In today’s newsletter: With gangs controlling Port-au-Prince and a UN-backed international force still not on the ground, is there any prospect of democratic control?
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Good morning. It is seven years since Haiti held an election, almost three years since the president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated, and more than a year since the last elected officials left office – and the return of democracy to Port-au-Prince still appears to be a distance away.
On Sunday, after gangs stormed the country’s two biggest jails and freed more than 3,800 criminals, the Haitian government declared a 72-hour state of emergency and a night curfew. But with gangs now exerting de facto authority over about 80% of the capital, and senior figures including acting president Ariel Henry out of the country, the government’s future appears increasingly uncertain. Yesterday, the Miami Herald reported that the gangs made a second attempt to take over the national airport.
Budget | NHS funding faces the biggest cuts in real terms since the 1970s, an influential analysis shows, amid growing pressure on Jeremy Hunt to prioritise public service funding over tax cuts in the budget. Health spending in England is due to fall by 1.2% – worth £2bn – in the new financial year.
US politics | Donald Trump was wrongly removed from Colorado’s primary ballot last year, the US supreme court has ruled, clearing the way for Trump to appear on the ballot in all 50 states. Trump said the unanimous decision was “very well crafted”. Read Ed Pilkington’s analysis.
UK politics | George Galloway has said he will target more seats in the next general election, including deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner’s, after his swearing-in at Westminster following last week’s Rochdale byelection victory. Galloway told reporters that his Workers Party of Britain would put up candidates to “either win or … make sure that Keir Starmer doesn’t.”
France | The French parliament has enshrined abortion as a constitutional right at a historic joint session at the Palace of Versailles. The change, agreed by an overwhelming margin of 780-72, was given impetus by the US supreme court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
Media | Ofcom has determined that GB News broke broadcasting rules when Laurence Fox, the leader of the rightwing Reclaim party, “demeaned” a female journalist on an episode of Dan Wootton Tonight. Fox’s comments, Ofcom says, were “unambiguously misogynistic” and “potentially highly offensive to viewers”.
