. Last week Trump announced a 25% tax on all Canadian goods, with a carve-out for the automotive and energy sectors. The tariffs have the power to push Canada’s fragile economy into a recession.

Carney spent much of his acceptance speech on Sunday evening foreshadowing the theme that will probably define his tenure as prime minister: conflict with the volatile and unpredictable president who has threatened repeatedly to annex Canada.

“America is not Canada. And Canada never, ever, will be part of America in any way, shape or form,” Carney told supporters. “We didn’t ask for this fight. But Canadians are always ready when someone else drops the gloves,” Carney said. “So the Americans, they should make no mistake, in trade as in hockey, Canada will win.

While the Liberals trail slightly in the polls, Carney’s ascension within the party, and Trudeau’s exit, has dramatically revived their chances of eking out a victory in the next election – a result that was widely seen as unthinkable just weeks ago.

Carney, a political novice who has never held elected office, also criticised his main political rival: the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre.

“Donald Trump thinks he can weaken us with his plan to divide and conquer. Pierre Poilievre’s plan will leave us divided and ready to be conquered,” Carney said. “Because a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.”

Carney also suggested Poilievre’s partisan nature was a liability in the existential fight for Canada’s future. “His anger isn’t action. His division isn’t strength. Division won’t win a trade war,” he said.

Earlier that evening, Poilievre accused Carney of being “sneaky” at a Sunday evening rally in London, Ontario.

“And now our Liberal friends, after they’ve caused all this damage, are going to pull a sneaky trick. They’re going to try to get elected for a fourth term. A fourth term by replacing Justin Trudeau with his economic adviser, Mark Carney,” he said. “Carney’s advice drove up taxes, housing costs and food prices, while he personally profited from moving billions of dollars and thousands of jobs out of Canada to the United States.”

Carney’s dominant win outshone most expectations and provides the leader with both a strong mandate and a unified party. He won in all 343 of the Liberal party districts. His closest rival, the former finance minister Chrystia Freeland finished a distant second with only 8% of the vote, and was unable to win the most votes in her own district.

There is “no military solution” to the conflict in Ukraine, US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said ahead of high-stakes meetings on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia aimed at repairing a severely damaged relationship that has left embattled Kyiv without Washington’s support.

Ukraine’s delegation, led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, will meet Rubio, and other senior White House officials on what is seen as neutral ground in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

Ukraine’s position in the talks would be “fully constructive”, said Zelenskyy, its president, on Monday, adding that he hoped for practical outcomes from the negotiations on ending the Russian war in his country.

On his way to Jeddah, Rubio stressed the need to gauge Kyiv’s readiness to make concessions to reach peace.

He told reporters on the plane: “The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things, to end this conflict or at least pause it in some way, shape or form.

“I think both sides need to come to an understanding that there’s no military solution to this situation.

“The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it’ll be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable time period to sort of force the Russians back all the way to where they were in 2014.”

It will be the first official meeting of the two governments since a disastrous Oval Office argument between Zelenskyy and Donald Trump, after which the US leader cut off crucial military assistance and intelligence sharing.

The two presidents will not take part in the talks, although Zelenskyy was in Jeddah on Monday to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, whose government has played a mediating role between Ukraine and Russia.

During the meeting in Jeddah, the crown prince underscored the kingdom’s support for international efforts to resolve Ukraine’s crisis and achieve peace, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported early on Tuesday.

Zelenskyy has also sent his foreign and defence ministers to Jeddah for the talks. On Sunday, he posted: “We are fully committed to constructive dialogue, and we hope to discuss and agree on the necessary decisions and steps.

“Realistic proposals are on the table. The key is to move quickly and effectively.”

Russian forces – emboldened after Ukraine lost support from its biggest backer – have seized the moment, launching barrages of ballistic missile attacks while attempting to surround thousands of Ukrainian troops who had maintained a seven-month foothold in the Russian region of Kursk.

On the eve of the talks, Russia launched air strikes targeting Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, with the Ukrainian air force saying the country was under a threat of a missile attack.

The White House has framed Trump’s Ukraine policy as intended to achieve a lasting “peace” but the president has focused primarily on pressuring Zelenskyy to hand over his country’s mineral wealth to the US.

After the Oval Office crisis, Zelenskyy sought to patch up ties with the US leader. The Ukrainian president says he is willing to sign a minerals deal, even though it looks unlikely he will gain US security guarantees that Kyiv sees as vital to prevent future Russian attacks.

With US backing in doubt, Zelenskyy has sought to shore up European support. Still, he has been put under pressure to salvage the relationship with Washington, which has been Ukraine’s biggest backer since the 2022 Russian invasion.

A spokesperson for the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said he had spoken to Trump on Monday and expressed a hope for “a positive outcome to the [Saudi] talks that would enable US aid and intelligence sharing to be restarted”.

Starmer’s spokesperson said UK and Ukrainian officials had also spoken over the weekend and “they remained committed to a lasting peace”.

The Trump aide Steve Witkoff said Washington expected substantial progress in Jeddah. Asked on Fox News if he thought Zelenskyy could sign the minerals deal this week, Witkoff said: “I am really hopeful. All the signs are very, very positive.” Intelligence sharing would be discussed at the meetings, Witkoff added.

However, Rubio, the US secretary of state, told reporters en route to Jeddah that there were still more details to be worked out on the minerals deal.

NBC News reported on Sunday that Trump would require more than just the minerals deal in order to resume deliveries of military aid and renew intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The outlet reported that Trump expected Ukraine to agree to key concessions for US support to resume, including a willingness to concede territory to Russia as part of peace talks and movement toward elections as well.

NBC and other US media have also reported that Trump may want to see Zelenskyy step down as part of that process. That stance has not been publicly confirmed by the White House.

However, European allies have been reassured that the US is close to resuming military aid and intelligence sharing, and Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One that the US was “just about” ready to resume aid. “We want to do anything we can to get Ukraine serious about getting something done,” he said.

The Ukrainian side is expected to propose a peace plan that features a halt to drone and missile strikes, as well as a suspension of military activity in the Black Sea. Zelenskyy has said the proposal would be a test of Russia’s commitment to ending the war. So far, however, Vladimir Putin has shown no interest in a ceasefire.

Trump has said he would consider ending the suspension of intelligence sharing with Kyiv and Ukrainian troops remain under intense pressure.

Russia’s defence ministry has said its forces had recaptured three more settlements in the Kursk region and Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev claimed Kyiv’s forces were nearly surrounded. “The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed. The offensive continues,” he posted on Telegram.

Russian forces were reported to be closing in on the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said it had repelled an extraordinary attack by Russian sabotage and assault groups via a gas pipeline in the area. About 100 Russian soldiers spent four days crawling through the nine-mile-long (15km) pipeline that leads to Sudzha’s outskirts.

Inside Ukraine, the country’s border guard said Russian forces were attempting to create an active fighting zone in the north-eastern region of Sumy, across the border from Kursk.

Kyiv’s top general, however, rejected reports that Ukrainian troops fighting in the Kursk region were at risk of encirclement by Russian forces backed by North Korean troops.

Oleksandr Syrskyi, who said he was visiting the forces fighting in Kursk without providing an exact location, made the remark in a statement on social media. “A number of settlements on the border, the names of which appear in the reports of Russian propagandists, no longer actually exist – they have been destroyed by the aggressor’s shelling,” Syrskyi said.

“Despite the involvement of a significant number of Russian troops in the offensive, reinforced by North Korean infantry, the enemy is suffering significant losses in manpower and equipment,” he added.

Trump suggested this weekend that Ukraine may not be able to continue fighting in the war against Russia, even with support from the US. In an interview with Fox News, while defending his decision to cut support to Ukraine, he said: “Well, it may not survive anyway.”

Trump also said Zelenskyy had taken from the US under the Biden administration like “candy from a baby”. He repeated his claim that Zelenskyy was not “grateful” but did describe him as “smart” and “tough”.

Additional reporting by Aletha Adu

• Russia launched airstrikes overnight on Kyiv, with air defence systems engaged in repelling the attack, Ukrainian authorities said late on Monday. “Air defence forces are working to eliminate the threat in the skies over Kyiv,” mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters witnesses heard explosions in the capital and surrounding region that sounded like air defence systems in operation.

• Russian forces are trying to cross the border and gain a foothold in Ukraine’s Sumy province as they press ahead with a counteroffensive aiming to eliminate the last of Kyiv’s position in the Russian Kursk region.

• Senior US and Ukrainian officials have arrived in Saudi Arabia for high-stakes meetings aimed at repairing a severely damaged relationship that has left Kyiv without Washington’s support. Ukraine’s delegation, led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, will meet the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other senior White House officials on what is seen as neutral ground in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

• Zelenskyy has also flown to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the eve of separate, high-stakes meetings between Ukrainian and US officials.

• The Ukrainian delegation will propose a ceasefire covering the Black Sea and long-range missile strikes, as well as the release of prisoners, two senior Ukrainian officials told the Associated Press. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about Tuesday’s meeting, also told The AP that the Ukrainian delegation is ready during the talks to sign an agreement with the United States on access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals – a deal that US President Donald Trump is keen to secure.

• Zelenskyy said that Kyiv’s position in Tuesday’s talks in Saudi Arabia with US officials will be “fully constructive” and that he hopes for practical outcomes from the negotiations on ending the war. Zelenskyy said that a “significant” part of his talks was dedicated to the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine.

• The US opposes language that could harm its efforts to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table, Rubio said on Monday, as Washington wrangled with G7 allies ahead of a meeting this week, further alarming them. The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven major democracies – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – will meet in the river resort of La Malbaie, Quebec on Wednesday-Friday for the first time since President Donald Trump returned to power in January. “We feel like antagonistic language sometimes makes it harder to bring parties to the table, especially since we’re the only ones right now that seem to be in a position to make talks like that possible,” Rubio said.

• Canada had initially hoped the seven would agree on an overall statement ranging on the war in Ukraine and a second declaration that would outline the G7’s efforts to curb Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, according to four G7 diplomats who spoke to Reuters. The first statement would have included the Middle East and China, too. Shadow fleet refers to vessels used by Russia to move oil, arms and grains around in violation of international sanctions imposed on it over the war. The vessels are not regulated or insured by conventional western providers.

• Almost two pages out of eight in the last G7 statement in November were focused entirely on Ukraine, mostly taking aim at Russia. However, the diplomats said agreement on the full communique this time was proving very difficult, with some fearing that a compromise may not be found. Two diplomats said the United States was seeking to remove references to sanctions and Russia’s war in Ukraine, while demanding tougher language on China.

• A Democratic US senator who visited Ukraine recently said the Trump administration’s suspension of intelligence-sharing had lessened Kyiv’s defences against Russia, and dismissed Trump adviser Elon Musk calling him a “traitor.” “One hundred percent,” Senator Mark Kelly told reporters when asked if he had heard during his visit of specific attacks or incidents that would have been affected if Ukrainians had had the intelligence. “If there’s stuff they don’t get, that they need, that changes their ability to defend against attacks,” Kelly said. “And those attacks happened on Friday night, on Saturday, when I was there.” The Arizona senator did not provide further details.

• Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, plans a visit to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, a person briefed on the plans told Reuters. Witkoff, who is officially Trump’s Middle East envoy, has played a growing role in efforts to bring about an end to the Ukraine war.

• A luxurious superyacht that belonged to Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov may be headed to the auction block after a US judge on Monday dismissed a competing claim to ownership of the $300m vessel. Another wealthy Russian, Eduard Khudainatov, the former head of Russian state oil and gas company Rosneft, claimed in a New York court to be the rightful owner of the vessel but his claim was dismissed by District Judge Dale Ho.

Russian forces are trying to cross the border and gain a foothold in Ukraine’s Sumy province as they press ahead with a counteroffensive aiming to eliminate the last of Kyiv’s position in the Russian Kursk region.

A Ukrainian state border guard spokesperson, Andrii Demchenko, told national television that Russian forces were trying to advance around the Ukrainian village of Novenke and cut off supply lines.

“These are small assault units, composed of a few people. They try to penetrate our territory, accumulate forces, and advance further into Ukraine, probably to cut off logistical routes,” he said.

The Russian efforts indicate that Moscow does not want to halt its counteroffensive at the national border, should it manage to recapture the rest of the shrinking Ukrainian pocket around the village of Sudzha.

Though Moscow has been trying to expel the Ukrainian forces since August, after Kyiv seized about 1,000 sq km of Russian territory in a surprise attack, one expert group noted its rate of success had dramatically improved in the past few days.

“Russian forces are collapsing the northern part of the Ukrainian salient in Kursk oblast,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote on Sunday night, before suggesting that the change in frontline position may be linked to the withdrawals of US support for Ukraine announced by the White House last week.

“The temporal correlation between the suspension of US intelligence sharing with Ukraine and the start of Russia’s collapse of the Ukrainian Kursk salient is noteworthy,” the ISW said, though it acknowledged the conclusion was tentative, and based on emerging observations.

Russia operations are reported to have intensified on Thursday and Friday last week, a day after the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, publicly confirmed that the US had stopped sharing intelligence – principally real-time surveillance and reconnaissance data, considered particularly useful in dynamic battlefield situations – with Ukraine.

On Friday, Donald Trump, the US president, noted that Russia was “bombing the hell out of Ukraine” and taking advantage of Kyiv’s weakness in the absence of US intelligence. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was “hitting them harder than he’s been hitting them”, adding “probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now”.

Moscow’s forces are making heavy use of “fibre-optic drones” in Kursk – small craft that are coordinated by a thin high-speed cable which is resistant to electronic jamming, according to a soldier who spoke to Ukraine’s Suspilne public broadcaster. “The situation is not developing in our favour,” they added.

Ukraine has lost more than two-thirds of the territory it controlled inside Russia in the summer, but on Monday, Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said there was “no threat of encirclement” and that he had taken a decision to reinforce his army’s forces in the area.

He insisted in a social media post that the border region was “under the control of the Ukrainian defense forces” – though some units in the area were “taking timely measures to manoeuvre to favourable defence lines”. Russian forces had lost a battalion of troops in the past four days by trying to advance, he added.

It would “make sense for Russia to push forward and do what they can while Ukraine is at a disadvantage”, said Keir Giles, an analyst at the Chatham House thinktank, emphasising that he expected Moscow to press on into Ukraine’s Sumy region if its forces are able to close up the Sudzha pocket.

Both sides recognise the fight for territory is acute at the moment, because the US is trying to force Ukraine into peace talks with Russia. The US hopes to persuade both sides into agreeing a ceasefire on the current frontlines, and some sort of acceptance by Ukraine of the reality of Russian occupation.

Ukraine originally launched its incursion into Kursk in August partly to show it was still capable of mounting effective attacks after its failed offensives of 2023 – but also to take Russian prisoners and to give it a territorial negotiating chip in any peace talks to end the conflict.

The initial success of the effort was a boost to Ukraine’s morale and its credibility among its western backers, but raised questions about whether it was wise to divert scarce resources away from the eastern Donbas region at a time when Russia was making gains towards Pokrovsk.

If Ukraine were to lose the remainder of the salient in the coming days, Kyiv would have been left, having mounted a risky operation without having a foothold on Russian territory, at a time when peace talks actually took place. But some analysts argued that did not mean the effort was not worthwhile.

“It reminded people that Ukraine had offensive potential and they held on to the pocket for a remarkable amount of time” said Nick Reynolds, a land warfare expert with the Royal United Services Institute thinktank. “I hesitate to say it wasn’t worth the attempt, and it had a shaping effect on Russian thinking.”

About 12,000 North Korean soldiers joined the fighting in Kursk on Russia’s side, taking heavy casualties, estimated by Ukraine at 4,000, during fighting in the autumn and winter. But a fresh influx has returned to the battlefield during the latest counteroffensive and are now making gains against outnumbered Ukrainian defenders.

Giles said “the rationales were valid” for Ukraine’s attack on Kursk at the time, arguing there was a high value to holding on to Russian territory, as well as capturing prisoners for exchange and disrupting a potential attack from Moscow into the Sumy region. “But what nobody could have foreseen is the determination of the US administration to force a Ukrainian surrender,” he added.

Greenland’s prime minister said voters face a “fateful choice” as the Arctic island prepares to go to the polls in a pivotal election closely watched by Europe and the US.

The vote on Tuesday has attracted global attention after Donald Trump’s repeated assertions about acquiring the autonomous territory, using military and economic force if necessary.

The poll, which takes place against a backdrop of growing calls for independence, is also being closely scrutinised by Denmark, which ruled Greenland as a colony until 1953 and continues to control its foreign and security policy.

Greenland, along with the Faroe Islands, remains part of the Danish kingdom. However, Copenhagen fears that if voters give strong backing to the largest opposition party, Naleraq, a prominent pro-independence voice and supporter of US collaboration, Greenland could instead strengthen its ties with the US.

On Monday the territory’s prime minister and chair of the Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party, Múte B Egede, accused Trump of being “unpredictable” and said he had failed to treat Greenlanders with respect.

“It is a fateful choice we have,” Egede told Danish broadcaster DR.

“The things that are happening in the world right now worry me quite a lot. That there is a world order that is faltering on many fronts, and perhaps a president in the United States who is very unpredictable in a way that makes people feel insecure,” he said.

“We deserve to be treated with respect, and I don’t think the American president has done that lately since he took office.”

In his speech to Congress last week, Trump said that he would acquire Greenland “one way or the other”. And on Sunday, he attempted to appeal to Greenlanders directly by reiterating his invitation to join the US and pledging to “invest billions of dollars to create new jobs and make you rich”.

However, while many in Nuuk are open to strengthening collaboration with the US, the idea of Greenland being acquired by the Trump administration has been widely rejected.

Trump’s recent remarks were not helping, Egede said. “We need to draw a line in the sand and spend more effort on those countries that show us respect for the future we want to draw,” he added.

Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for natural resources, equality, business and justice and a member of IA, said Trump’s latest comments were seen as “crass and inappropriate”. “It’s the wrong way to do foreign policy if you want to get a closer tie with Greenland,” she added.

Of the six parties running, only Naleraq has promised to hold a snap vote on independence and all parties, except for Atassut, support secession – although with varying degrees of urgency.

Greenland’s longstanding independence movement has gained significant traction in recent years after a series of scandals highlighting Denmark’s racist treatment of Greenlanders – including the IUD scandal, in which 4,500 women and girls were allegedly fitted with contraception without their knowledge, and “parenting competency” tests that have separated many Inuit children from their parents.

With the US administration expressing interest in Greenland’s “incredible natural resources”, chiefly its mineral wealth, Egede’s IA and another party, Siumut, have said they would set up a national mining company to enable Greenland to profit more from its raw materials.

Nathanielsen said that despite the geopolitical drama the issues on voters’ minds were the usual preoccupations such as education and healthcare.

“We are getting asked the exact same questions as usual by voters,” she said. “But on top of that there is, of course, a real concern about what is going on the world stage, especially with regards to Greenland.”

Trump’s promises of interest and money in Greenland have so far been “very vague”, she said. “Right now it is just talk and very unclear what they [the US] actually think and what he [Trump] means by making Greenlanders rich, that’s still to be seen.”

High school student and first-time voter, Aviâja Korneliussen, 18, said: “I am excited but also very nervous because we don’t know how it’s going to affect our communities and we know that the whole world is watching and waiting.”

Korneliussen said she had not yet decided whether to vote for Naleraq, IA or the Democrats. She wanted Greenland to become independent and to have more connection with the Arctic region rather than with Denmark or the Nordics or Europe. But she was unsure when it came to the US.

“I’m a bit conflicted because we know [what] the US has done to their own Indigenous groups and how they can manipulate things to be their way. But I get the idea they want to work together to be more independent from Denmark, so it’s a bit 50/50 for me.”

Trump had been “disrespectful … he looks at us as objects to own” and she did not want Greenland to become the 51st state, she added.

Greenland’s prime minister said voters face a “fateful choice” as the Arctic island prepares to go to the polls in a pivotal election closely watched by Europe and the US.

The vote on Tuesday has attracted global attention after Donald Trump’s repeated assertions about acquiring the autonomous territory, using military and economic force if necessary.

The poll, which takes place against a backdrop of growing calls for independence, is also being closely scrutinised by Denmark, which ruled Greenland as a colony until 1953 and continues to control its foreign and security policy.

Greenland, along with the Faroe Islands, remains part of the Danish kingdom. However, Copenhagen fears that if voters give strong backing to the largest opposition party, Naleraq, a prominent pro-independence voice and supporter of US collaboration, Greenland could instead strengthen its ties with the US.

On Monday the territory’s prime minister and chair of the Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party, Múte B Egede, accused Trump of being “unpredictable” and said he had failed to treat Greenlanders with respect.

“It is a fateful choice we have,” Egede told Danish broadcaster DR.

“The things that are happening in the world right now worry me quite a lot. That there is a world order that is faltering on many fronts, and perhaps a president in the United States who is very unpredictable in a way that makes people feel insecure,” he said.

“We deserve to be treated with respect, and I don’t think the American president has done that lately since he took office.”

In his speech to Congress last week, Trump said that he would acquire Greenland “one way or the other”. And on Sunday, he attempted to appeal to Greenlanders directly by reiterating his invitation to join the US and pledging to “invest billions of dollars to create new jobs and make you rich”.

However, while many in Nuuk are open to strengthening collaboration with the US, the idea of Greenland being acquired by the Trump administration has been widely rejected.

Trump’s recent remarks were not helping, Egede said. “We need to draw a line in the sand and spend more effort on those countries that show us respect for the future we want to draw,” he added.

Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for natural resources, equality, business and justice and a member of IA, said Trump’s latest comments were seen as “crass and inappropriate”. “It’s the wrong way to do foreign policy if you want to get a closer tie with Greenland,” she added.

Of the six parties running, only Naleraq has promised to hold a snap vote on independence and all parties, except for Atassut, support secession – although with varying degrees of urgency.

Greenland’s longstanding independence movement has gained significant traction in recent years after a series of scandals highlighting Denmark’s racist treatment of Greenlanders – including the IUD scandal, in which 4,500 women and girls were allegedly fitted with contraception without their knowledge, and “parenting competency” tests that have separated many Inuit children from their parents.

With the US administration expressing interest in Greenland’s “incredible natural resources”, chiefly its mineral wealth, Egede’s IA and another party, Siumut, have said they would set up a national mining company to enable Greenland to profit more from its raw materials.

Nathanielsen said that despite the geopolitical drama the issues on voters’ minds were the usual preoccupations such as education and healthcare.

“We are getting asked the exact same questions as usual by voters,” she said. “But on top of that there is, of course, a real concern about what is going on the world stage, especially with regards to Greenland.”

Trump’s promises of interest and money in Greenland have so far been “very vague”, she said. “Right now it is just talk and very unclear what they [the US] actually think and what he [Trump] means by making Greenlanders rich, that’s still to be seen.”

High school student and first-time voter, Aviâja Korneliussen, 18, said: “I am excited but also very nervous because we don’t know how it’s going to affect our communities and we know that the whole world is watching and waiting.”

Korneliussen said she had not yet decided whether to vote for Naleraq, IA or the Democrats. She wanted Greenland to become independent and to have more connection with the Arctic region rather than with Denmark or the Nordics or Europe. But she was unsure when it came to the US.

“I’m a bit conflicted because we know [what] the US has done to their own Indigenous groups and how they can manipulate things to be their way. But I get the idea they want to work together to be more independent from Denmark, so it’s a bit 50/50 for me.”

Trump had been “disrespectful … he looks at us as objects to own” and she did not want Greenland to become the 51st state, she added.

Nearly every country on Earth has dirtier air than doctors recommend breathing, a report has found.

Only seven countries met the World Health Organization’s guidelines for tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 last year, according to analysis from the Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.

Australia, New Zealand and Estonia were among the handful of countries with a yearly average of no more than 5µg of PM2.5 per cubic metre, along with Greenland and some small island states.

The most polluted countries were Chad, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and India. PM2.5 levels in all five countries were at least 10 times higher than guideline limits in 2024, the report found, stretching as much as 18 times higher than recommended levels in Chad.

Doctors say there are no safe levels of PM2.5, which is small enough to slip into the bloodstream and damage organs throughout the body, but have estimated millions of lives could be saved each year by following their guidelines. Dirty air is the second-biggest risk factor for dying after high blood pressure.

“Air pollution doesn’t kill us immediately – it takes maybe two to three decades before we see the impacts on health, unless it’s very extreme,” said Frank Hammes, CEO of IQAir. “[Avoiding it] is one of those preventative things people don’t think about till too late in their lives.”

The annual report, which is in its seventh year, highlighted some areas of progress. It found the share of cities meeting the PM2.5 standards rose from 9% in 2023 to 17% in 2024.

Air pollution in India, which is home to six of the 10 dirtiest cities in the world, fell by 7% between 2023 and 2024. China’s air quality also improved, part of a long-running trend that saw the country’s extreme PM2.5 pollution fall by almost half between 2013 and 2020.

The air quality in Beijing is now almost the same as in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The latter was the most polluted city in Europe for the second year running, the report found.

Zorana Jovanovic Andersen, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Copenhagen, who was not involved in the report, said the results highlighted some chilling facts about air pollution.

“Huge disparities are seen even within one of the cleanest continents,” she said. “Citizens of eastern European and non-EU Balkan countries breathe the most polluted air in Europe, and there is a 20-fold difference in PM2.5 levels between the most and least polluted cities.”

Governments could clean their air with policies such as funding renewable energy projects and public transport; building infrastructure to encourage walking and cycling; and banning people from burning farm waste.

To create the ranking, the researchers averaged real-time data on air pollution, measured at ground level, over the course of the calendar year. About one-third of the units were run by governments and two-thirds by non-profits, schools and universities, and private citizens with sensors.

Air quality monitoring is worse in parts of Africa and west Asia, where several countries were excluded from the analysis. Poor countries tend to have dirtier air than rich ones but often lack measuring stations to inform their citizens or spur policy changes.

Roel Vermeulen, an environmental epidemiologist at Utrecht University, who was not involved in the report, said biases were most likely in data-poor areas with few regulated monitoring stations – particularly as satellite measurements were not used for the analysis – but that the values presented for Europe were in line with previous research.

“Virtually everyone globally is breathing bad air,” he said. “What brings it home is that there are such large disparities in the levels of exposure.”

Global stock markets have continued to fall amid fears that a wide-ranging trade war could dent US economic growth and result in a recession, even as the White House has denied that Trump’s trade policies are causing lasting chaos.

The S&P 500 fell 2.7%, the Dow Jones dropped 2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 4% on Monday as investors sold shares in the so-called “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla. Tesla’s shares had their worst day since September 2020, falling 15%.

In Asia, stocks took their cue from Wall Street and fell sharply on Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei and Taiwan stocks sliding about 3%, hitting their lowest level since September. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell more than 1%.

Even Chinese stocks, which have been on a tear this year, were not immune to the downbeat mood. The blue-chip index fell about 1%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was 1.5% lower.

European futures also pointed to a lower open, with DAX futures down 0.8% and Eurostoxx futures 0.9% lower, suggesting the selloff had more room to go.

The fall came a day after Trump skirted around questions about a potential recession on Sunday. Asked if he expected a recession, Trump said: “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big … It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.”

Kevin Hassett, the head of the national economic council, told CNBC on Monday that any uncertainty around Trump’s trade policies would be resolved by early April and that the policies were “creating jobs in the US”.

“It’s starting to have the intended effect of onshoring in the US,” Hassett said, citing recent job figures that showed an increase of 10,000 manufacturing jobs in February. For context, the increase represents about a 0.08% increase in manufacturing jobs, of which there are about 12.7m in the US.

Hassett insisted: “There’s a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish going forward,” saying that the Trump administration was still aiming for “the biggest tax cuts in history, massive deregulation and a productivity boom from artificial intelligence”.

“Everyone is talking about uncertainty. Surely there’s uncertainty in exactly how the trade policy will work itself out, but the tax policy is almost sure to work,” Hassett said.

Over the last week, as the US stock market has slumped, Trump and his administration have been busy working the talkshow circuits trying to allay growing concerns of a recession and continue to push for his trade policies.

Since coming into office, Trump has started a trade war with America’s three largest trading partners. Trump has increased tariffs on China, first by 10% and now by 20%. He has pulled back on 25% tariffs against goods from Mexico and Canada, though he is still threatening to impose the tariffs against the two countries next month.

Atlanta Federal Reserve’s closely followed GDP Now tracker – which forecasts US economic growth – is suggesting the economy could contract in the first three months of the year, largely due to an outsized drag from net trade.

Trump has repeatedly balked at the idea that his trade policies have caused uncertainty.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “There’s going to be no recession in America,” comparing doubts about Trump’s trade policies to previous skepticism over Trump winning the election.

“You are going to see over the next two years the greatest set of growth coming from America,” Lutnick said.

Reuters contributed to this report

The US secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has directed the Food and Drug Administration to revise safety rules to help eliminate a provision that allows companies to self-affirm that food ingredients are safe.

The move would increase transparency for consumers as well as the FDA’s oversight of food ingredients considered to be safe, Kennedy said on Monday.

“For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the US food supply without notification to the FDA or the public,” he said in a statement.

Kennedy has promised to address an epidemic of chronic illness with Donald Trump’s backing, but his broad agenda from making food healthier to studying vaccines could clash with government spending cuts.

Currently, the FDA strongly encourages manufacturers to submit notices under a rule known as “substances generally recognized as safe”, but they can also self-affirm the use of a substance without notifying the FDA.

Eliminating this pathway would make it mandatory for companies that want to introduce new ingredients in foods to publicly notify the FDA of their intended use and submit underlying safety data, HHS said.

The FDA maintains a public inventory where all notices, supporting data, and response letters are available for review.

PepsiCo, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Hershey, Mondelez and Kellanova did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

A few months ago the FDA had set in motion a restructuring of its food division to increase oversight of food supply and agricultural products under the former commissioner Robert Califf.

In January, it proposed that food companies display nutrition labels on the front of the packages.

The US secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has directed the Food and Drug Administration to revise safety rules to help eliminate a provision that allows companies to self-affirm that food ingredients are safe.

The move would increase transparency for consumers as well as the FDA’s oversight of food ingredients considered to be safe, Kennedy said on Monday.

“For far too long, ingredient manufacturers and sponsors have exploited a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the US food supply without notification to the FDA or the public,” he said in a statement.

Kennedy has promised to address an epidemic of chronic illness with Donald Trump’s backing, but his broad agenda from making food healthier to studying vaccines could clash with government spending cuts.

Currently, the FDA strongly encourages manufacturers to submit notices under a rule known as “substances generally recognized as safe”, but they can also self-affirm the use of a substance without notifying the FDA.

Eliminating this pathway would make it mandatory for companies that want to introduce new ingredients in foods to publicly notify the FDA of their intended use and submit underlying safety data, HHS said.

The FDA maintains a public inventory where all notices, supporting data, and response letters are available for review.

PepsiCo, General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Hershey, Mondelez and Kellanova did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

A few months ago the FDA had set in motion a restructuring of its food division to increase oversight of food supply and agricultural products under the former commissioner Robert Califf.

In January, it proposed that food companies display nutrition labels on the front of the packages.

NHS England will lose half its staff and a huge swathe of its senior management team as part of a brutal restructuring under its new boss.

Its workforce will shrink from 13,000 to about 6,500 as entire teams are axed to save money and avoid “duplication” with officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

NHS England staff said they were “in shock and awe” at the scale of the job cuts, which go far beyond the loss of 2,000 posts to save £175m announced just weeks ago.

The DHSC will also become smaller as a result of a process that will see it working much more closely from April with NHS England, though it will shed far fewer staff than the latter. The changes will give Wes Streeting, the health secretary, far more control over the organisation that is responsible for the operational performance of the health service in England.

“These changes represent the biggest reshaping of the NHS’s national architecture in more than a decade,” said Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts in England.

Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s outgoing chief executive, broke the news to staff today in an email that made clear Streeting had instigated the organisation’s dramatic downsizing.

He has asked Jim Mackey, her successor, and Dr Penny Dash, NHS England’s incoming new chair, to lead on the “radical reform of the size and functions of the centre [how NHS staff refer to NHS England and the DHSC’s respective headquarters in London],” Pritchard said. That will “deliver significant changes in our relationship with DHSC to eradicate duplication”.

Pritchard announced two weeks ago, after weeks of talks with Streeting, that she was stepping down at the end of the month.

A “formal change programme board” or “transition team” of DHSC and NHS England officials will oversee the slimming down of the two organisations. It will report to Dash and Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary Streeting appointed as the DHSC’s lead non-executive director, the board’s co-chairs.

“As part of this, they will be looking at ways of radically reducing the size of NHS England that could see the centre decrease by around half,” Pritchard said. The news would be “very unsettling” and involve “uncertainty and worry” for staff, she added.

Pritchard also announced that Julian Kelly, NHS England’s deputy chief executive and finance chief, chief operating officer Emily Lawson and chief delivery officer Steve Russell will follow her out the door this month.

They “feel it is the right time to move on and allow a new transition team, led by Jim, to reshape how NHS England and DHSC work together,” she said. Prof Sir Stephen Powis, the service’s national medical director, announced last Thursday that he was leaving too.

One NHS England staffer said: “People here have been expecting change over the last couple of weeks but not as much change as is now apparent. They feel baffled, unnerved and fearful.

“The speed at which Emily Lawson, Julian Kelly and Steve Russell are going is bewildering.”

Streeting has made no secret of his ambition to gain more power to direct NHS England, which has been semi-independent of ministerial control as a result of then health secretary Andrew Lansley’s shake-up of the service in 2012, as part of the biggest overhaul of the NHS since it was founded.

The Guardian revealed last month that thousands of jobs were going to be axed at NHS England and disclosed last week that Mackey was planning a major cull of NHS England’s senior leadership team. Further departures are expected.

Mackey and Pritchard warned NHS leaders last week that the organisation is facing a possible overspend of £6.6bn in the 2025/26 financial year and that “a fundamental reset of the financial regime” will help “get a grip of this situation”.

Syria’s government has reached a deal with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that controls the north-east of the country to integrate the group into the national army and achieve a nationwide ceasefire.

The agreement will place the north-east under Syrian government control for the first time since the Kurdish-led authority gained autonomy of the region in 2012 during the civil war..

The deal, which is to be carried out by year’s end, will place all public institutions in north-east Syria – including borders, airports and oilfields – under Syrian government control.

The deal will also recognise Kurdish rights – long denied under the Assad regime, which banned the Kurdish language from schools and prohibited Kurdish holidays.

The text of the agreement also said all Syrians would be able to participate in the country’s new political process, regardless of religious or ethnic background.

The deal is a major breakthrough for Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who early on engaged the SDF in negotiations to consolidate Syrian government control over the country.

It resolved an open question about what would happen to the SDF after the ousting of Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, on 8 December by a rebel coalition led by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Turkish-backed rebel groups, now part of the Syrian army, had been engaged in near-daily clashes with the SDF since the toppling of the Assad regime until the announcement of the deal.

The announcement of the agreement prompted cheering crowds to take to the street in Raqqa, north-east Syria and in Damascus.

The agreement came just after the Syrian defence ministry announced the end of its military operation against Assad loyalists in the Syrian coast. Combat had started after fighters loyal to the ousted Assad regime launched a coordinated attack on Syrian security forces across the coast on Thursday.

The fighting triggered a five-day battle in north-west Syria that killed more than 1,000 people, including at least 745 civilians. The attack also triggered revenge killings of mostly Alawite civilians in villages across the north-west.

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Assad regime loyalists killed 211 civilians and 172 Syrian security forces, while Syrian government forces killed 396 civilians and unarmed prisoners.

Al-Sharaa promised accountability for the killings, saying: “We will hold accountable, with full decisiveness, anyone who is involved in the bloodshed of civilians, mistreats civilians, exceeds the state’s authority or exploits power for personal gain.”

It is unclear how the spate of killings will affect the process of the SDF’s handing over of military authority to the state, as Syria’s Kurdish population is wary after decades of historical oppression under the Assad regime.

The Syrian government also needs to make a deal with the Druze community in southern Syria, which has retained autonomy under the country’s new rulers.

Syria also faces an Israeli incursion in the south, with Israeli leaders threatening military intervention in the country if the central government harms the Druze population. Druze leaders in turn have rejected any Israeli intervention in the country.

On Monday night shortly after the agreement was signed between Damascus and the SDF, the Israeli air force bombed military sites in Daraa, southern Syria, according to Syria TV, a government aligned broadcaster.

The Dalai Lama’s successor will be born outside China, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism says in a new book, raising the stakes in a dispute with Beijing over control of the Himalayan region he fled more than six decades ago.

Tibetans worldwide want the institution of the Dalai Lama to continue after the 89-year-old’s death, he writes in Voice for the Voiceless, which was reviewed by Reuters and is being released on Tuesday.

He had previously said the line of spiritual leaders might end with him.

His book marks the first time the Dalai Lama has specified that his successor would be born in the “free world”, which he describes as outside China. He has previously said only that he could reincarnate outside Tibet, possibly in India where he lives in exile.

“Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama – that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people – will continue,” the Dalai Lama writes.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled at the age of 23 to India with thousands of other Tibetans in 1959 after a failed uprising against the rule of Mao Zedong’s Communists. Beijing insists it will choose his successor, but the Dalai Lama has said any successor named by China would not be respected.

China brands the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for keeping alive the Tibetan cause, a “separatist”.

When asked about the book at a press briefing on Monday, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said the Dalai Lama “is a political exile who is engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion.

“On the Tibet issue, China’s position is consistent and clear. What the Dalai Lama says and does cannot change the objective fact of Tibet’s prosperity and development.”

Beijing said in February it hoped the Dalai Lama would “return to the right path” and that it was open to discussing his future if he met such conditions as recognising that Tibet and Taiwan are inalienable parts of China, whose sole legal government is that of the People’s Republic of China. That proposal has been rejected by the Tibetan parliament-in-exile in India.

In his book, the Dalai Lama says he has received numerous petitions for more than a decade from a wide spectrum of Tibetan people, including senior monks and Tibetans living in Tibet and outside, “uniformly asking me to ensure that the Dalai Lama lineage be continued”.

Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death. The current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two.

The book, which the Dalai Lama calls an account of his dealings with Chinese leaders over seven decades, is being published on Tuesday in the US by William Morrow and in Britain by HarperNonFiction, with HarperCollins publications to follow in India and other countries.

The Dalai Lama, who has said he will release details about his succession around his 90th birthday in July, writes that his homeland remains “in the grip of repressive Communist Chinese rule” and that the campaign for the freedom of the Tibetan people will continue “no matter what”, even after his death.

Colombia, whose president, Gustavo Petro, is a vocal critic of the US-led war on drugs, has urged the UN to remove coca – the main ingredient in cocaine – from a list of harmful substances.

Used not only for cocaine, the coca leaf is also chewed as a stimulant in countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, or brewed into a tea thought to combat altitude sickness.

Colombia’s foreign minister, Laura Sarabia, in an address to the UN’s commission on narcotic drugs in Vienna, insisted on Monday that the leaf “is itself not harmful to health”.

Removing it from a 1961 UN list of harmful narcotics, where it sits alongside cocaine and heroin, would allow it to be used to “its full potential in industrial applications such as fertilisers and beverages”, she said.

She argued that legalisation was the only way to stop drug traffickers monopolising the plant – forcing rural communities to grow it for them, and razing forests for its cultivation.

Sarabia said billions of dollars spent on the so-called war on drugs has done nothing to stop consumption, production and trafficking.

In fact, she said, the number of recreational users of cocaine increased by more than 50 million in a decade.

Colombia is the world’s main producer of cocaine – much of its production in the hands of drug cartels and violent guerrilla groups.

In 2023, the South American country set a new record last year for coca leaf cultivation and cocaine production, which rose 53% from 1,738 tonnes (1,915 US tons) to 2,600 tonnes, according to the UN.

The United States is the biggest cocaine consumer.

Petro, the country’s first leftist president, has tried to change the approach to combating drug trafficking to focus more on prevention among potential users, and finding alternative incomes for coca farmers.

Last month, he raised some eyebrows when he said that cocaine “is no worse than whisky” and is only illegal because it comes from Latin America.

“If you want peace, you have to dismantle the business [of drug trafficking],” he said during a government meeting. “It could easily be dismantled if they legalise cocaine in the world. It would be sold like wine.”

Sarabia on Monday insisted that changing the approach from a punitive one towards a more humanitarian one did not imply “normalising or coexisting with drug trafficking”.

Colombian authorities have seized more than 1,900 tonnes of cocaine and destroyed 454 clandestine laboratories since Petro took office in August 2022 up to January this year, said the minister.