operations

Announcing the move, staff at the outlet said ‘authoritarian regimes are already celebrating’ its potential demise.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) will shut down its news operations on Friday, citing the government-funded news outlet’s dire financial situation caused by funding cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration and the ongoing US government shutdown.

Bay Fang, RFA’s president and CEO, said in a statement that “uncertainty about our budgetary future” means that the outlet has been “forced to suspend all remaining news content production”.

“In an effort to conserve limited resources on hand and preserve the possibility of restarting operations should consistent funding become available, RFA is taking further steps to responsibly shrink its already reduced footprint,” she said on Wednesday.

Fang added that RFA would begin closing its overseas bureaus and would formally lay off and pay severance to furloughed staff. She said many staff members have been on unpaid leave since March, “when the US Agency for Global Media [USAGM] unlawfully terminated RFA’s Congressionally appropriated grant”.

On March 14, Trump signed an executive order effectively eliminating USAGM, an independent US government agency created in the mid-1990s to broadcast news and information to regions with poor press freedom records.

Alongside RFA, USAGM also hosts sister publications Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE) and Voice of America (VOA).

Following March’s executive order, RFA was forced to put three-quarters of its US-based employees on unpaid leave and terminate most of its overseas contractors.

Another round of mass layoffs followed in May, along with the termination of several RFA language services, including Tibetan, Burmese and Uighur.

Mass layoffs also took place at VOA in March when Trump signed another executive order placing nearly all 1,400 staff at the outlet – which he described as a “total left-wing disaster” – on paid leave. It has operated on a limited basis since then.

Trump has said operations like RFA, RFE/Radio Liberty and VOA are a waste of government resources and accused them of being biased against his administration.

Since its founding in 1996, RFA has reported on Asia’s most repressive regimes, providing English- and local-language online and broadcast services to citizens of authoritarian governments across the region.

Its flagship projects include its Uighur service – the world’s only independent Uyghur-language outlet, covering the repressed ethnic group in western China – as well as its North Korea service, which reports on events inside the hermit state.

An announcement penned by RFA executive editor Rosa Hwang, published on the outlet’s website on Wednesday, said, “Make no mistake, authoritarian regimes are already celebrating RFA’s potential demise.”

“Independent journalism is at the core of RFA. For the first time since RFA’s inception almost 30 years ago, that voice is at risk,” Hwang said.

“We still believe in the urgency of that mission – and in the resilience of our extraordinary journalists. Once our funding returns, so will we,” she added.

RFE/Radio Liberty, which went through its own round of furloughs earlier this year, said this week that it received its last round of federal funding in September and its news services are continuing for now.

“We plan to continue reaching our audiences for the foreseeable future,” it said.

It’s not immediately clear why RFA and RFE/Radio Liberty – which share the same governing and funding structure, but are based in the US and Europe, respectively – are taking different approaches.

Oct. 24 (UPI) — Alaska Airlines late Thursday announced it was “actively restoring operations” after issuing a ground stoppage due to an IT outage.

The airline said the temporary ground stop was caused by an IT outage affecting all operations.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” it said on X.

The FlightAware air traffic tracking website states that 54 Alaska Airlines flights were canceled as of early Friday, though it was unclear which, if any, were related to the ground stoppage.

The ground stop comes as flights in the United States have been impacted by the ongoing government shutdown that began Oct. 1, during which many air traffic controllers are ordered to work without pay. The shutdown has worsened staffing shortages, leading to an increase of canceled and delayed flights.

In July, Alaska Airlines issued a system-wide ground stoppage due to an IT issue.

WASHINGTON — President Trump confirmed Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations on the country.

The acknowledgement of covert action in Venezuela by the U.S. spy agency comes after the U.S. military in recent weeks has carried out a series of deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. U.S. forces have destroyed at least five boats since early September, killing 27 people, and four of those vessels originated from Venezuela.

Asked during an event in the Oval Office on Wednesday why he had authorized the CIA to take action in Venezuela, Trump affirmed he had made the move.

“I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

Trump added the administration “is looking at land” as it considers further strikes in the region. He declined to say whether the CIA has authority to take action against President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump made the unusual acknowledgement of a CIA operation shortly after the New York Times published that the CIA had been authorized to carry out covert action in Venezuela.

Maduro pushes back

On Wednesday, Maduro lashed out at the record of the U.S. spy agency in various conflicts around the world without directly addressing Trump’s comments about authorizing the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

“No to regime change that reminds us so much of the [overthrows] in the failed eternal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on,” Maduro said at a televised event of the National Council for Sovereignty and Peace, which is made up of representatives from various political, economic, academic and cultural sectors in Venezuela.

“No to the coups carried out by the CIA, which remind us so much of the 30,000 disappeared,” a figure estimated by human rights organizations such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo during the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). He also referred to the 1973 coup in Chile.

“How long will the CIA continue to carry on with its coups? Latin America doesn’t want them, doesn’t need them and repudiates them,” Maduro added.

The objective is “to say no to war in the Caribbean, no to war in South America, yes to peace,” he said.

Speaking in English, Maduro said: “Not war, yes peace, not war. Is that how you would say it? Who speaks English? Not war, yes peace, the people of the United States, please. Please, please, please.”

In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected “the bellicose and extravagant statements by the President of the United States, in which he publicly admits to having authorized operations to act against the peace and stability of Venezuela.”

“This unprecedented statement constitutes a very serious violation of international law and the United Nations’ Charter and obliges the community of countries to denounce these clearly immoderate and inconceivable statements,” said the statement, which Foreign Minister Yván Gil posted on his Telegram channel.

Resistance from Congress

Early this month, the Trump administration declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and pronounced the United States is now in an “armed conflict” with them, justifying the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.

The move has spurred anger in Congress from members of both major political parties that Trump was effectively committing an act of war without seeking congressional authorization.

On Wednesday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said while she supports cracking down on trafficking, the administration has gone too far.

“The Trump administration’s authorization of covert CIA action, conducting lethal strikes on boats and hinting at land operations in Venezuela slides the United States closer to outright conflict with no transparency, oversight or apparent guardrails,” New Hampshire’s Shaheen said. “The American people deserve to know if the administration is leading the U.S. into another conflict, putting servicemembers at risk or pursuing a regime-change operation.”

The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that the boats targeted by the U.S. military were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs.

Lawmakers have expressed frustration that the administration is offering little detail about how it came to decide the U.S. is in armed conflict with cartels or which criminal organizations it claims are “unlawful combatants.”

Even as the U.S. military has carried out strikes on some vessels, the U.S. Coast Guard has continued with its typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs.

Trump on Wednesday explained away the action, saying the traditional approach hasn’t worked.

“Because we’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats,” he said. ”They’re world-class speedboats, but they’re not faster than missiles.”

Human rights groups have raised concerns that the strikes flout international law and are extrajudicial killings.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that he has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

He added that his administration was also mulling land-based military operations inside Venezuela, as tensions between Washington and Caracas soar over multiple deadly US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean Sea in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, Trump held a news conference with some of his top law enforcement officials, where he faced questions about an earlier news report in The New York Times about the CIA authorisation. One reporter asked directly, “Why did you authorise the CIA to go into Venezuela?”

“I authorised for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”

“The other thing,” he continued, was Venezuela’s role in drug-trafficking. He then appeared to imply that the US would take actions on foreign soil to prevent the flow of narcotics and other drugs.

“We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” Trump said. “A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.  So you get to see that. But we’re going to stop them by land also.”

Trump’s remarks mark the latest escalation in his campaign against Venezuela, whose leader, Nicolas Maduro, has long been a target for the US president, stretching back to Trump’s first term in office.

Already, both leaders have bolstered their military forces along the Caribbean Sea in a show of potential force.

The Venezuelan government hit back at Trump’s latest comments and the authorised CIA operations, accusing the US of violating international law and the UN Charter.

“The purpose of US actions is to create legitimacy for an operation to change the regime in Venezuela, with the ultimate goal of taking control of all the country’s resources,” the Maduro government said in a statement.

Earlier, at the news conference, reporters sought to confront Trump over whether he was trying to enforce regime change in Caracas.

“Does the CIA have authority to take out Maduro?” one journalist asked at the White House on Wednesday.

“Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given,” Trump said, demurring. “Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”

He then offered an addendum: “But I think Venezuela’s feeling heat.”

Claiming wartime powers

Trump’s responses, at times meandering, touched on his oft-repeated claims about Venezuela.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has sought to assume wartime powers – using laws like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 – by alleging that Venezuela had masterminded an “invasion” of migrants and criminal groups onto US soil.

He has offered little proof for his assertions, though, and his statements have been undercut by the assessments of his own intelligence community.

In May, for example, a declassified US report revealed that intelligence officials had found no evidence directly linking Maduro to criminal groups like Tren de Aragua, as Trump has alleged.

Still, on Wednesday, Trump revisited the baseless claim that Venezuela under Maduro had sent prisoners and people with mental health conditions to destabilise the US.

“Many countries have done it, but not like Venezuela.  They were down and dirty,” Trump said.

The authorisation of CIA operations inside Venezuela is the latest indication that Trump has been signing secret proclamations to lay the groundwork for lethal action overseas, despite insisting in public that he seeks peace globally.

In August, for instance, anonymous sources told the US media that Trump had also signed an order allowing the US military to take action against drug-trafficking cartels and other Latin American criminal networks.

And in October, it emerged that Trump had sent a memo to the US Congress asserting that the country was in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels, whom he termed “unlawful combatants”.

Many such groups, including Tren de Aragua, have also been added to the US’s list of “foreign terrorist organisations”, though experts point out that the label alone does not provide a legal basis for military action.

Strikes in the Caribbean Sea

Nevertheless, the US under Trump has taken a series of escalatory military actions, including by conducting multiple missile strikes on small vessels off the Venezuelan coast.

At least five known air strikes have been conducted on boats since September 2, killing 27 people.

The most recent attack was announced on Tuesday in a social media post: A video Trump shared showed a boat floating in the water, before a missile set it alight. Six people were reportedly killed in that bombing.

Many legal experts and former military officials have said that the strikes appear to be a clear violation of international law. Drug traffickers have not traditionally met the definition of armed combatants in a war. And the US government has so far not presented any public evidence to back its claims that the boats were indeed carrying narcotics headed for America.

But Trump has justified the strikes by saying they will save American lives lost to drug addiction.

He has maintained the people on board the targeted boats were “narco-terrorists” headed to the US.

On Wednesday, he again brushed aside a question about the lack of evidence. He also defended himself against concerns that the bombings amount to extrajudicial killings.

“When they’re loaded up with drugs, they’re fair game,” Trump told reporters, adding there was “fentanyl dust all over the boat after those bombs go off”.

He added, “We know we have much information about each boat that goes. Deep, strong information.”

Framing the bombing campaign in the Caribbean as a success, Trump then explained his administration might start to pivot its strategy.

“ We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now, we’ll stop it by land,” he said of the alleged drug trafficking. He joked that even fishermen had decided to stay off the waters.

“ We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control.”

Oct. 12 (UPI) — Search-and-rescue operations were underway Sunday night in Alaska as several people remain unaccounted for while typhoon remnants continue to batter the Last Frontier state.

Alaska State Troopers said in a statement that at least three people were unaccounted for in Kwigillingok, along the west coast of the state. There were also reports of people unaccounted for in nearby Kipnuk, where homes were pushed from their foundations by heaving winds and flooding.

The operation rescued 18 people in Kwigillingok and at least 16 from Kipnuk, the state police force said, adding that both communities were hit with strong winds and heavy flooding Saturday night.

“This is an active and ongoing search-and-rescue mission,” it said adding that the Alaska Air National Guard, Alaska Army National Guard and the U.S. Coast Guard were aiding in the effort.

Western Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and Nunivak Island were hit hard by remnants of Typhoon Halong over the weekend, with the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management stating they experienced hurricane-force winds, some areas in gusts in excess of 100 mph. “Significant” storm surges leading to widespread flooding were also recorded, it said.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration on Thursday as the state was already being negatively impacted by the storm. On Sunday, he expanded that order, making available state public and other assistance programs to those affected in the named in the region.

He said Kipnuk and Kwigillingok had been “hard hit” and that rescue aircraft were on their way.

“Every effort will be made to help those hit by this storm,” he said in a Sunday evening release.

In Kipnuk, where water levels reached 6.6 feet above high tide overnight, 172 people had sought shelter, according to the state.

In Kwigillingok, water levels reached a height of 6.3 feet above high tide and more than 100 people required shelter. At least four homes were “inundated,” it said.

The National Weather Service said Sunday afternoon that the storm was continuing to move across Alaska’s west coast, with high wind warnings to remain in effect through Monday Morning for Norton Sound and Kotzebue Sound and through Tuesday morning for the northwest Alaska coast.

For some areas, coastal flooding warnings will remain in effect through Tuesday morning.