Cuban foreign ministry called US military action ‘maritime terrorism’ under a policy of ‘economic suffocation’
Cuban officials have denounced the US seizure of the Skipper oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday, calling it an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism” as well as a “serious violation of international law” that hurts the Caribbean island nation and its people.
“This action is part of the US escalation aimed at hampering Venezuela’s legitimate right to freely use and trade its natural resources with other nations, including the supplies of hydrocarbons to Cuba,” the Cuban foreign ministry statement said.
The seizure of the Skipper on Wednesday marked the first US capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since sanctions were imposed in 2019
Venezuelan oil exports have reportedly fallen sharply since the US seized a tanker this week and imposed fresh sanctions on shipping companies and vessels doing business with Caracas, according to shipping data, documents and maritime sources.
The US seizure of the Skipper tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday was the first US capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since sanctions were imposed in 2019 and marked a sharp escalation in rising tensions between the Trump administration and the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes and his wife had been under Global Magnitsky sanctions after conviction of ex-president
The US Department of the Treasury has lifted sanctions imposed on the Brazilian supreme court justice who oversaw the conviction of the former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes had been under Global Magnitsky sanctions, which target individuals accused of human rights abuses, since July. His wife Viviane Barci de Moraes – who was added the sanctions list in September – was also removed from the register on Friday.
Rookie Michael Ma leaves Conservative party for ‘steady, practical approach’ of Mark Carney’s government
Canada’s ruling Liberals have edged closer to a majority government after a Conservative lawmaker crossed the floor, in yet another blow to the struggling Tories.
Rookie lawmaker Michael Ma said late on Thursday that he had decided to leave the Conservative party, for “the steady, practical approach” of prime minister Mark Carney’s government, which he said would “deliver on the priorities I hear every day, including affordability and the economy”.
The US is ramping up the pressure on Nicolás Maduro with a tanker seizure and expanded sanctions following threats and boat strikes
Early in his first term, Donald Trump mooted a “military option” for Venezuela to dislodge its president, Nicolás Maduro. Reports suggest that he eagerly discussed the prospect of an invasion behind closed doors. Advisers eventually talked him down. Instead, the US pursued a “maximum pressure” strategy of sanctions and threats.
But Mr Maduro is still in place. And Mr Trump’s attempts to remove him are ramping up again. The US has amassed its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama. It has carried out more than 20 shocking strikes on alleged drug boats. Mr Trump reportedly delivered an ultimatum late last month, telling the Venezuelan leader that he could have safe passage from his country if he left immediately. There was already a $50m bounty on his head. This week came expanded sanctions and the seizure of a tanker.
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In sprawling landfills, thousands of Argentinian families scavenge for survival amid toxic waste and government neglect, dreaming of steady jobs and escape
The sun rises over the plateau of Neuquén’s open-air rubbish tip. Maia, nine, and her brothers, aged 11 and seven, huddle by a campfire. Their mother, Gisel, rummages through bags that smell of rotten fruit and meat.
Situated at the northern end of Argentinian Patagonia, 100km (60 miles) from Vaca Muerta – one of the world’s largest fossil gas reserves – children here roam amid twisted metal, glass and rubbish spread over five hectares (12 acres). The horizon is waste.
Special forces veteran Bryan Stern says he told US defence officials some of his planned route to reduce airstrike risk
The most dangerous moments came when salvation seemed finally assured.
Many miles from land, the small fishing skiff carrying the Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel prize laureate María Corina Machado had been lost at sea for hours, tossed by strong winds and 10ft waves. A further hazard was the ever present risk of an inadvertent airstrike by US warplanes hunting alleged cocaine smugglers.
President Nayib Bukele entrusting chatbot known for calling itself ‘MechaHitler’ to create ‘AI-powered’ curricula
Elon Musk is partnering with the government of El Salvador to bring his artificial intelligence company’s chatbot, Grok, to more than 1 million students across the country, according to a Thursday announcement by xAI. Over the next two years, the plan is to “deploy” the chatbot to more than 5,000 public schools in an “AI-powered education program”.
Six more oil supertankers added to sanctions list, as well as members of Maduro’s extended family, amid rising tensions following tanker seizure
Donald Trump has exerted more pressure on Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, expanding sanctions and issuing fresh threats to strike land targets in Venezuela, as the South American dictator accused the US president of ushering in a new “era of criminal naval piracy” in the Caribbean.
Late on Thursday, the US imposed curbs on three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six crude oil supertankers and the shipping companies linked to them. The treasury department alleged the vessels “engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime”.
Thousands of Venezuelan migrants have braved the seas off Falcón state in recent years, fleeing their shattered homeland towards the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao in rickety wooden boats called yolas. Many lost their lives chasing a brighter future after their overcrowded vessels capsized or were smashed apart by rocks.
This week, the opposition leader María Corina Machado got a taste of that perilous journey herself, as the Nobel laureate began her surreptitious 5,500-mile-plus odyssey from her authoritarian homeland to Norway to collect her peace prize.
British government also rejects president’s claims on sovereignty over Falkland Islands as he suggests wanting to make Argentina a ‘world military power’
The British government has denied it is engaged in negotiations to lift a ban on selling arms to Argentina that has been in place since the Falklands war.
Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, told the Daily Telegraph his government had begun speaking to the UK about the restrictions.
Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, the Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado, has said she supports the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, calling it a “very necessary step” to confront Nicolás Maduro’s “criminal” regime.
Speaking in Oslo on Thursday, a day after she was honoured for her “tireless” struggle for democratic change, Machado praised the US navy and coastguard helicopter raid on the vessel.
Ally claims former Mas president ‘illegally kidnapped’ and suggests arrest linked to fund for Indigenous Bolivians
Bolivia’s former president Luis Arce was reportedly detained and taken to police headquarters on Wednesday.
His former presidency minister, María Nela Prada Tejada, posted a video on social media saying she had received information from “unofficial sources” that Arce had been “illegally kidnapped” by police.
US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, whose government called the seizure “an act of international piracy”.
Trump confirmed the operation on Wednesday, saying: “We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually.”
Government claims national security strategy is working, but analysts say figures don’t show rise in forced disappearances
The average number of daily killings per month in Mexico has dropped by 37% since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office last year, according to new government figures, but security analysts cautioned that homicide data may not indicate improved national security.
There was an average of nearly 55 murders a day in November compared with almost 87 when Sheinbaum assumed the presidency in September last year, the head of the country’s national public security system, Marcela Figueroa Franco, said during the president’s daily news conference on Tuesday.
Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has vowed to continue her struggle to free the country from years of “obscene corruption”, “brutal dictatorship” and “despair” as she was awarded the Nobel peace prize at a ceremony in Norway’s capital, Oslo.
The 58-year-old conservative has lived in hiding in Venezuela since its authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, was accused of stealing the 2024 presidential election from her political movement. Despite fevered speculation that she would make a dramatic appearance at Wednesday’s event, having somehow slipped out of Venezuela, Machado was not present, although she was expected to arrive in Oslo in the coming hours.
Xiomara Castro alleges US manipulation and blackmail as preliminary count shows two rightwing candidates closely tied
Honduras’s president, Xiomara Castro, has alleged that an “electoral coup” is under way in the country’s presidential election, which she says has been marked by “interference from the president of the United States, Donald Trump”.
The leftist president also said that “the Honduran people must never accept elections marked by interference, manipulation and blackmail … Sovereignty is not negotiable, democracy is not surrendered.”
Press conference was expected to have been Venezuelan opposition leader’s first public appearance in 11 months
A press conference in Oslo with the Nobel peace prize laureate María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader in hiding, has been cancelled, the Norwegian Nobel Institute has said, adding that it was “in the dark” as to her whereabouts.
Machado last appeared in public on 9 January at a demonstration in Caracas protesting against the inauguration of Nicolás Maduro for his third term as president. The press conference, traditionally held by the Nobel laureate on the eve of the award ceremony, had been expected to be the 58-year-old’s first public appearance in 11 months.
When the new premier of the British Virgin Islands said he needed an armed security detail, his chief of police knew trouble was on its way
Augustus James Ulysses Jaspert, Gus for short, arrived in Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands, on 21 August 2017, just two weeks away from catastrophe. Jaspert, who was in his late 30s, had recently been appointed governor by Queen Elizabeth II, on the recommendation of the Foreign Office in London. The BVI is an overseas territory of Britain, with only partial independence, and the governor effectively acts as a backstop to the locally elected legislature. For Jaspert, a career civil servant, it would be his first hands-on experience of governing – and his first time in the British Virgin Islands. Any trepidation was outweighed by the prospect of moving to the Caribbean. “If you’re sitting in an office in London and someone says, ‘Go to Tortola,’ you look it up on a screen and think, ‘OK, I can do that,’” Jaspert told me.
While Jaspert, his wife and two sons were settling into their new life, a tropical storm gathered over the Atlantic. At first, forecasters weren’t unduly alarmed, but in the first days of September, the storm transformed into something much worse. In the afternoon of 6 September, Hurricane Irma made landfall in Tortola, which is home to the majority of the BVI’s 30,000-strong population. Irma was one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. It scalped buildings, blew out windows and removed entire floors from homes. Shipping containers smashed into the islanders’ fishing boats and the out-of-towners’ yachts.
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