leader

CHICAGO — Sydney Taylor hit four three-pointers and scored 19 points, and the Chicago Sky beat the Sparks 96-82 on Friday night as Nneka Ogwumike became the Sparks’ career scoring leader.

Ogwumike finished with 18 points to give her 7,703 in her career. She had 12 rebounds, moving past Candace Parker (3,467) into third on the WNBA’s career list with 3,472.

Kamilla Cardoso had 13 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks for Chicago (7-16), which avenged a 102-77 loss at L.A. last Friday. Natasha Cloud had 15 points and nine rebounds, Jacy Sheldon added 14 points, and Azura Stevens scored 12 points.

Dearica Hamby also scored 18 points for the Sparks (10-14), and Erica Wheeler added 14. The Sparks have lost the first three games of a four-game trip and eight of their last 11 overall.

Ogwumike scored 23 points Wednesday night in a 96-87 loss at Minnesota to tie the mark of 6,263 points set by Lisa Leslie. Ogwumike hit a short jumper about three minutes into the game Friday to break the record.

Picked No. 1 overall by the Sparks in 2012, Ogwumike, 36, returned to Los Angeles this season after spending the last two with Seattle.

Kelsey Plum, the Sparks’ other All-Star, missed her eighth straight game because of a leg injury. Chicago’s Skylar Diggins (knee) missed her fifth consecutive game.

The Sparks’ trip wraps up Sunday at Dallas (16-8).

Britain’s governing Labour Party confirmed Andy Burnham as its new leader, clearing the way for him to become prime minister next week. In his first speech, he pledged to chart a new political and economic course, saying Britain needed a break from four decades of failed policies.

Following the passing of Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani on Sunday, his solidarity with the Palestinian people remains one of the defining legacies of his leadership. He is being remembered not only as a regional statesman, but also as a steadfast ally of the Palestinian people and the only Arab leader to physically break the crippling siege on the Gaza Strip.

In October 2012, Sheikh Hamad visited the embattled Gaza Strip, six years after Israel imposed its crippling international blockade on the territory, following the 2006 Palestinian elections.

Accompanied by his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, and a high-level delegation, the emir bypassed the political isolation imposed on the enclave by Western powers and regional actors, leading to a massive official and popular reception.

The head of Hamas’s diaspora office, Khaled Meshaal, told Al Jazeera that the visit to the Strip means that “Jerusalem, Gaza and Palestine mourn him.”

“He was the first Arab and Muslim leader to visit Gaza, standing by its side with chivalry and magnanimity, as if officially announcing the breaking of the siege in its darkest circumstances,” Meshaal told Al Jazeera. “He was intelligent, brave and a man of principles.”

Ahmed al-Sheikh, a senior journalist, Arab affairs commentator and former news director at Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, said the Father Emir had ”a special kind of love for Palestine”.

“Has any other leader in the Arab world done that [visit to Gaza], except Hamad bin Khalifa?” al-Sheikh reflected in a recent interview.

”Why did he go to Gaza? It’s because he saw that everyone around Gaza is neglecting it”, he added.

During that landmark visit, Sheikh Hamad announced an increase in Qatar’s reconstruction grant to the enclave from $254m to $400m, laying the foundation for vital housing, infrastructure and healthcare projects that benefited thousands of Palestinians.

Addressing crowds at the Islamic University of Gaza – which awarded him and Sheikha Moza honorary doctorates for their humanitarian efforts – he praised the resilience of the Palestinian people, while criticising the international community’s double standards.

Personal pain and the ‘spearhead’ of liberation

His commitment to the Palestinian cause predated the blockade on Gaza. In 1999, Sheikh Hamad became the first Gulf leader to visit the Palestinian territories since 1967, meeting with the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat during a critical political impasse.

According to al-Sheikh, the emir viewed the Palestinian struggle through a deeply personal lens. When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon besieged Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, the emir was profoundly pained. He told his aides that when Sharon attacked the Muqata’a, it felt as though he was attacking Qatar itself.

His connection to Palestine was coupled with a regret that he had never visited Jerusalem before its occupation in 1967, According to al-Sheikh, that prompted him to commission an extensive three-hour documentary on the holy city to capture its history and identity.

Rather than relying solely on international intervention, he believed in the agency of the Palestinian people and that they were the essential spearhead of their movement. “You will do the primary action and without this action there can be no liberation,” the emir once told al-Sheikh.

Defying regional consensus

This stance put him frequently at odds with the regional consensus. During Israel’s devastating 2008–2009 war on Gaza, deep divisions emerged among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members over how to respond to the crisis.

Sheikh Hamad called for an emergency Arab summit in Doha, proposing a $250m reconstruction fund and a maritime corridor to bypass the blockade. He famously expressed his disappointment on live television about the lack of an Arab quorum for the emergency meeting. “God is sufficient for us and he is the best disposer of affairs.”

Some of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure projects before the outbreak of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023 were the result of financial pledges made by Sheikh Hamad.

Qatar funded the rehabilitation of vital highways and the flagship Sheikh Hamad City in Khan Younis—a $58m public housing project with 53 modern apartment buildings for thousands of low-income families.

Additionally, the Sheikh Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics, which officially opened in April 2019, became the territory’s premier facility for amputees and children with hearing impairments.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has systematically erased much of the infrastructure Qatar helped finance during Sheikh Hamad’s leadership. Satellite imagery from May this year confirms that Hamad City and other areas in southern Gaza have been wiped from the map.

The Sheikh Hamad Hospital managed to resume its vital services last December, despite suffering direct attacks, severe shortages and the broader collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Operating the only CT scanner in northern Gaza, the hospital has even opened a new branch in the south to cope with a 225 percent increase in amputation cases.

Sheikh Hamad Hospital’s continued operations during the ongoing genocide in Gaza remain a tangible remnant of the late emir’s unprecedented efforts in the besieged enclave. His support for Gaza will remain for generations to come.

July 10 (Asia Today) — A special counsel team on Thursday sought a 13-year prison term for Han Hak-ja, leader of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, commonly known as the Unification Church, over allegations involving improper ties between religion and politics.

The team led by special counsel Min Joong-ki made the request during the final hearing in Han’s trial at the Seoul Central District Court. Han has been charged with violating the Political Funds Act and other offenses.

The special counsel asked the court to sentence Han to five years in prison on the political funds charge and eight years on the remaining charges.

“Han and others used vast financial resources to unlawfully and improperly use public authority in an effort to expand religious interests and influence and realize the integration of religion and politics,” the special counsel team said.

The team said the alleged crimes “directly violated the spirit of the Constitution and damaged representative democracy.”

“Han and others, as top leaders of a religious organization, privately used donations voluntarily made by believers and improperly colluded with political forces in an attempt to influence South Korea,” the team said.

The special counsel also sought prison terms for other defendants being tried with Han.

For a former chief of staff identified only by the surname Chung, the team requested four years in prison on the political funds charge and six years on the remaining charges.

For Yun Young-ho, former head of the church’s world headquarters, the team sought one year and six months in prison on the political funds charge and two years on the remaining charges. The team requested three years in prison for Yun’s wife, identified only by the surname Lee.

Han is accused of conspiring with Yun and others to deliver 100 million won, about $66,000, in political funds to People Power Party lawmaker Kweon Seong-dong in January 2022.

She is also accused of involvement in delivering gifts to former first lady Kim Keon Hee through Jeon Seong-bae, a religious figure known as Geonjin, while seeking favors related to church affairs in 2022.

Han also faces allegations that she embezzled church funds and ordered Yun to destroy evidence in October 2022 in preparation for a police investigation into allegations that she gambled overseas.

Han arrived at the court at about 9:29 a.m. wearing a black jacket and white pants and using a wheelchair. She did not answer reporters’ questions, including whether she had given gifts to Kim.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260710010003980

The late supreme leader will be buried in his hometown, the eastern holy city of Mashhad.

Huge crowds have gathered in the eastern holy city of Mashhad as Iran prepares to bury its slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The burial in Khamenei’s hometown on Thursday follows a week of mass funeral processions, rallies and mourning ceremonies held across Iran, including a day dedicated to neighbouring Iraq.

There were marathon ceremonies to project strength and unity amid the US-Israel war on Iran, which began with strikes by the two countries on Tehran that killed Khamenei and several of his relatives on February 28.

Despite a promised pause in US attacks, Khamenei’s burial ceremony comes after the US and Iran traded attacks for a second day.

After massive processions in Iraq’s holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, Khamenei’s remains arrived on Thursday at Mashhad international airport, footage shared by the official news agency IRNA showed.

Iraq’s paramilitary group Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), or Hashd al-Shaabi, said on Wednesday more than 2.3 million people took part in Khamenei’s funeral procession in Najaf alone.

Khamenei’s remains, along with those of four family members killed alongside him, were also paraded through Tehran and the Shia clerical centre of Qom.

The Tasnim news agency and the broadcaster Press TV reported that millions of mourners attended the funeral procession in Tehran, with Iranian officials describing the event as the “largest public gathering in the country’s modern history”.

Crowds marched through Mashhad on Thursday morning, waving Iranian flags, photographs of Khamenei and placards with revolutionary slogans.

The mourners also chanted slogans demanding vengeance against US President Donald Trump for his role in the assassination.

“I swear by the blood of the supreme leader, Trump, we will kill you,” they shouted, with women holding up placards reading “Kill Trump”.

The incumbent supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been notably absent from the processions. He has not yet appeared in public since taking over days after his father’s assassination.

Officials have said he was wounded in the air strikes that killed his father, but the severity of his injuries remains unclear.

Iranian state television reported that Khamenei’s burial ceremony in Mashhad would be pushed to 2:30pm local time (11:00 GMT) as larger-than-expected crowds had delayed the funeral processions in Iraq.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas said Iranian officials had confirmed that the overnight US attacks on the Tehran-Mashhad railway line, which have put it out of service, had not delayed the burial ceremony.

Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, head of the late leader’s office, said Khamenei had requested to be buried in Mashhad, near the shrine of Imam Reza, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.

July 8 (Asia Today) — People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok is moving into street politics over the June 3 ballot shortage while also using the party’s ethics process to discipline internal critics, a strategy some see as an effort to consolidate support among the party’s hard-line base.

Jang attended a rally in Incheon on Wednesday condemning the ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections, beginning what is expected to be a series of visits to voting rights protests across the country.

It was his first appearance at a protest outside Seoul’s Songpa District, where demonstrations have continued for more than a month near Olympic Park.

Some party officials and political observers say Jang appears to be using street rallies to rally conservative supporters and push back against calls for his resignation. They say he is trying to regain political momentum by focusing on the ballot shortage and voting rights rather than internal power struggles.

But concerns are also growing inside the party.

Rep. Lee Sung-kwon, secretary of Alternative and Future, a reform-minded group of People Power Party lawmakers, said on YTN radio Wednesday that lawmakers may need to act if disciplinary action against party members becomes unfair.

“If disciplinary action becomes reality and unfair punishment is imposed, we must act,” Lee said. “If necessary, we can convene a general meeting of lawmakers or circulate a petition.”

Rep. Kim Jae-sub, who has been mentioned as a possible target of disciplinary action, criticized Jang during an appearance on a Channel A YouTube program.

“The person most responsible for the local election defeat is Jang,” Kim said. “It is difficult to understand why he is creating a disciplinary atmosphere everywhere under the pretext of restoring discipline. The person who has most harmed the party is Jang himself.”

Rep. Cho Kyoung-tae, who was referred to the party ethics committee over allegations that he asked Democratic Party lawmakers to vote against Park Deok-heum in the National Assembly vice speaker election, also criticized the leadership at a news conference.

“The irresponsibility of a leadership that refuses to take responsibility after an election defeat and the tyranny of suppressing colleagues who speak the truth are shaking the roots of the party,” Cho said.

A senior lawmaker from the southeastern Yeongnam region said Jang is closing off channels for internal communication and deepening his own isolation.

“The party must now recognize that its direction should be expanding its appeal, not rallying only hard-line supporters,” the lawmaker said.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260709010003160

WASHINGTON — The leaders of Europe are bracing for another turbulent summit with President Trump this week as NATO members gather for their annual meeting in the Turkish capital.

European diplomats view Trump’s decision to attend as a positive sign of his continued commitment to the alliance. But the president’s grievances with several European governments over their refusal to join the U.S. war with Iran have cast a pall over a summit already strained by Trump’s wavering support for the continent.

The secretary-general of the transatlantic alliance, Mark Rutte, told reporters on Monday that Trump had aired his resentments in a recent phone call. But Rutte countered with a mix of flattery and countervailing facts that has thus far kept Trump engaged.

While Trump has accused European leaders of denying U.S. forces access to allied bases for takeoffs and refueling during the war, Rutte noted that about 5,000 sorties supporting Operation Epic Fury launched from European airfields. And last Friday, France and Britain committed to a joint military mission with Oman to support freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz — “an extremely important development,” Rutte said.

At last year’s summit, held in The Hague, all NATO member states — with the exception of Spain — agreed to spend 5% of their GDP on defense by 2035, marking a significant increase in historic spending goals for modern Europe. The pledge is divided into two categories, with 3.5% of spending allocated to core military requirements, and the rest committed to a broad set of security-related investments.

Trump’s tough love on the alliance “is, I think, bringing NATO closer together,” the secretary general told reporters.

“You could argue that he is the first president of the U.S. since Eisenhower who was able to come to this situation where the Europeans and the Canadians will spend the same as the Americans” on security, Rutte said. “This equalization was a wish for 50, 60 years, and now it’s happening — I think in large part due to his leadership.”

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte speaks to reporters Monday ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

(Hussein Malla / Associated Press)

In a video message posted on social media Monday, Trump’s ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, said the summit this week would serve as a “report card” to determine whether countries were beginning to fulfill their commitments from last year.

He offered a note of optimism and suggested the president’s goal is to enhance, rather than undermine, the alliance.

“The United States will be here, but we also need our allies to be here. We cannot do it alone, and the American taxpayer should no longer bear the burden,” Whitaker said.

A White House schedule for Trump’s trip lists bilateral meetings with Rutte and the leaders of Turkey, Syria and Ukraine, in between alliance-wide meals and conferences.

Ukraine will remain at the top of the agenda, Trump told reporters Monday, expressing hope that the war could soon come to an end after four brutal years of fighting.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the greatest loss of life in Europe since World War II, resulting in more than 1 million casualties, including an estimated 600,000 dead. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion in 2022, following his covert invasions of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and eastern regions in 2014, Russian forces have captured roughly 12% of Ukraine’s territory.

The war has settled into a deadly stalemate since a 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to break Russian defensive lines. While Russian forces have occasionally advanced, they have only managed to hold marginal gains along the front, at tremendous cost.

In recent weeks, however, expanded Ukrainian drone and missile capabilities have shifted the dynamic, striking military production sites deep inside Russia and targets near Moscow, bringing the war more directly into the Russian public consciousness and raising questions in the Russian capital whether the war effort is sustainable.

Ukraine’s boldness has impressed the Trump administration, Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, told the Financial Times this week.

“I think he does feel pressure,” Trump said of Putin, addressing reporters in the Oval Office before departing for Turkey on Monday.

The president referred to an ongoing U.S. effort to end the war, a goal that has remained elusive for Trump since returning to office.

“I think we’re getting much closer than people realize,” he said. “President Putin wants it to end, I will tell you that. Very strongly. Had a good call. And President Zelensky actually wants it to end now.”

“We’re going to be going to NATO, and we’re going to be talking about it,” Trump added. “And I think we’re going to get it ended. It’s been terrible.”

Venezuela has marked its 215th Independence Day as citizens continue to grapple with grief following a pair of deadly earthquakes on June 24.

On Sunday, interim President Delcy Rodriguez sought to project strength during a military service in honour of the annual holiday.

“There will be no social unrest here,” Rodriguez said. “What we have here is deep social solidarity.”

But Rodriguez’s government has faced backlash since the twin earthquakes struck, hitting Venezuela with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively.

On Sunday, Venezuela’s Ministry of Communication and Information announced that it had recorded 3,342 deaths as a result of the earthquakes, with more expected. Thousands of people remain missing.

In addition, some 16,470 people are injured, while 17,345 have been left without homes.

The powerful seismic activity levelled buildings along Venezuela’s northern coastline, damaging regions like La Guaira and the Caracas metropolitan area.

Critics have accused the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which has led the country since 2007, of chronic mismanagement and corruption.

That, they say, has left Venezuela incapable of handling a crisis of the current scale. The June 24 earthquakes are the deadliest in a century for the country, and they represent the most catastrophic natural disaster Venezuela has weathered since the flash floods of 1999.

After the earthquakes, residents reported that government aid was slow to reach the most affected areas. Some accused the government of impeding the flow of foreign assistance.

In Sunday’s remarks, Rodriguez accused critics of seeking to stir “hatred” against the state.

“Attempts are being made today to attack Venezuelan institutions,” Rodriguez said. “There can be no room for any kind of conspiracy, internal or external, from whatever source it may come.”

The earthquakes are the first major disaster the Rodriguez government has had to contend with.

Rodriguez was sworn in as acting president in January, after serving as vice president under then-President Nicolas Maduro.

But on January 3, the United States launched a military operation to abduct and imprison Maduro on drug- and weapons-related charges. He is currently facing trial in New York.

Since taking power, Rodriguez has sought to work within the demands of US President Donald Trump. Her government has overseen reforms, for example, to its nationalised mining and fuel industries allowing more foreign investment.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has stood by Rodriguez, even amid the outpouring of criticism following the earthquakes.

Media reports have emerged that the US has repeatedly rejected requests from Venezuela’s main opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, to help her return to the country.

Machado had been living in hiding under Maduro for fear she would be arrested for her politics. In December, shortly before Maduro’s abduction, she secretly left Venezuela to collect a Nobel Peace Prize for promoting democracy.

But Machado has yet to return, though she has said she wants to be in the country to help with disaster relief efforts.

Her political coalition, Vente Venezuela, has been organising its own volunteer effort to collect donations and distribute supplies.

In a message to mark Venezuela’s Independence Day, Machado sought to draw a parallel between the US and her country.

“Yesterday, the people of the United States celebrated the 250th anniversary of their Declaration of Independence. Mere hours separate these commemorations, reflecting far more than a coincidence of history,” she wrote.

“They remind us that our nations are bound by the same republican ideals and by a shared commitment to the defense of the free world.”

In January, Machado presented Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize medal, in what was widely seen as an attempt to curry favour with the US president.

She has repeatedly pushed for new elections in Venezuela, claiming that her party has had a mandate to lead since the 2024 presidential race.

That election saw Maduro claim a third term as president, despite published vote tallies indicating he lost the race to the opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, an ally of Machado.

“We have built an unshakable democratic legitimacy, we have defeated the regime’s lies with the truth, and we have peacefully mobilized an entire nation that today is outraged and desperate for change,” Machado wrote in her Independence Day message.

“Enduring alliances are built on truth and trust. Now is the time to move forward with determination and to carry out, with unwavering resolve, the decisive chapter of our shared strategy.”

Reporting from Manila — The contrast was inescapable. At the top of a local newspaper’s front page here was a huge photo of the new Canadian prime minister, in a trim suit and wind blowing through his hair, captioned “ladies’ choice.” Next to him was a workmanlike headline over a separate story: “Obama to give PH two warships.”

President Obama, once a glamorous figure among world leaders, has been replaced as the “It Boy” of the summit circuit by Canada’s newly elected Justin Trudeau, as heads of state meet up this week in Turkey, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Though Obama came to Manila for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit with a new financial commitment to bolster the Philippine maritime fleet, the nation’s hearts and minds seemed won over by the 43-year-old Canadian, who lighted up Twitter with the designation #APECHottie.

NEWSLETTER: Get the day’s top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

If there was any resentment on the part of a president whose hair is more salt than pepper these days, it didn’t show as he and Trudeau sat down here for their first official meeting.

Obama warned him: “If you don’t want to gray like me, you need to start dyeing it soon.”

“So young and yet so cynical,” Trudeau joked in response.

Though Trudeau’s global image as a hip, next-generation leader mirrors Obama’s of seven years ago, Trudeau’s views on some of Obama’s biggest policy priorities provide a more sobering contrast.

Trudeau has been ambivalent on the massive Pacific trade deal Obama is pushing, and he reiterated to Obama on Thursday that he planned to follow through on his campaign pledge to end Canada’s part in the air campaign against Islamic State — though his nation will ramp up efforts to train local fighters in Iraq and Syria.

“Canada continues to be a strong player, doing its part – and more than its part,” Trudeau said.

Differences in viewpoint between two North American leaders is familiar. Canadian leaders have long tried to show independence from the United States in matters of foreign policy. Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, was one of the first Western leaders to embrace communist China and grew so close to Fidel Castro that the Cuban leader served as an honorary pallbearer at his funeral.

“Canada and the U.S. have not always seen eye-to-eye when there’s a Liberal government in power, something that stems from Trudeau’s own party and parentage,” said Antonia Maioni, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal who researches and writes about the Canadian political process and social policy. “It stems from the Canadian attitude that emerged under Pierre Trudeau that was about Canada finding its own way in international relations and not just being part of the U.S. orbit.”

But in the budding relationship between Obama and the younger Trudeau, there may be potential for collaboration, given the youth-oriented campaign that Trudeau ran – Obama noted the similarity to his own “hope and change” message – and their shared affinity for progressive social policies, especially on climate change.

Given that common ground, said Maioni, Trudeau may eventually drift more closely toward Obama’s point of view on national security and trade, too.

“A lot of people in Trudeau’s inner circle were inspired by and have taken advice from people around Obama,” she said. “That may open a conversation that would allow for change.”

Obama and Trudeau on Thursday began to explore an area in which they may be able make progress together – the fight against climate change.

Obama’s recent announcement to reject a Canadian company’s request to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would have carried crude oil from Alberta to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries was fortunate for Trudeau, said James Coleman, a legal scholar at the University of Calgary who studies environmental and energy regulation. Even though Trudeau was in favor of the pipeline, he is helped by the timing of the debate over it, which came during the tenure of his predecessor, the Conservative Party’s Stephen Harper.

“Given that President Obama was going to reject the pipeline, sooner was better for him,” said Coleman. “Because now it will be easier for him to pin it on Harper.”

Added Coleman: “It’s not hard to predict a little more friendliness between Obama and Trudeau than there was between Obama and Harper.”

Trudeau, whose graduate studies were in environmental science, emphasized the similarities in his and Obama’s climate doctrines. He noted that Canadians feel that their government hasn’t done enough to protect the environment, and he vowed to set and meet tough targets for carbon reduction.

Obama echoed the sentiment, arguing that transition from fossil fuels “does not happen overnight,” especially by nations that produce and consume a lot of oil and gas. Seated next to Trudeau, the father of three young children, Obama also made an argument about parenthood.

“If we want to preserve this planet for our kids and grandkids, then we’re going to have to shift increasingly away from carbon-emitting energy sources,” Obama said.

“This is going to be a messy, bumpy process worldwide,” he said, “but I am confident that we can get it done.”

michael.memoli@latimes.com

christi.parsons@latimes.com

Memoli reported from Manila and Parsons from Washington.

For more White House coverage, follow @mikememoli and @cparsons

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ROME — President Trump’s attacks on Italy’s premier have had an unintended consequence.

After Trump questioned Italy’s reliability as a wartime ally and claimed Giorgia Meloni had groveled for his attention, European leaders rallied to Meloni’s side, thawing what had been a frosty relationship over her hard-right political roots.

It is the latest example of how the often divisive American president is helping to draw Europe closer together.

European leaders are finding more reasons to coordinate on defense, tariffs and foreign policy as they confront wars in Ukraine and Iran, a ballooning trade deficit with China, and threats from Russia. That leaves Trump, who has often preferred to negotiate with European countries individually, with less ability to do so, analysts say.

“Most of the mainstream leaders realize that Europe is getting squeezed between China and America, and so, if not now, then when?” said Sudha David-Wilp, vice president at the German Marshall Fund. “They need to act as a bloc in order to maintain Europe’s place in the world.”

This newfound European unity could be tested next week at a NATO summit in Turkey.

European leaders rally around Meloni

Meloni’s spat with Trump has helped her strengthen ties with European leaders once wary of her party’s post-fascist roots.

A pivotal moment came in March when she wouldn’t allow U.S. bombers headed to the Middle East to use a base in Sicily without parliamentary approval.

For years before then, France and Germany often kept Meloni outside the small-group talks that helped shape Europe’s response to major foreign policy crises. That persisted into 2026 amid disagreements over the Russian war on Ukraine, including Meloni’s rejection of a proposal by Britain and France to send European troops there following a possible ceasefire.

But Trump’s escalating attacks on Meloni — who called Trump’s criticism of Pope Leo “unacceptable” — helped shift the dynamic, prompting European leaders to rally around her.

After all, they, too, have been on the receiving end of Trump’s barbs.

Meloni was firmly in the fold at a late June meeting in Berlin with the leaders of Germany, France, Britain and Poland. And she met the next day with French President Emmanuel Macron in southern France — the first bilateral summit since the pandemic.

Europe’s nationalist parties are adjusting

Even nationalist parties across the continent once aligned with Trump are recalibrating their stances because his trade policies and war with Iran are proving unpopular with voters.

In France, far-right leader Jordan Bardella recently blasted U.S. actions as “foreign interference” and described Trump as “erratic” and “extremely unsteady.” Bardella had previously welcomed Trump’s brand of nationalism as a “wind of freedom.”

In Germany, leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany party have criticized the U.S. military campaign against Iran. The co-leader of the party, Tino Chrupalla, said in March he was “extremely disappointed” with Trump, whom he had viewed as a politician who would avoid new conflicts.

The changing rhetoric comes as elections approach, putting more focus on domestic issues.

“This pushes everyone to consider a European horizon more than an international one,” said Lorenzo Castellani, a political analyst and professor at Rome’s LUISS University,

Beyond Europe’s biggest powers

These dynamics are playing out beyond the European Union, from the Arctic Ocean to the Balkans.

When Trump threatened to take Greenland by force, protests erupted in its capital, Nuuk, and in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. Leaders across the political spectrum bristled at the threatened infringement of European sovereignty and feared it could shatter the already stressed NATO military alliance.

In Albania, a luxury development being planned that is linked to Trump’s family business has become a major political issue, drawing protests in June.

The political risks of close alignment with Trump were perhaps most clearly illustrated in Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — long regarded as Trump’s closest ally in the European Union — was voted out of office in April despite support from the U.S. president and prominent figures in the MAGA movement.

An analysis by the consultancy Maplecroft suggested that negative perceptions of the Trump administration may have weighed on Orbán politically.

Meloni’s balancing act

Though Meloni remains closely aligned with Trump on issues like immigration and security, she has long diverged from him on Ukraine. Her steadfast support for Kyiv made her more palatable for European leaders and has been a key factor in forging a more united European front toward the U.S.

During their public spat last month, Meloni said her friendship with Trump came with a heavy political cost.

In her response to his accusation that she had “begged” to be photographed with him while at the recent G7 summit in France, she wrote on social media: “As for my popularity, being your friend has certainly not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you.”

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that Trump is deeply unpopular in Italy. According to the survey, 83% of Italians have no confidence in Trump’s ability to do the right thing regarding foreign affairs. His handling of a range of issues — including Iran, tariffs, and U.S. immigration policies — received a low level of support.

With a national election due by 2027 — and possibly as early as next spring — Meloni faces mounting political pressures, including fallout from the unpopular Iran war and her former ties to Trump.

Voters across Europe could hold their own politicians accountable for the actions of an American president beyond their control, said Castellani, the political analyst.

“At a certain point, when voters see the price of gasoline rising because of a war perceived as distant, they ask Meloni for the bill, not Trump.”

Zampano and McNeil write for the Associated Press. McNeil reported from Brussels. AP writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin, and Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, contributed to this report.

An estimated 10 million mourners attended Iran’s first Supreme Leader’s funeral in 1989, making it one of the world’s largest gatherings. As Iran prepares for the funeral of Khamenei, it’s expecting even bigger numbers.

MANCHESTER, England — Andy Burnham, likely the next U.K. prime minister, pledged Monday to give away a chunk of his power by handing greater autonomy to local leaders in a “circuit-breaker” for the sclerotic British state.

The former mayor of Greater Manchester also said he would move part of the prime minister’s office from London’s 10 Downing St. to northwest England as part of “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen.”

“Growth cannot be ordered from the top down. Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up,” Burnham said in a speech aimed at bringing voters, Labour Party colleagues and financial markets up to speed with his economic vision.

Burnham is the strong favorite to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation last week.

“If councils can’t fix potholes, what chance do they have of bringing forward major regeneration schemes to get growth going?” Burnham said. He set out a 10-year plan to get “good growth in every postcode,” in a country where wealth and power are concentrated in London and the south of England.

He said he would reverse almost two decades of low growth since the 2008 financial crisis through an approach dubbed “Manchesterism” — harnessing private and public money to invest in areas like transport, housing and infrastructure. He also pledged to create new industrial jobs and better educational opportunities, and to reform the U.K.’s inefficient and expensive privatized water and energy utilities.

Moving the new ‘No. 10 North’ to Manchester

During the speech at the People’s History Museum in the city where he spent nine years as mayor, Burnham said a new government office in Manchester – dubbed “No. 10 North” — would oversee regional development and become “the nerve center of a rewired Britain,” tasked with equalizing living standards across the country. Regional mayors would get more power over housing, welfare and education as part of his planned reforms.

Burnham’s rousing speech was short on specifics about where the government would find more money, and he didn’t take questions from journalists.

Burnham won praise for his role in revitalizing and regenerating Manchester, but he has not served in a U.K. government for almost two decades, and may struggle to replicate “Manchesterism” on a U.K.-wide scale.

The Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, said Burnham is right to focus on “rebalancing Britain.”

“The U.K.’s concentration of power and opportunity in Westminster has held back growth, productivity and living standards for too long,” said IPPR Executive Director Harry Quilter-Pinner. “The real test now is delivery.”

Matthew Flinders, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield, said replicating Burnham’s Manchester approach on a national level would require “a fundamental shift” in the way politics is done in Britain.

“And at the heart of that would be moving from a very traditional, elitist, centralized model of politics toward something that is in many ways far more European, far more based on power-sharing in order to develop long-term policymaking capacity,” he said.

Burnham is likely to inherit Starmer’s challenges

Burnham will be aware that Starmer also announced a 10-year mission — the equivalent of two full terms in government —- to transform Britain soon after he was elected in a landslide in July 2024. Starmer is leaving after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Burnham won a special election for a seat in Parliament on June 18 and was sworn in as a lawmaker on June 22, the same day Starmer announced that he will resign as soon as a successor is chosen.

Burnham is so far the only contender in the Labour Party leadership contest. If no one challenges him, he will become prime minister by July 20.

While Burnham is considered more charismatic than the stolid Starmer, he will face many of the same political and economic challenges, including a sluggish economy, tattered public services and a cost-of-living squeeze. He will also be constrained by the platform the center-left Labour Party was elected on in 2024, with its pledges not to increase taxes on working people.

And like other NATO countries, the U.K. is under pressure to dramatically increase defense spending to counter a more aggressive Russia and less reliable United States.

The government’s long-awaited defense investment plan — which sparked the resignation of Defense Secretary John Healey on June 11 — is expected to be published before a NATO summit in Turkey on July 7 and 8. Starmer’s successor will be expected to stick to the commitments in the plan.

“Andy Burnham’s big idea is to shuffle power between politicians,” said opposition Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake. “Not fix the welfare system. Not cut the taxes strangling working families and British business. Not fund the defense our country desperately needs.”

Grant and Lawless write for the Associated Press. Lawless reported from London. AP writer Brian Melley contributed to this report.

Thousands of Kurds in Turkiye rallied to demand the release of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and other prisoners. Ocalan has been imprisoned since 1999 for leading a decades-long armed insurgency against the Turkish state. The PKK and Ocalan renounced any armed struggle against Turkiye last year.

The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.

That book, and the stream of his that followed, seduced millions of readers, plenty of them no doubt hoping that with the proper dosage they, like Castaneda, might also transform into a crow and soar across the purple skies of the dusty Southwest. That Castaneda’s books were largely flimflam isn’t in dispute. But Ru Marshall’s hefty biography, “American Trickster,” reveals the depth of his deception — and, just as potently, how easily people can be taken in by it.

“He didn’t lie out of convenience or opportunism,” Marshall writes. “He lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.” This is a 1970s story, but anybody in the present can relate.

Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s, first at L.A. City College and later at UCLA, he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the ’60s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality — all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books. His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda’s manuscript of “The Teachings” spoke effervescently about both.

Author Ru Marshall

(Allen Frame)

It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don’t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book — and their follow-ups “A Separate Reality” and “Journey to Ixtlan” — were massive bestsellers. Castaneda made it to the cover of Time magazine. His work provided George Lucas with more than a little inspiration for his master-and-student space opera, “Star Wars.” And he became a target for parodists, the surest sign of fame. Donald Barthelme satirized him in his story “The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge.”

That the ’70s American psyche, brutalized by Watergate and Vietnam, found solace in Castaneda’s sophistry isn’t surprising. More shocking is that the academic establishment tolerated it too: UCLA awarded him a PhD in anthropology with “Ixtlan” serving as his dissertation. Castaneda, Marshall writes, made an end run around the department’s Yaqui expert, with the other committee members overly impressed by his au courant melange of fieldwork and gauzy ruminations, despite the fact that his timelines and grasp of mycology didn’t make sense. “If we stop telling ourselves that the world is so-and-so, the world will stop being so-and-so,” Don Juan mused. Perversely, Castaneda’s success proved him right.

“American Trickster,” at more than 600 pages, is at once more information about Castaneda than any reader needs, and not nearly enough. Marshall (who in 2006 published a novel, “A Separate Reality,” inspired by Castaneda), has gone to ground on every element of his subject’s life, from his upbringing in Peru to his celebrity (he’d find his way into the orbits of former Gov. Jerry Brown, Federico Fellini and Oliver Stone at various points), to the years before his death of liver cancer in 1998. By that point he’d focused his attention on Tensegrity, a modified martial arts practice demonstrated at pricey workshops, and gathered a host of followers, mostly women, who he played against each other and psychologically abused in various ways.

But who did this guy think he was? How did he come to invent such a strange spiritual system, and develop the nerve to sell it both to mainstream publishers and the academic establishment? Why did he keep a box of knives under his bed? “Carlos acted in the zone where the trickery of the cult leader and that of the literary hoaxer (and the anthropological hoaxer) overlap,” Marshall writes. But all the biographical detail brings us no closer to what made him such a successful triple threat of eyewash.

Perhaps a book that couched Castaneda’s story more deeply in the context of the ’70s counterculture and the nature of cults past and present would make his story clearer. But perhaps not — his tale is inevitably something to wonder at, evidence of humans’ capacity to spin a yarn that flatters our egos and urge to understand our spiritual selves, and to buy into what’s spun.

Maybe it’s unsurprising that one of the first people to publicly sound the alarm about Castaneda was a novelist. In 1972, Joyce Carol Oates wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review questioning a credulous review of Castaneda’s books. (The New York Times had spiked a more skeptical one, Marshall reports.) “It is quite possible that Don Juan represents a ‘non-ordinary’ reality so strange to me that I cannot accept it, and must try to reason my way out of believing,” she wrote. “But I don’t think so… I’d be very interested in whether other readers share my bewilderment.” No doubt others did. But what if bewilderment was exactly what they were seeking?

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

US prosecutors reach into Somalia for a suspect in US fraud case.

Mogadishu, Somalia – United States prosecutors have reached across the world to seize a leading suspect in a Minnesota fraud case, arresting him in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, 42, was taken into custody on Thursday, with US authorities announcing the arrest on Friday. His capture is the clearest sign yet that the pursuit of those behind the scheme has gone international.

Neither US nor Somali officials have disclosed how Eidleh was located. However, the Department of Justice said his arrest was the result of cooperation between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency.

Prosecutors describe Eidleh as the alleged second-in-command to Aimee Bock, the convicted mastermind of a scheme built around Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota nonprofit that channelled federal money meant to feed needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2022, the US charged 47 people over a roughly $250m fraud that exploited a federal child-nutrition programme, the largest pandemic-relief fraud prosecuted in the country to that point.

Eidleh fled to Somalia as the scheme unravelled. Bock was recently sentenced to more than 40 years in prison.

According to prosecutors, Eidleh recruited operators into the scheme and collected bribes and kickbacks, often disguised as consulting fees and funnelled through shell companies.

He is accused of setting up his own meal sites under the names of stand-in owners, falsely claiming they were serving thousands of children a day, and inventing supplier firms to bill the government for food never delivered.

“This is a big fish,” US Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen told CBS News, calling Eidleh a key figure who recruited businesses and paid bribes to loot public money.

Crackdown on Somali community

The Trump administration has seized on the Feeding Our Future case to target Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country, with about 84,000 people of Somali descent in the Minneapolis-St Paul area.

Most were born in the US or are naturalised citizens.

Somalia was placed among a list of countries on Trump’s travel ban when he returned to power in 2025 and he has also threatened to revoke the citizenship of naturalised Americans convicted of fraud.

Late last year, he also described Somalis as “garbage” in one of his many rhetorical attacks on both Somalia and the Somali American community.

Federal immigration enforcement agents flooded the Minneapolis area, and two people were killed by ICE agents – Renee Good in early January and the nurse Alex Pretti weeks later – igniting weeks of protest.

In January, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved to end Temporary Protected Status, a designation shielding people from deportation to dangerous homelands, for about 1,100 Somalis, ending protections that had stood since 1991.

A federal judge blocked the termination in March, and the legal fight continues.

US President Donald Trump has made his first comment on the UK’s likely next leader describing Andy Burnham as ‘extremely liberal’. He also declared that Britain is ‘dying’ and urged greater oil drilling in the North Sea. The comments came after Keir Starmer announced plans to step down, with Burnham the only candidate to succeed him.

June 24 (UPI) — A U.S. airstrike launched last week in northwest Syria killed a senior Islamic State leader, U.S. military officials announced Wednesday.

U.S. Central Command said the Friday attack killed Ali Husayn al-Ulaywi as “part of ongoing U.S. efforts to disrupt and eliminate terrorists seeking to attack Americans abroad or the U.S. homeland.”

The announcement comes a little more than a month after U.S. and Nigerian forces killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, believed at the time to be second-in-command for USUS.

U.S. forces have been battling ISIS and its predecessors for more than a decade in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria and other locations throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa. This fight was entwined with both the Iraq war and the Syrian civil war.

“CENTCOM and our partners remain committed to rooting out remaining remnants of ISIS to ensure its enduring defeat,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander.

‘Too much change, but nothing really is changing for the better.’ Londoners shared mixed reactions to Keir Starmer’s resignation, voicing frustration over living costs, political turmoil and unfulfilled promises.

Photo: Las Brisas del Cuyuní gold mining area, as posted by reporter Fritz Sánchez on June 10

Donald J. Trump turned back to breaking out big news on Truth Social about Venezuela on a Friday evening, like it’s a movie premiere. On June 12, he claimed US forces had killed Héctor Guerrero Flores, AKA El Niño Guerrero, who was the number 1 of the Venezuelan mega-gang Tren de Aragua, TDA. That same week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had promised that a great announcement about drug trafficking was on the way. Naturally, it was the boss who had to reveal the news on prime time. But people in Venezuela were already on alert after news broke, mid-week, that the Venezuelan armed forces, FANB, were attacking the mines near the village of Las Claritas.

Amid a rain of AI-generated fakes and videos coming from other contexts that flooded social media, we were able to see real videos from people on site, showing two Superpuma choppers shooting at targets on land, bringing support to special forces on the ground. The main hypothesis at that point was that they were raiding the compound of AKA Johan Petrica, a TDA co-founder. With Trump’s announcement on Friday, we learned that the trophy was Guerrero, whose whereabouts were unknown since Maduro agents raided the Tocorón prison where the TDA capo had his headquarters.

This is not about drugs, but gold

You may associate TDA with drugs and terrorism, but in this case drugs are secondary. Years ago, TDA turned into a big criminal organization in Venezuela by displacing other gangs or turning them into subsidiaries, by dealing in a wide array of crimes that went from drug trafficking to kidnapping, classic mafia extortion and non-violent scams. When they were able to expand from that Tocorón prison in Aragua state that Guerrero, then an inmate, turned into a fortress, they not only started to venture in the rest of the continent but fought to control the lucrative mining pole of Las Claritas, in the massive state of Bolívar, where international mining companies were expelled by Chavez’s expropriation.

Killing Guerrero is more relevant for the White House as a propaganda piece than as a real hit against drug trafficking in the Americas. It serves to justify the incursion in Venezuela and to give US voters another win amid the Iran fiasco and the lack of results in Cuba.

The military-managed Mining Arc was theoretically the legal frame. We are talking about one of the biggest reserves of gold on the planet. Just look at the numbers mentioned by Lorena Meléndez in this piece. By establishing a presence there, TDA got a cut from human trafficking, the black market of mining supplies and gas, and of course the production and export of minerals. As happened throughout the gang’s history, its involvement in the drug industry prospered because they had corrupt officials in their payroll. Until the regime’s priorities changed, Maduro ordered to raid Tocorón and impose a new Bukele-style prison regime where gangs don’t control jails. Guerrero went elsewhere, likely after reaching an agreement with chavismo that saw him leave his old turf unharmed. TDA continued taking part in the mines business in Bolivar, but sharing the place with other gangs.     

This is not law enforcement but business

The kinetic attack on Guerrero, that seems to have taken place at the start of last week, and the FANB raids that came after must be read as part of the Rodríguez interim government to comply with everything Team Trump is demanding from them. Yes, TDA is a criminal organization and Guerrero was guilty of many crimes, but what we must see here, rather than a legitimate Venezuelan government fighting crime, is an illegitimate regime clearing a terrain with the help of a foreign army to allow the return of foreign companies. We mustn’t compare this event with the killing of Pablo Escobar in Medellín in 1993. It’s not that the Venezuelan authorities made the commitment of restoring the rule of law. Actually, we haven’t seen any legal procedure here. There’s no transparency or accountability, we don’t know what happened to the civilian population or whether any rights were respected there. It’s the same level of State violence and lack of due process that the police and military have deployed in poor communities for years.

This is happening because, after US special forces removed Maduro and his wife on January 3, the remaining chavista officers met in Caracas with CIA Director John Ratcliffe (on January 16), US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (March 4), US Southern Command commander Francis Donovan (in February and May), and more recently the highest military officer from that country, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine (June 3). All of them had issued instructions to their Venezuelan counterparts and the top echelons of the chavista regime, including Delcy Rodríguez, related to the improvement of local conditions to allow US companies to invest in Venezuela. This is why the regime has been dismantling Chávez-era laws that discourage foreign investment in oil and mining, why Interior Secretary Burgum has praised Venezuela’s potential for the mining business, and why the armed forces seem to be clearing Las Claritas to take the area back to what is was when companies like Gold Reserve and Crystallex were operating there, instead of a gang ruling over thousands of semi-slaved informal miners.

Of course, taking over the mines from the gangs sounds like rule of law is being restored, but the fact is that it was done with the same opacity that has been the norm regarding this whole Washington-Caracas relationship that appeared when the smoke of January 3 dispersed in the air.  

This is not only business but also propaganda

This followed the same script of the kinetic attacks on boats that preceded the incursion of January 3: the social media post with the video, Trump taking the lion’s part of the story, followed by a more formal confirmation by the Rodríguez administration and the SouthCom. After months of repeating that everything’s fantastic in Venezuela and people like Burgum telling Trump that Venezuelans were about to raise statues of him in the cities, Trump needed to underline with a new spectacular event his old narrative of TDA as the spearhead of Maduro’s war against the US. In fact, most of Trump’s post of last Friday goes on trashing Joe Biden, as if Trump was still in the presidential campaign using the TDA trope to win the 2024 election.

The Trump government, which is testing the limits of US institutions, has attacked Venezuela to complete a story (the one about Maduro, TDA and Cartel de los Soles) and to open an investment horizon where business allies of the presidential family would have a head start.

Killing Guerrero is more relevant for the White House as a propaganda piece than as a real hit against drug trafficking in the Americas. It serves to justify the incursion in Venezuela and to give US voters another win amid the Iran fiasco and the lack of results in Cuba. For chavismo, instead, the killing of Guerrero has another meaning. The Maduro regime routinely denied that TDA existed; the Rodríguez regime, coherently, refused to mention TDA or even Guerrero in its Friday night statement. But for Delcy Rodríguez and her minister of Defense Gustavo González López, the operation is a message for three audiences that need some convincing about the case for leaving them in power: the Republican Party, the CEOs of foreign mining and oil companies, and the Venezuelan business community. For Delcy Rodriguez, those three audiences must see that the peace and order they need will come from her, not María Corina Machado.  

This isn’t a game of countries but of tight elites

The operation in Las Claritas is a clear example of the true nature of what’s happening between Venezuela and the US.

Everybody is saying that Venezuela is being controlled by the US. It’s more precise to say that the Rodríguez regime is being controlled by the Trump administration. What tends to be described as a relationship between two countries is in practice a relationship between two very specific models of power and networks of political and economic relationships. On one side, a dictatorship where an unelected president simply took the place of a dictator removed by force, but that continues to control the Venezuelan population under the same legal framework that suspended the people’s rights, and that shows flexibility in some matters (releasing some political prisoners, admitting back some exiled politicians) to generate favorable headlines in the global media. On the other side, a North American government that is testing the limits of US institutions and that attacked Venezuela to complete a story (the one about Maduro, TDA and Cartel de los Soles) and to open an investment horizon where business allies of the presidential family would have a head start. So far, Rodríguez and Trump need each other, and are making decisions on Venezuela that have improved the expectations on the economy, but so far have failed to improve the living conditions for most of the population.    

The Venezuelan armed forces seem compliant

In a continent so reluctant to allow US military presence, this operation shows the extent to which the Venezuelan armed forces—which according to the Trump administration has given sanctuary to terrorists and are led by a drug-trafficking military mafia designated as terrorist—are cooperating with the Southern Command (that narrative may be simplistic, we must say, but is not completely false). The same FANB that talked about the US as a mortal enemy during a quarter century failed to down a single drone in January 3, when their commander in chief was being captured in the main fort of the country, and now meets with the highest echelons of the US armed forces and cooperates with them in killing Venezuelans citizens on Venezuelan soil. We are not only seeing high-level officials like Defense Minister González López and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello meeting American generals and doing, apparently, what the Americans want, even if González and Cabello are still under US sanctions, accused of several serious crimes that do not expire. Our Political Risk Report sources say that middle-rank officers are happy to cooperate with the US military.

Why? We can speculate that men under threat like Cabello are complying to avoid the fate of Maduro, hoping that they just need to wait until Trump is out of the picture and the US looks elsewhere. But, what about the many officers and soldiers who benefit from the corrupt State that Chávez and Maduro built for them, to buy their allegiance? If foreign companies are coming to Venezuela to exploit gold under contracts with the State, what will happen with the bribes those officers were collecting by allowing the gangs to operate the mines? 

How deep, sincere and stable is the US-FANB military and intelligence cooperation that made it possible to locate and kill the leader of the Tren de Aragua?

The next target will be harder to hit

Another question is who’s next. Now that a powerful message was sent with the obliteration of Guerrero’s last hideout, we must assume that the next targets will be the other Venezuelan gangs, the colectivos that ceased to be of use for chavismo, and Colombian guerrillas (ELN and FARC dissidents, all of them designated terrorists), which also have interests in the mines in other parts of the country. If Abelardo De la Espriella wins the Colombian election, military pressure from that country should increase as well on those armed actors.

The Venezuelans gangs are vulnerable. Colombian guerrillas, on the contrary, have survived for decades and know how to mix with civilians. Not even the Plan Colombia during the Uribe administrations was enough to eradicate them. However, the Trump and Rodríguez governments don’t need to push all armed actors to extinction or to make Venezuela a country free of paramilitary and gangs. For the moment, they just need to clear exploitation sites, logistical routes, ports and main cities. All the places foreign executives and their families would need for a safe relocation in Venezuela.

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was admitted to a hospital Sunday, his spokesperson said, but there was no immediate information about why he was there or his prognosis.

McConnell, 84, was the longest-serving Senate leader in history before stepping aside from that role while finishing his final term, which ends in January.

“Senator McConnell was admitted to the hospital this morning. He is receiving excellent care,” spokesperson David Popp said in a statement without elaboration. It was not immediately clear whether McConnell was in Washington, Kentucky or elsewhere.

McConnell’s health has been a subject of scrutiny for years.

He fell and sprained his wrist while walking out of a GOP luncheon in December 2024. He was hospitalized with a concussion in March 2023 and missed several weeks of work after falling in a Washington hotel. After he returned, he twice froze up during news conferences that summer, staring vacantly ahead before colleagues and staff came to his assistance.

McConnell had polio in his early childhood, and he has long acknowledged some difficulty as an adult in walking and climbing stairs. In addition to his 2023 fall, he tripped and fell in 2019 at his home in Kentucky. He had surgery for a fractured shoulder.

McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984 and was the Republican leader from 2007 until 2025, serving as both majority and minority leader during that period.

He remains active in the Senate, showing up for work when the chamber is in session, and recently chairing public hearings and grilling officials from his perch as chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense. He has intermittently used a wheelchair to navigate the Capitol and is routinely accompanied by his security detail, as a former congressional leader.

President Donald Trump has posted a video of a ‘swift and lethal’ US strike he claims has killed the leader of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang. Trump said Venezuela helped the US with the strike on Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores.