Former U.S. President Donald Trump is set to face testimony from a key figure in his criminal trial over irregular payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels: his former lawyer and right-hand man, Michael Cohen, who facilitated those payments.

Trump will confront one of his greatest adversaries, who in 2018 pleaded guilty and served more than a year in prison for several offenses, including campaign finance violations related to payments to two alleged lovers of the politician, one of them being Daniels.

Cohen is a star witness for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which has charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in a series of payments to the lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign that led him to the White House, including $130,000 paid by the former president to Daniels to silence her.

Cohen is expected to strongly criticize Trump, as usual, and as he did in the recent civil trial in New York for fraud in the Trump Organization, where he accused Trump of manipulating asset figures, resulting in a $364 million fine that the mogul is appealing.

Last week, another key and opposing witness, Daniels herself, took the stand. She detailed her one-night affair in 2006 with the then-married former president when she was 27 and he was 59.

Daniels underwent rigorous cross-examination by the defense, where she was labeled a liar and accused of being motivated by money. She was even accused of extorting the payment from the former president, which she denied, through Cohen.

The lawyers unsuccessfully attempted once more to have the trial dismissed, criticizing the intimate nature of the adult film actress’s testimony. She revealed having spanked Trump with a magazine and stated that he had greeted her in satin pajamas and they had had unprotected sex.

Richard Slayman, the first recipient of a genetically modified pig kidney, has died nearly two months after the transplant in Massachusetts. Slayman, 62, had been suffering from end-stage renal failure for years and had undergone various unsuccessful treatments before this surgery. Initially deemed successful, the transplant was predicted by doctors to last at least two years.

Massachusetts General Hospital, where the surgery was performed, expressed “deep sadness” and condolences to Slayman’s family. The hospital announced his passing and stated there are “no indications” that it was a result of the transplant.

Slayman, from Weymouth, was the first living person to undergo this procedure, which had previously been attempted only with brain-dead donors. On two other occasions, regular patients had received similar transplants, but their immune systems had rejected them.

Slayman’s death adds to those of two other patients worldwide who had received pig heart transplants and died within months.

Former Colombian President Iván Duque sees that there is “despair” and “insecurity” in his successor, Gustavo Petro, who accused him of being a “terrorist” for the “murder” of dozens of young people at the hands of the public forces during the 2021 protests.

In a message published on the social network X, Duque (2018-2022) made a parallel between his career and that of Petro. He asked “that the healthy democratic debate begin now” for the presidential elections of 2026.

“There is despair, insecurity, paranoia, schizophrenia evident in this behavior, which intensifies with the drunkenness of applause and the motivation to eclipse failures and scandals. No more threats or attacks. Let the tragedy end on August 7, 2026 (the day that Petro’s mandate culminates), but let the healthy democratic debate begin without stopping at more crazy things to attract attention,” Duque said.

The day before, President Petro called his predecessor a “terrorist” for the “murder” of young people during the social outcuse of 2021. According to social organizations, more than 80 people died violently, most of them from police abuses.

“When 60 young people killed by the State die, burned, tortured, when thousands of young people were arrested, the question is then: who was the terrorist? Who should be described as a terrorist?” Petro asked in a government act in Cali, capital of the department of Valle del Cauca (southwest).

Petro added: “The president of the republic today has to say that the terrorist was not the popular youth, that the terrorist was the State of Colombia and particularly the Government of (…) Mr. Duque. The 60 killed in Cali by you were not terrorists, the terrorist was you.”

In that sense, Duque wondered, “Who is the terrorist?” He recalled that he has never been a member of “illegal or terrorist armed groups,” as if Petro did, who was a guerrilla of the 19 de Abril Movement (M-19).

“I have never made an apology for terrorism by flying flags of illegal armed groups,” added the former president, referring to the controversy that erose last month when Petro ordered the M-19 flag to be displayed in a public event in which he commemorated the murder 34 years ago of former guerrilla commander Carlos Pizarro.

Among other issues that Duque reminded Petro of, there are the “alliances with criminals in prisons to make the most of the election.” Or the call to young people to “express themselves with violence and vandalism with the promise of impunity if they are prosecuted.”

“I have never exalted the seizure of the Palace of Justice (in 1985), the murder of José Raquel Mercado (union leader kidnapped and executed by the M-19), the Tacueyó Massacre (in the 1980s), nor hundreds of kidnappings calling them ‘revolutionary’ acts,” Duque added in reference to Petro’s attitudes.

Likewise, Duque said that he has not “promoted the paramilitary leaders to return to the country to avoid their punishments, revictimizing those who have caused them so much pain,” referring to what happened to the former commander of the United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC) Salvatore Mancuso, appointed peace manager by the Government and who may be released in the coming days.

“I have not threatened journalists, businessmen, politicians, judges, guilds, industrialists, intellectuals for not thinking like me, much less disagreeing with me,” Duque concluded in his decalogue of response to Petro.

Former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010) accused the current president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, of wanting to instigate “civil war” in the country and of constantly challenging the Constitution.

“The president instigates civil war. Let’s add so that that war does not divide the citizenry, so that it is the president’s against all of Colombia,” said Uribe, leader of the opposition party Centro Democrático, in a video published on his social networks.

Uribe assured that “the president of the republic, instead of reorienting the young people of Cali, as part of the support he wants to give them, instigates them more to violence, applauds violent acts.”

“He repeats to them that my permanence in politics is attachment to power when he should give thanks that that permanence allowed him to base himself on anti-uribism for his election,” said Uribe, who ruled in the periods 2002-2006 and 2006-2010.

He also stated that Petro defies the Constitution as a step “in his purpose of unleashing a civil war between compatriots.”

“We work so that respect for the Constitution and respect for the ideas of fraternal economy one more to the citizenry (…) That it is against all of Colombia, that it does not divide the Colombians more,” he concluded.