demands

Caracas, October 29, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has instructed the Foreign Ministry and the Attorney General’s Office to advance diplomatic and legal efforts to recover 31 tonnes of Venezuelan gold held by the Bank of England’s vaults for more than six years.

The freeze on the reserves, currently valued at around US $4 billion, dates back to the United Kingdom’s refusal to recognize Nicolás Maduro’s 2018 reelection. A year later, opposition leader Juan Guaidó formally asked British authorities to prevent the Venezuelan government from accessing the gold.

During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Rodríguez described the ongoing freeze as a theft. 

“It is a mockery, but one aimed at illegitimately appropriating Venezuela’s gold reserves. We want no more excuses. Even the irrational lawsuit pursued by opposition factions was withdrawn by the very same people who brought it,” she said.

Rodríguez added that she “will not give up” on the claim and recalled that “there is an agreement among Venezuela’s political sectors” to secure the gold’s return. 

The Venezuelan government and an opposition sector representing the defunct 2015 National Assembly have been engaged in a US-backed dialogue process. On October 21, the delegations agreed to establish a joint commission to engage with London and seek the return of the reserves. The parties announced that the funds would be destined for post-earthquake reconstruction efforts, though Rodríguez has also pledged to use it to bolster public services and the electricity grid.

The acting leader had previously written to King Charles III requesting the release of the gold. In September, London and Caracas likewise began a diplomatic rapprochement and announced plans to appoint ambassadors to their respective missions.

According to reports, the Venezuelan gold is set to be transferred to the US Federal Reserve in New York, where its sale or use as collateral for loans would be contingent on the Trump administration’s approval and subjected to foreign audits.

Wednesday’s cabinet meeting additionally saw Rodríguez announce the arrival of 41 heavy machinery units to southeast Bolívar State to strengthen the Venezuelan Mining Corporation’s (CVM) operations at the Chocó plant.

The acting president said the delivery was part of a comprehensive state plan to acquire 544 pieces of equipment, including surface and underground machinery, drilling equipment, and mobile units. 

“More than 60 percent of this purchase will have arrived before the end of the year. What does that tell us? More gold production in 2027,” she affirmed. The Venezuelan executive has pushed a pro-business overhaul of mining legislation in recent months in a bid to court foreign investment. In September, New York-based Heeney Capital and commodities trader Mercuria Energy received a 30-year concession of the Chocó 10 mine in Bolívar State.

Rodríguez also promised short-term relief from electricity outages, often lasting up to 12 hours a day in certain parts of the country. However, she criticized the recurrent protests against blackouts

“I have not seen a single megawatt added to the national electricity system, which has been battered by the blockade, as a result of burning a tire (…) Soon, you will see relief in a country that has been hit so hard by the sanctions demanded by radical sectors,” she said.

Venezuelan authorities have pledged to restore 1,300 MW of generation capacity before the end of the year to mitigate a current deficit of around 4,500 MW. The Venezuelan National Assembly is close to approving a reform that will open electrical generation, transmission, distribution, and commercialization to the private sector.

Caracas has also turned to multinational corporations in a bid to recover the electrical grid.

However, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik stated that the company had already selected its contractors and completed the planning work but had not begun repairs because it has yet to be paid. “This is not an environment in which we are going to act without receiving payment upfront,” he said.

Meanwhile, popular organizations and trade unions staged demonstrations in Caracas and other cities on Tuesday. Through the newly formed “Blackout Victims Committee,” activists criticized the government for prioritizing the oil industry to satisfy US interests at the expense of rationing electricity throughout the country.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

A New York Times investigation links Democratic operatives to a namesake candidate in Alaska’s Senate race.

US President Donald Trump has called for the removal and prosecution of two candidates in Alaska’s Senate race, accusing Democrats of orchestrating a scheme to mislead voters.

Trump’s demand on Wednesday followed a New York Times investigation into efforts by people linked to Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign to recruit candidates who could draw support from Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, including a retired teacher with the same name.

The November 3 vote could help determine control of the US Senate, Congress’s upper chamber.

In Truth Social posts on Wednesday, Trump accused Peltola and Daniel J Sullivan Jr of election fraud and called for both to be removed from the ballot and prosecuted.

He described the alleged operation as “Voter Fraud at the Highest Level” and accused Democrats of lying under oath.

The Times noted that recruiting candidates to split an opponent’s vote – a practice known as ballot stacking – is generally legal and has been used by both parties in Alaska.

The two Sullivans are among four candidates in Alaska’s ranked-choice election.

Voters rank candidates by preference, with votes transferred if a first choice is eliminated. The ballot identifies the sitting senator as an incumbent Republican.

His namesake says he entered the race independently.

The Times reported that the effort began in 2025, when a Peltola aide was asked to identify Alaskans named Dan Sullivan.

Citing interviews and messages, it said Peltola advisers and officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which supports Democratic Senate candidates, discussed ways to reshape the ballot.

The newspaper identified Democratic operative Jerid Kurtz as a recruiter who approached potential candidates, sometimes under an assumed name.

It also reported that another Democrat withdrew after an approach from Kurtz, opening a place for Republican Gerald Heikes, who said he too had been encouraged to run.

Peltola’s former campaign manager, Elisa Rios, told the Times that Peltola knew about the operation but did not participate directly.

Rios later sought to withdraw her statements and the newspaper said other evidence supported its reporting.

Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic campaign committee denied recruiting candidates. Her campaign said political threats from Washington would not stop her candidacy.

Senator Sullivan accused Peltola of deceiving voters on Fox News on Wednesday.

Recruiting candidates to divide an opponent’s support is generally legal, the Times noted, and both major parties have used such tactics in Alaska.

The state’s Supreme Court upheld the retired teacher’s right to stand in June.

Trump’s Justice Department, the federal government’s legal arm, sued Alaska last week, seeking to delay certification if Senator Sullivan loses and votes for his namesake could have affected the outcome.

Alaska has asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that it lacks legal grounds.

In a letter outlining 42 questions, UEFA gives FIFA until November 2 to release documents on Infantino’s aborted plans.

UEFA has given FIFA a deadline of November 2 to release documents relating to its president Gianni Infantino’s aborted attempts at a secretive investment plan for the World Cup and other governance issues.

The latest move in a power struggle between the global and continental governing bodies was revealed on Monday, days after European football’s top officials were disappointed by what they perceived as a lack of clarity from Infantino over the issues at a FIFA Council meeting last week.

Infantino provided no documents about the $4.2bn World Cup sell-off plan he launched and quickly dropped in July amid a fierce backlash led by Europe.

Among the 42 questions to which UEFA is demanding answers are: Infantino’s personal remuneration package, financial payments made to singer Marc Anthony, the handling of USA striker Folarin Balogun’s disciplinary case, business and political relationships involving US President Donald Trump and his family, and the operational independence of FIFA’s judicial, electoral and ethics committees.

UEFA asked US federal courts to authorise subpoenas compelling the production of documents and sworn testimony about the abandoned investment plan called FIFA Forward Enterprise.

FIFA lawyers have claimed UEFA is harassing Infantino.

Al Jazeera reached out to FIFA for a comment but did not receive a response.

Deep dissatisfaction

The formal letter, signed by UEFA general secretary Theodore Theodoridis on behalf of European FIFA Council members, stated Infantino’s apology for his actions and subsequent explanation failed to address their core concerns.

“These explanations have not begun satisfactorily to address a number of fundamental questions raised by Council members. Others remain unanswered, and the information and documentation requested have not been [provided],” the letter said.

“The withdrawal of FFE, the recognition of mistakes, and the announcement of ‘potential governance reforms’ do not answer how the relevant decisions were taken or why the FIFA Council was not involved at the appropriate stage.”

According to media reports, the letter further said: “Any refusal to disclose information or documents should be justified individually, with a clear explanation of the specific grounds relied upon.”

Tight timeline

UEFA submitted 42 detailed questions to FIFA, demanding responses by November 2 — 16 days before the nomination deadline for the presidential election on March 18, 2027.

With the next FIFA Council meeting scheduled for December 16 in Doha, Qatar — after nominations close — UEFA insisted that answers cannot wait.

“These questions require answers now. They cannot be deferred until the next meeting of the FIFA Council — nor can future governance reforms substitute for scrutiny of decisions already taken and accountability for them,” the letter emphasised.

The earlier deadline would give federations time to assess FIFA’s answers — or its failure to answer — while they can still nominate or endorse a challenger.

The U.S. Department of Justice has ratcheted up its pressure campaign on California election officials to ferret out alleged voter fraud ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm election, demanding that officials statewide prove the U.S. citizenship of thousands of voters flagged by the federal government as potential noncitizens, or withhold or set aside their ballots.

Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter made the demand — which experts called highly questionable at a time when votes are already being cast — in letters to state election officials Tuesday, including Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office.

The letters, reviewed by The Times, call on the state officials to respond to the Justice Department within 48 hours.

McCotter wrote that the Justice Department had provided Logan’s office with a “password-protected thumb drive with a list of names the Federal Government believes are likely noncitizens who were sent a vote-by-mail ballot” for the Nov. 3 election.

“We request that you review the list within 48 hours to determine whether any citizens are listed. For individuals whom you cannot independently confirm citizenship status, we request that you immediately instruct the appropriate elections officials to segregate — not cancel — those individuals’ vote-by-mail ballots until their citizenship status can be determined,” McCotter wrote to both Weber and Logan.

The demand letter came from U.S. Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter, shown entering a news conference in September 2026 in Washington.

(Finn Gomez / Getty Images)

Voters on the federal list who haven’t already been sent a ballot should not be sent one until their citizenship is verified, while ballots already returned by voters on the list should not be counted until their citizenship is verified, McCotter wrote.

Weber’s office in a statement late Wednesday criticized the Justice Department for telling it to obtain a list of an unknown number of voters it hadn’t been given directly from Logan’s office, investigate all of those voters and “take action” all within 48 hours, based on inaccurate federal data that has led to U.S. citizens being purged from rolls in other states, and under threat of litigation despite the Justice Department providing no legal authority for the demand.

Weber said the Justice Department’s “relentless efforts to unlawfully gain access to states’ protected voter data and purge voter rolls serve only to cause chaos and fuel public distrust in our elections,” and that California already has “robust state law requirements” to ensure only U.S. citizens vote.

Logan said his office was reviewing the Justice Department letter in coordination with Weber and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, but had not accessed the USB drive because state officials “do not consider the device a secure medium” and accessing its contents “would conflict with established data privacy and information security protocols.”

He said that maintaining accurate voter records is a fundamental responsibility of his office, but also that federal and state laws “are clear on how voter eligibility is established — and any action to remove a voter from eligibility must be based on verifiable information, not assertions of unconfirmed data matching.”

Weber previously questioned the basis for a claim by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in July that there may be more than 190,000 noncitizen voters on California rolls, and rebuffed Trump administration offers to work with her office to purge state rolls of such ineligible voters ahead of November without additional information on how it reached its conclusions.

Similar Trump administration lists have been shown in other states to be substantially inaccurate, and to include many voters who are indeed citizens. Election experts say that makes the demand on California — where ballots have already been mailed out — even more concerning.

“One must question why the DOJ would violate its own rules about investigating elections close to election day, and over a week after they knew the state had already mailed ballots out, particularly when their past claims have been full of errors,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Becker noted the Trump administration alleged that there were nearly 16,000 noncitizens registered in Nevada, later reduced that number to 185 after additional scrutiny, and then determined all of them were in fact citizens.

A Justice Department spokesperson, in a statement to The Times, defended the agency’s demands to California — saying it “should not be controversial, as the criminal statute is clear: only American citizens may vote in federal elections. It is a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and the DOJ is asking California to ensure that is not occurring.”

The spokesperson said the agency could not provide the exact number of voters whose citizenship is being questioned, but that it is in the thousands.

California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber speaks during the state Democratic Party convention in Anaheim on May 31, 2025.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

McCotter wrote that if Weber cannot implement his demands for how to segregate ballots and verify voter citizenship for those on the federal list, the Justice Department “will have no choice but to seek emergency relief” — an apparent reference to seeking court intervention.

McCotter copied on the letters First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles whose office previously sent Logan’s office a series of grand jury subpoenas for individual voter records as part of a criminal investigation into illegal voting.

Essayli’s office referred questions to the Justice Department. Bonta’s office referred questions to Weber and Logan.

Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, said that he is “not aware of anything like this ever happening this close to an election,” and that it may in fact be illegal under the National Voter Registration Act, which “prevents systematic purges of voters 90 days before the election.”

He said that the question of whether that preclusion against purges applies to the removal of noncitizens is an issue that is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, in an Arizona case the high court will hear in December, but that the Justice Department’s actions strike him as “legally questionable.”

Hasen said the “whole point of that 90-day rule is to prevent the inadvertent disenfranchisement of eligible voters by mistake in the rush before the election,” and that risk is increased by the inaccuracies of similar lists presented by the Trump administration in other states. “So if there is an attempt to go to court — if DOJ tries to sue over this — they might have a hard time getting a judge to agree that this is something that the registrar must do or even can do.”

The fact that election officials are already busy receiving and preprocessing ballots would only bolster the state’s position in such a case, Hasen said.

“It’s obviously not a convenient time,” he said. “And given the fact that the lists have proven to be wildly inaccurate, at least in other states, it might be sending the registrar on a wild goose chase, when they have more relevant things to do in the election.”

But that “chaos” may be the point, Hasen said. “This is potentially another example of DOJ just making the work of state and local election administrators — which is already quite difficult and stressful — even harder,” he said.

Attorneys with the UCLA Voting Rights Project filed a lawsuit last month on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo, in which they challenged the Trump administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege registered California voters are not citizens.

On Wednesday, they told the Justice Department that they would be seeking emergency relief from such practices, given McCotter’s letters.

“The federal government’s attempt to pressure California election officials into acting on lists that may misidentify eligible voters is an alarming abuse of power as election season gets underway. This puts our communities and our fundamental rights at risk,” said Carl Bergquist, a CHIRLA attorney.

The Justice Department in recent weeks has announced scattered arrests of alleged noncitizen voters around the country, and Trump administration officials — including Essayli — have pointed to such arrests as proof that noncitizens are voting illegally.

Such voting does happen, Hasen said, but after months of the administration aggressively searching for such voters, the relatively small number of arrests “belies the contention that it’s widespread” or criminal, with many of the few cases identified the result of “administrative error or misunderstanding” rather than an intent to illegally cast ballots.

In his letters to Weber and Logan, McCotter wrote that allowing “noncitizens to vote cancels citizen votes,” and that ferreting out illegal noncitizen voters is a joint responsibility of state and federal officials.

“States are responsible for voter registration, and the Federal Government is responsible for maintaining immigration records to enable verification of citizenship,” he wrote. “Working together, we can more effectively protect against voter dilution and promote election integrity.”

Documentary draws on 24 anonymous Israeli sources accusing military of killing Palestinians in Gaza using AI systems.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for an investigation into the anonymous sources featured in a documentary alleging that Israel’s military killed civilians in Gaza using AI-powered targeting systems.

The award-winning film, NAZA, draws on testimony from 24 unnamed Israeli military whistleblowers accusing the army of using the systems to kill numerous civilians in the besieged territory.

“I demand that the chief of general staff, the head of the Shin Bet, and the attorney general launch a comprehensive investigation into the participants in the film ‘Naza’ and prosecute them for serious information security violations, criminal libel, and harm to Israel’s diplomatic and security interests,” Netanyahu said on X on Saturday evening.

“The film presents a false, misleading, and biased narrative that defames the State of Israel and the [Israeli military] internationally, severely damaging Israel’s standing,” he added.

In a statement last month, the Israeli military said it “categorically” rejected the whistleblowers’ allegations, calling some of their assertions “absurd’ and contradictory.

It insisted that the selection and approval of strikes “are made by human personnel only”, in line with the military’s guidelines.

Israeli army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has called for legal action against the participants to be considered and ordered an investigation into suspected leaks of classified military information used in the film’s production.

NAZA takes its name from the Israeli military term for civilian casualties expected in air strikes, an abbreviated form of the Hebrew phrase for “collateral damage”.

The film was awarded a special jury prize at the Venice International Film Festival and received a historic 25-minute standing ovation.

It has also triggered a political storm in Israel.

The film’s directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, have been accused of “treason”. Netanyahu and Culture Minister Miki Zohar have threatened to revoke their Israeli citizenship.

Last week, the head of Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, Tzipi Hotovely, awarded the creators of another film, NAZA: The Real Story, certificates of recognition for countering the “blood libels” made in the original NAZA film.

According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, NAZA: The Real Story features testimony from soldiers refuting the original claims.

In contrast, 43 Israeli rights groups defended the filmmakers of NAZA and denounced the threats being directed at them, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, after Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and other Palestinian groups attacked southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking about 240 captive.

Since then, Israel has killed at least 74,000 Palestinians, including at least 21,000 children, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.