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Nov. 6 (UPI) — The Trump administration has moved to end deportation protections for those from South Sudan as the United Nations warns the country is on the brink of war.

Amid President Donald Trump‘s crackdown on immigration, the Department of Homeland Security has targeted countries that have been given Temporary Protected Status, which is granted to countries facing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disasters or other extraordinary conditions.

TPS enables eligible nationals from the designated countries to live and work in the United States legally, without fear of deportation.

DHS announced it was ending TPS for South Sudan on Wednesday with the filing of a Federal Register notice.

The termination will be in effect Jan. 5.

“After conferring with interagency partners, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem determined that conditions in South Sudan no longer meet the TPS statutory requirements,” DHS said in a statement, which explained the decision was based on a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services review of the conditions in South Sudan and in consultation with the Department of State.

South Sudan was first designated for TPS in November 2011 amid violent post-independence instability in the country, and the designation has been repeatedly renewed since.

The Trump administration has sought to end TPS designations for a total seven countries: Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal, Venezuela and now South Sudan. Court challenges have followed, with decisions staying, at least for now, the terminations for all of the countries except for Afghanistan and Cameroon, which ended July 12 and Aug. 4, respectively.

The move to terminate TPS for South Sudan is also expected to be challenged in court.

The announcement comes a little more than a week after the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned the General Assembly that the African nation is experiencing escalating armed conflict and political crisis, and that international intervention is needed to halt mounting human rights violations.

A civil war erupted in South Sudan in December 2013, just two years after the country gained independence — a conflict that came to an end with a cease-fire in 2018.

Barney Afako, a member of the human rights commission in South Sudan, said Oct. 29 that the political transition spearheaded by the cease-fire agreement was “falling apart.”

“The cease-fire is not holding, political detentions have become a tool of repression, the peace agreement’s key provisions are being systematically violated and the government forces are using aerial bombardments in civilian areas,” he said.

“All indicators point to a slide back toward another deadly war.”

The DHS is urging South Sudanese in the United States under TPS to voluntarily leave the country using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection smartphone application. If they do, they can secure a complimentary plane ticket, a $1,000 “exit bonus” and potential future opportunities for legal immigration.

Until recently, no one would have mistaken Arianna Barrios for a wokosa.

The Orange city council member comes from O.C. Republican royalty. Her grandfather, Cruz, was a Mexican immigrant and civil rights pioneer who registered with the GOP in the late 1940s after Democratic leaders wouldn’t help him and other activists fight school segregation against Mexican American students in Orange County. Her second cousin, Steve Ambriz, was a rising GOP star serving on the Orange City Council when he was killed by wrong-way driver in 2006.

The 55-year-old has helped Republicans on policy and handled communications for the Orange County Taxpayers Assn. and the Richard Nixon Foundation. Friendly, smart, quick-witted and a total goodie-goodie, she corrected me last fall when I introduced her to my Chapman University history students as a Republican. To my surprise, the Orange native proclaimed that she has never been a Republican — she started out as a Democrat and is now an independent.

And that’s not the first surprise she’s sprung on me. Her recent rise as one of O.C.’s most vocal politicians opposing President Trump’s deportation machine has been unexpected — and welcome.

She called out her council colleagues in July for not approving a resolution that would have required federal immigration agents to remove their masks and wear IDs within city limits. She connects young activists to legal and financial resources and has participated in neighborhood patrols alerting people that la migra is coming. She has accompanied Orange residents to hearings at Adelanto’s immigration court and hosted a two-part video series for the civic affairs group Orange County Forum on how the U.S. got to this moment in immigration.

Why, Barrios has become so radicalized that she used the hash tag #brownwar throughout the summer and into the fall when posting immigration-related stories on Facebook. That stopped after her husband, an anti-Trump Republican, suggested it was a bit much.

You would expect this of a politician from an O.C. city with a progressive streak, like Santa Ana, Anaheim or even Laguna Woods. But not from Orange, whose city fathers have long cast it as a slice of small-town Americana free from big-city problems or national issues.

And definitely not from Barrios, whose demeanor is usually more baseball mom than strident activist.

“I’ve been asked multiple times, ‘What’s up with Arianna? This is not her,’” said Orange Councilmember Ana Gutierrez, who has seen ICE agents invade her street twice. “Well, when she cares about something, she’s loud.”

Working with Barrios on pro-immigrant actions is “like talking to a young person,” said 20-year-old Chapman student Bianey Chavez, who belongs to a local youth activist group. The two connected at a protest in their hometown’s picturesque Orange Circle. “It’s fresh air for someone of her age and power to be so open-minded and helpful.”

Anaheim Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava, who has known Barrios for over a decade, said she had “never heard Arianna speak on any issue like this in the past. But it’s great. Maybe she just felt empowered at this point. Maybe anger just boiled up in her, and she couldn’t be quiet anymore.”

That’s exactly what happened, Barrios told me over breakfast at a Mexican café in Old Towne.

The immigration raids that have rocked Orange County as hard as L.A. “just hit all of those buttons,” she said. Wearing a blouse decorated with orange poppies, the bespectacled Barrios looked every bit the polite pol that O.C. leaders had taken her to be. “Not only is it just patently unfair, it’s just so wrong. And it’s so inhumane.

“And one of the things that I can’t stand — and one of things I taught my kids — is if you see a kid being bullied, my expectation of you is that you go up to that kid and you go protect them.”

Councilmember Ariana Barrios holds up a vest and hat she bought from Amazon while arguing about the dangers of ICE imposters.

She credits what her father jokes is “an overactive sense of justice” to her grandparents, who ran a corner store in Santa Ana in the 1940s. Barrios Market became a meeting place for the families who helped organize the 1946 lawsuit that ended Mexican-only schools in California.

Their granddaughter didn’t know any of that history until her 20s, because her upbringing in 1980s Orange County was “like a John Hughes movie.”

“We didn’t even really think of ourselves really as, like, Hispanic — I mean, we all were, but it wasn’t the end-all be-all,” Barrios said. “We were all trying to be Valley girls.”

Living in Nacogdoches, Texas, for a few years in the 1990s “woke her up” to anti-Latino racism. But after returning home to find county and state officials passing anti-immigrant laws, she didn’t join the resistance, as many Latinos of that era did. Instead, Barrios focused on starting on her career in communications and later raising two sons.

“I remember even having my own stereotypical thoughts about [illegal immigration], not really understanding what the experience was, how people got here,” she said.

Things began to change as Barrios worked for school districts “making sure that kids had access. I didn’t care about their status.” It became personal once she was appointed to the Rancho Santiago Community College District Board of Trustees in 2011 and met refugees as well as recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which grants a reprieve from deportation to some immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. She hired some at her PR firm.

The council member brought up the 1986 immigration amnesty that Ronald Reagan signed and an unsuccessful 2001 bill co-sponsored by the late U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that would have created a pathway to citizenship for people who came to this country without papers as minors.

“That’s what’s so odd about where we are right now,” Barrios said. “The two biggest programs, to get people to protected status and to legal resident status, came out from under Republicans.”

After winning another four-year term in 2024, Barrios figured she’d spend her time trying to fix Orange’s fiscal crisis, especially because she thought “so much of what [Trump] was promising on immigration was rhetoric.”

An onslaught of federal immigration raids in the L.A. area starting in June made her realize things would be different. What finally sparked her furor was when federal agents handcuffed U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla after he crashed a June news conference featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“All of this garbage about [Noem claiming], ‘I didn’t know who he was and he didn’t identify himself’ was bulls—,” she said. “It was just bulls—. But if you’re willing to do that, you’re willing to do anything. There are no limits.”

She admits to sometimes “los[ing] my cool” while speaking out against Trump and his deportation deluge, arguing it’s necessary to spark change in a place like Orange, which has a long history of anti-Latino sentiment. Within walking distance from her home is a former movie theater where Latinos were forced to sit in the balcony into the 1950s. In 2010, the City Council tried to ban day laborers and voted to support an Arizona law that made it legal for local law enforcement to question people about their immigration status.

It’s history Barrios knows and cites now but that barely registered with her back then.

“If people want to be nasty to me, I can’t stop them,” she said. “But I can try and explain where I’m coming from so that, as I told my sister once, it’s not for the person I’m talking to, it’s [for] everybody who’s watching the fight.”

Her husband — who joined her at a No Kings rally during the summer and will join her this weekend at one she helped organized — feels “nervous” about her newfound advocacy, she said.

But her late grandfather and her father, a Democrat who was the first Latino elected to the Orange Unified school board, wouldn’t have hesitated to protest against Trump’s cruelty, she said. “They wouldn’t even think twice about it.”

Barrios asked for a to-go box for her chorizo and eggs, which she barely touched during our hourlong chat. Then she reached into a cream-colored Kate Spade purse to pull out red cards.

“Know Your Rights,” they read, delineating what people can and can’t do if la migra asks them questions.

“I carry these all the time,” she said, leaving some on the table. “I see people and go, ‘Here you go. Just take some, OK?’”

A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday to decide whether maneuvers used by the Trump administration to install Bill Essayli as acting United States attorney in Los Angeles are improper — and, if so, what should be done about it.

During a Tuesday hearing in downtown L.A., Senior Judge J. Michael Seabright — who flew in from Hawaii for the proceeding — wondered how to proceed after defense attorneys sought to dismiss indictments against three clients and to disqualify Essayli “from participating in criminal prosecutions in this district.”

Essayli, a former Riverside County assemblyman, was appointed as the region’s interim top federal prosecutor by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April.

His term was set to expire in late July unless he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate or a panel of federal judges. But the White House never moved to nominate him to a permanent role, instead opting to use an unprecedented legal maneuver to shift his title to “acting,” extending his term for an additional nine months without any confirmation process.

Seabright was selected from the District of Hawaii after L.A.’s federal judges recused themselves from the proceedings. He questioned the consequences of dismissing any charges over Essayli’s title.

“If I did this for your client, I’ll have to do it for every single defendant who was indicted when Mr. Essayli was acting under the rubric of acting U.S. attorney, correct?” Seabright said to a deputy federal public defender.

“I don’t think you will,” replied James A. Flynn. “This is a time-specific, case-specific analysis and the court doesn’t need to go so far as to decide that a dismissal would be appropriate in all cases.”

“Why not? You’re asking for a really draconian remedy here,” Seabright said, before questioning how many indictments had been made since Essayli was designated acting U.S. attorney at the end of July.

“203, your honor,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins responded.

In a court filing ahead of the hearing Tuesday, lawyers bringing the challenge against Essayli called the government’s defense of his status a handbook for circumventing the protections that the Constitution and Congress built against the limitless, unaccountable handpicking of temporary officials.”

During the nearly two-hour hearing, Flynn cited similar legal challenges that have played out elsewhere. A federal judge ruled in August that Alina Habba has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month, a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she “is not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.”

The judges who ruled on the Nevada and New Jersey cases did not dismiss the charges against defendants, instead ordering that those cases not be supervised by Habba or Chattah.

Flynn argued that the remedies in other states “have not been effective to deter the conduct.”

“This court has the benefit of additional weeks and has seen the government’s response to that determination that their appointments were illegal and I submit the government hasn’t gotten the message,” Flynn said.

Flynn said another option could be a dismissal without prejudice, which means the government could bring the case against their clients again. He called it a “weaker medicine” than dismissal with prejudice, “but would be a stronger one than offered in New Jersey and Nevada.”

The hearing grew testy at times, with Seabright demanding that Assistant U.S. Atty. Robbins tell him when Essayli’s term will end. Robbins told the judge the government believes it will end on Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.

Robbins noted that Essayli has also been designated as first assistant U.S. attorney, essentially allowing him to remain in charge of the office if he loses the “acting” title.

Bondi in July also appointed him as a “special attorney.” Robbins told the judge that “there’s no developed challenge to Mr. Essayli’s appointment as a special attorney or his designation as a first assistant.”

“The defense challenge here, the stated interest that they have, is Bill Essayli cannot be acting,” Robbins said. “But they don’t have a compelling or strong response to Bill Essayli is legitimately in the office and he can be the first assistant … he can supervise other people in the office.”

Seabright asked both sides to brief him by Thursday on “whatever hats you believe [Essayli’s] wearing now” and “whether I were to say he wasn’t legitimately made acting U.S. attorney … what hats does he continue to wear.”

“If I understand the government’s proposed remedy correctly … it would essentially be no remedy at all, because they would be re-creating Mr. Essayli as the acting United States attorney, he’d just be wearing a first assistant hat,” Flynn said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said “the president won the election.”

“The American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney’s office and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,” he said during a news conference.

Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued Trump’s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president’s language verbatim at news conferences. His tenure has sparked discord in the office, with dozens of prosecutors quitting.

With the Trump administration’s counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean expanding to become a “non-international armed conflict,” the prospects of some kind of confrontation between the U.S. military and Venezuela are rising, too. On top of the counter-narcotics effort, some officials in the Trump administration are pushing to oust Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro.

With the possibility of direct actions inland on cartels — now designated as unlawful combatants — becoming a real possibility, it’s worth taking a look at the air defense assets available to Venezuela, which comprise a somewhat unusual mix of older, lower-end equipment and smaller numbers of very capable systems, mainly Russian-supplied.

Yesterday, we reported on the first official imagery of the 10 U.S. Marine Corps F-35Bs forward-deployed to the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico. These jets are now undertaking patrols in the region, with open-source flight trackers pointing to sorties off the coast of Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, has claimed that the country’s armed forces had tracked F-35s flying off the coast in the Maiquetía Flight Information Region (FIR). Today, we have also begun to see imagery indicating that Venezuelan mobile surface-to-air missile systems are being redeployed, perhaps in response to U.S. military activities.

A Venezuelan S-125 Pechora-2M moving west through Peaje La Cabrera from Maracay toward Carabobo, suggesting redeployment to a location closer to the Caribbean coast:

Meanwhile, it’s not only F-35s that are active in the region. A growing mix of U.S. forces is now active in the counter-narcotics operation, with Marine Corps AV-8B attack jets also in theater as part of the Air Combat Element (ACE) deployed to the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima, and other assets that could be quickly deployed.

MQ-9 Reapers have also previously been used in maritime drug interdiction operations here. Of the U.S. military’s four deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, the latest of which was today, at least two targeted vessels that originated from Venezuela. MQ-9s would be the most likely choice for operations in lightly contested and non-contested airspace, as we have discussed in the past.

Were the United States to decide to strike the cartels directly at their inland bases in Venezuela, or even expanded operations against the Maduro regime directly, the F-35 may well be the weapon of choice. These jets have the ability to penetrate into enemy airspace, even when relatively heavily defended, and strike fixed and moving targets.

At the same time, as we originally highlighted, the F-35s can also use their powerful sensor suite for surveillance and reconnaissance, meaning they can also operate as critical assets in a non-kinetic capacity.

Nevertheless, comments from Venezuelan officials suggest that they, too, are planning for a possible U.S. attack on the country, with Maduro saying that he is gearing up to call a state of emergency should that happen.

At the sharp end of the Venezuelan military’s capabilities to disrupt or degrade any U.S. air operations directed against the country are its air defense systems. These include ground-based systems that are operated by the Venezuelan Army (Ejército Bolivariano, EB, or Bolivarian Army of Venezuela), as well as fighter jets flown by the Venezuelan Air Force (Aviación Militar Bolivariana Venezolana, AMBV, or Bolivarian Venezuelan Military Aviation). Certain air-defense-capable warships also serve with the Venezuelan Navy (Armada Bolivariana de Venezuela, or Bolivarian Navy of Venezuela).

Venezuelan Air Force

In terms of the AMBV, the mainstay of its fighter force is provided by 21 Su-30MK2V Flanker fighters, 24 of which were delivered between 2006 and 2008. These can be armed with beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles, but they are multirole types, also able to carry a variety of precision-guided air-to-ground ordnance, including Kh-31A (AS-17 Krypton) supersonic anti-ship missiles.

Air-to-air armament for the Su-30s includes the R-77 beyond-visual-range missile known to NATO as the AA-12 Adder. With a reported maximum range of 50 miles, the R-77 is typically launched under inertial guidance, with midcourse updates provided by datalink, before using its active radar seeker for the terminal phase. Reportedly, the R-77 can switch to a home-on-jam mode if it encounters heavy electronic countermeasures, engaging the source of the jamming.

The Flankers can also carry the older R-27 (AA-10 Alamo) series beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles. Basic versions are the semi-active radar-homing R-27R and the infrared-guided R-27T, as well as the longer-range radar-guided R-27ER and the infrared-guided R-27ET. The extended-range versions add a more powerful dual-pulse engine section to the same missile.

The maximum range of the R-27R is reportedly 37 miles, and 31 miles for the R-27T. The extended-range versions are able to hit targets at a maximum range of 59 miles (R-27ER) or 56 miles (R-27ET).

Close-range missile armament for the Su-30 is provided by the R-73, known in the West as the AA-11 Archer. It has an all-aspect infrared seeker, high off-boresight capability, thrust-vectoring controls, and can be cued by the pilot’s helmet-mounted sight. It has a maximum range of around 18.6 miles against a head-on target, or 8.7 miles in a tail-on engagement.

Nowadays far less important within the AMBV inventory is the F-16A/B, once the pride of the air force.

Perhaps only three of these fighters are still operational, although a pair was involved in a ‘show of force’ near the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Jason Dunham last month.

The F-16s have no beyond-visual-range weapons, relying on the Israeli-made Python 4 infrared-guided air-to-air missile, supplementing the AIM-9L/P-4 Sidewinder, 150 of which were supplied when the F-16s were first ordered. At this stage, the Venezuelan F-16s remain as a mainly token capability, which you can read about in detail here.

Venezuelan Army

Turning to the Army, its most powerful air defense system is the S-300VM, an unspecified number of which were acquired from Russia by Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez. The purchase was reportedly part of a deal for a loan of $2 billion provided by Moscow. The EB’s S-300VM made its first public appearance in Venezuela during a military parade in Caracas in 2013.

The S-300VM (SA-23 Gladiator/Giant), sometimes marketed as the Antey-2500, is a modernized version of the Cold War-era S-300V1 (SA-12, also Gladiator/Giant), originally designed for the Soviet ground forces. This is a long-range surface-to-air/anti-ballistic missile system carried on tracked transport-erector-launcher (TEL) vehicles, for improved cross-country mobility, something that could be a big problem for the U.S. military, as we will come to later.

In the S-300VM, the two primary types of missiles offered in the S-300V1 — the 9M83 (SA-12A Gladiator) with a maximum engagement range of around 47 miles and the 9M82 (SA-12B Giant) that can engage targets out to 62 miles — are replaced with new 9M83M and 9M82M missiles. These are claimed to be able to hit targets out to a range of 81 miles and 124 miles, respectively.

Launcher units can either be loaded with four 9M83M missiles or two 9M82Ms.

The S-300VM can engage ballistic missiles, as well as aircraft and cruise missiles. While its anti-ballistic-missile capability is relatively limited, the Antey-2500 marketing name highlights its claimed ability to engage 2,500-kilometer (1,553-mile) range intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), with re-entry velocities around 4.5 kilometers/second (2.8 miles/second).

Venezuela reportedly fields a single battalion equipped with two S-300VM units, with their main operating base at Capitán Manuel Ríos Air Base in Guárico state.

Making a stark contrast with the S-300VM is Venezuela’s S-125 Pechora (SA-3 Goa) medium-altitude surface-to-air system, the first version of which entered Soviet service in the early 1960s. However, the EB’s S-125s have been modernized to Pechora-2M standard, with different reports stating that 24 or 44 systems have been fielded.

In the Pechora-2M, which is a joint Russian/Belarusian upgrade, the missiles are moved from the previous static launchers to a wheeled TEL. Meanwhile, the modernized 5V27D and 5V27DE missiles feature new fuses and warheads, and enhanced electronics. The Low Blow engagement radar is also mounted on the same 6×6 MZKT-8022 truck as the missile launchers.

Unlike the S-125, the more modern Buk-M2 (SA-17 Grizzly) medium-range surface-to-air system was designed to be fully mobile from the outset. It is a further development of the 9K37 (SA-11 Gadfly) developed toward the end of the Soviet era. However, while Soviet and Russian versions of the Buk series are based on a tracked TEL vehicle carrying four ready-to-fire missiles, as well as the fire control radar, the variant supplied to Venezuela is on a 6×6 wheeled chassis.

With its combination of high mobility and independence of operation, as well as its reported ability to hit targets operating as high as 80,000 feet, the Buk-M2 is one of the most capable and versatile ground-based air defense systems available to the EB. In Russian hands, the Buk-M2 has proven to be a fearsome adversary for the Ukrainian Air Force.

Speaking to TWZ, the late Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 pilot known as “Juice,” Andrii Pilshchykov, singled out the Buk-M2 and the latest Buk-M3 version among the most concerning threats.

Venezuela is understood to have received 12 Buk-M2 systems, which are also shared with the Navy, for the defense of naval installations and in amphibious operations by the Venezuelan Marine Corps.

All these Russian surface-to-air missile systems are road-mobile, with varying degrees of high-mobility capability. This makes them especially threatening to even advanced combat aircraft, including the F-35, as they can pop up without warning and in close proximity. They are also much harder to find and fix, with this unpredictability making them a significant threat.

Lastly, the EB has received around 300 ZU-23-2 towed twin-barreled 23mm anti-aircraft guns. A first unit was reportedly equipped with these autocannons in 2011, somewhat surprising given that this is a relatively antiquated system. With a maximum engagement altitude of around 6,500 feet, the ZU-23-2 is most relevant for engaging helicopters, low-flying drones, and cruise missiles. At the same time, it can be very effective when used against ground targets.

First fielded in the 1950s, the versions of the ZU-23-2 used by the EB are more advanced than their predecessors, with a computerized fire-control system and an electro-optical sighting system.

Finally, the EB also issues man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), including the Russian-made Igla-S (SA-24 Grinch) and the Swedish RBS 70.

The Igla-S is among the latest versions of the Igla family and among the most advanced such weapons available on the market today. Compared to older variants, the Igla-S has a longer range and a significantly larger warhead. Its maximum range of 20,000 feet is more than 5,000 feet greater than that of the U.S.-made FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS.

In 2017, Reuters reported that it had obtained a Venezuelan military record that showed the country had a total inventory of approximately 5,000 Igla-S missiles. These would pose a significant threat to any low-flying aircraft or cruise missiles.

The EB also has a smaller number of RBS 70s. This laser-beam-riding MANPADS was attributed with the destruction of an OV-10 Bronco close-support aircraft during the military coup launched against President Carlos Andres Perez in November 1992.

It should be noted that, despite the influx of new Russian-made equipment, the EB has also lost some of its previous capabilities in recent years, primarily due to the effect of sanctions and ostracization from much of the international community.

In this way, the EB has been forced to decommission its three Israeli-supplied Barak-1 ADAMS short-range air defense systems (SHORADS), which were decommissioned relatively soon after they were acquired, after appearing only once in a public parade in 2006. These towed systems were primarily acquired for point-defense of airbases, a requirement highlighted during the 1992 coup attempt. Reportedly, the ZU-23-2 is now the primary weapon for defending Venezuelan airbases against low-level attack.

Venezuelan Navy

Something of a wildcard is the air defense capability of the Venezuelan Navy.

As well as Igla-S and RBS 70 MANPADS, as well as Buk-M2 systems shared with the Army, the Venezuelan Navy has a single operational Mariscal Sucre class frigate, the Almirante Brión. The Italian-made warship was supplied armed with a Mk 29 octuple launcher for Sea Sparrow/Aspide air defense missiles, providing a point-defense capability. The operational status of this system should be considered questionable.

Conclusion

Overall, Venezuela has an unusually varied collection of air defense assets, including smaller numbers of more capable systems. However, even most of the older surface-to-air missile systems have been upgraded and, as stated earlier, are generally highly mobile, meaning they can appear virtually anywhere, disrupting carefully laid mission plans. They could still pose a threat that would have to be taken seriously during any kind of offensive U.S. air operation directed against Venezuela.

As we have discussed in the past, after the Houthis got worryingly close to downing a U.S. F-35, and reportedly several F-16s, even largely rudimentary air defense capabilities can pose a very real challenge for American combat aircraft. It should be noted that the same Houthi militants, often using improvised systems, claim to have damaged or destroyed Tornado, F-15, and F-16 combat jets, as well as drones, belonging to Saudi Arabian-led forces during fighting in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

At the very least, it might be expected that the Venezuelan air defense picture would prompt the U.S. military to rely heavily on stealthy aircraft like the F-35, especially for any direct strikes on targets in defended areas of the country, as well as costly standoff munitions. Such a campaign would also require the support of defense-suppression assets and other support aircraft with their associated capabilities. Using any crewed aircraft complicates operations dramatically, with a combat search and rescue (CSAR) package needing to be ready at a moment’s notice.

For now, it remains unclear whether U.S. military activities directed against suspected drug-smugglers and/or the Maduro regime will be escalated. However, as U.S. assets continue to arrive in the Caribbean, that scenario seems to be becoming more likely.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Oct. 3 (UPI) — The Trump administration can resume its deportation of Venezuelans after the Supreme Court again overturned a lower court’s block on ending the temporary protected status.

The Department of Homeland Security in August ended the TPS protection for about 300,000 “migrants” from Venezuela, which U.S. District Court for Northern California Judge Edward Chen blocked on Sept. 5.

Chen’s ruling is the second in which he blocked the Trump administration’s effort to end protected status for Venezuelans, which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld in August, The Hill reported.

The Supreme Court overturned Chen’s first ruling when the Trump administration sought an emergency hearing in May, according to The New York Times.

Chen, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, afterward said the Supreme Court ruling lacked detail and again blocked the Trump administration from ending the TPS protection.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the matter again and repeated its earlier ruling.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not,” the unsigned Supreme Court order says.

“The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here.”

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the emergency relief request by the Trump administration.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called the court’s ruling “another grave misuse of our emergency docket” in her dissenting opinion.

“We once again use our equitable power to allow this administration to disrupt as many lives as possible as quickly as possible,” Jackson said.

She accused the Supreme Court’s majority of GOP-appointed justices of “privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our government has promised them.”

Shortly before leaving office, former President Joe Biden on Jan. 17 extended the temporary protected status for Venezuelans for another two years.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the protected status within days of the Senate confirming her nomination on Jan. 25.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled for a second time that the Trump administration may cancel the “temporary protected status” given to about 600,000 Venezuelans under the Biden administration.

The move, advocates for the Venezuelans said, means thousands of lawfully present individuals could lose their jobs, be detained in immigration facilities and deported to a country that the U.S. government considers unsafe to visit.

The high court granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside decisions of U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not. The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court said in an unsigned order Friday.

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the appeal.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she wrote. “Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Last month, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had overstepped her legal authority by canceling the legal protection.

Her decision “threw the future of these Venezuelan citizens into disarray and exposed them to substantial risk of wrongful removal, separation from their families and loss of employment,” the panel wrote.

But Trump’s lawyers said the law bars judges from reviewing these decisions by U.S. immigration officials.

Homeland Security applauded the Supreme Court’s action. “Temporary Protected Status was always supposed to be just that: Temporary,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Yet, previous administrations abused, exploited, and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program.”

Congress authorized this protected status for people who are already in the United States but cannot return home because their native countries are not safe.

The Biden administration offered the protections to Venezuelans because of the political and economic collapse brought about by the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary under Biden, granted the protected status to groups of Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, totaling about 607,000 people.

Mayorkas extended it again in January, three days before Trump was sworn in. That same month, Noem decided to reverse the extension, which was set to expire for both groups of Venezuelans in October 2026.

Shortly afterward, Noem announced the termination of protections for the 2023 group by April.

In March, Chen issued an order temporarily pausing Noem’s repeal, which the Supreme Court set aside in May with only Jackson in dissent.

The San Francisco judge then held a hearing on the issue and concluded Noem’s repeal violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was arbitrary and and not justified.

He said his earlier order imposing a temporary pause did not prevent him from ruling on the legality of the repeal, and the 9th Circuit agreed.

The approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who had TPS through the 2023 designation saw their legal status restored. Many reapplied for work authorization, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, and a counsel for the plaintiffs.

In the meantime, Noem announced the cancellation of the 2021 designation, effective Nov. 7.

Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, went back to the Supreme Court in September and urged the justices to set aside the second order from Chen.

“This case is familiar to the Court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this Court’s orders on the emergency docket,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision once again reverses the legal status of the 2023 group and cements the end of legal protections for the 2021 group next month.

In a further complication, the Supreme Court’s previous decision said that anyone who had already received documents verifying their TPS status or employment authorization through next year is entitled to keep it.

That, Arulanantham said, “creates another totally bizarre situation, where there are some people who will have TPS through October 2026 as they’re supposed to because the Supreme Court says if you already got a document it can’t be canceled. Which to me just underscores how arbitrary and irrational the whole situation is.”

Advocates for the Venezuelans said the Trump administration has failed to show that their presence in the U.S. is an emergency requiring immediate court relief.

In a brief filed Monday, attorneys for the National TPS Alliance argued the Supreme Court should deny the Trump administration’s request because Homeland Security officials acted outside the scope of their authority by revoking the TPS protections early.

“Stripping the lawful immigration status of 600,000 people on 60 days’ notice is unprecedented,” Jessica Bansal, an attorney representing the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, wrote in a statement. “Doing it after promising an additional 18 months protection is illegal.”

Trump administration says Syrian nationals in the US must leave the country within 60 days or face arrest and deportation.

The United States has ended the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Syria, warning Syrian migrants they now face arrest and deportation if they do not leave the country within 60 days.

The action on Friday came as part of US President Donald Trump’s broad effort to strip legal status from migrants.

It will terminate TPS for more than 6,000 Syrians who have had access to the legal status since 2012, according to a Federal Register notice posted Friday.

“Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

“Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country.”

The statement said Syrian nationals currently living in the US have 60 days to voluntarily depart the country and return home.

“After the 60 days have expired, any Syrian national admitted under TPS who have not begun their voluntary removal proceedings will be subject to arrest and deportation,” it said.

Trump, a Republican, has sought to end temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants in the US, including some who have lived and worked in the country legally for decades.

The administration has said deportation protections were overused in the past and that many migrants no longer merit protections.

Democrats and advocates for the migrants have said that TPS enrollees could be forced to return to dangerous conditions and that US employers depend on their labour.

Trump has previously ended the status for Venezuelans, Hondurans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Ukrainians and thousands of others.

Sept. 17 (UPI) — The New7Wonders Foundation warned that Machu Picchu, South America’s most iconic tourist site, could be removed from the list of the New Seven Wonders of the World because of alleged poor management and a lack of sustainable planning.

At the same time, local protests blocked rail access to the 15th-century Inca sanctuary in the Andes Mountains, forcing the Peruvian government to evacuate more than 1,400 tourists.

In a statement, New7Wonders director Jean-Paul de la Fuente said unplanned tourist overcrowding, high costs, irregular ticket sales and social conflicts have worsened the visitor experience and damaged Peru’s image.

“The justifiable and credible permanence of Machu Picchu as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World depends on urgent action by the Peruvian state,” he said.

Although it carries significant media and tourism weight, the New7Wonders list has no official status or institutional recognition from international organizations, unlike UNESCO’s World Heritage designation.

Peru’s Ministry of Culture responded, insisting that conservation of the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu “is not being threatened” and stressed that UNESCO has not placed it on its “World Heritage in Danger” list.

In July, during the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris, officials recognized progress in visitor management and the use of monitoring and conservation tools.

The sanctuary, a World Heritage Site since 1983, receives about 4,500 visitors a day and is Peru’s most visited archaeological site.

Still, the Peruvian Institute of Economics reported that between 2020 and 2024, Machu Picchu received about 5 million fewer visitors than expected based on pre-pandemic trends, equal to 25% fewer tourists than expected.

In 2024, Cusco, which is about 50 miles from Machu Picchu recorded 3.4 million visitors, still below pre-pandemic levels. Machu Picchu saw 76,000 fewer tourists last year than in 2019.

The Institute of Economics said the decline is partly due to a lack of sustained investment in infrastructure, connectivity and tourism promotion, which has hurt job creation in the Cusco region. Between 2019 and 2024, the region lost one-third of the jobs generated directly and indirectly by tourism, equal to about 33,000 positions.

Meanwhile, the social crisis in Cusco highlighted those tensions. On Monday, protesters blocked the railway line to Machu Picchu, shutting down the main access to the archaeological site. Rail operators suspended service for safety, leaving thousands of travelers, most of them foreigners, stranded at Peru’s sacred mountain.

Foreign Trade and Tourism Minister Desilú León said police cleared the tracks around midnight, allowing about 1,400 tourists to be evacuated, though another 900 remained stranded after new attacks on the line.

“We coordinated the transfer of passengers who were on the site,” she said.

The protest was organized by a local group demanding the replacement of the company that has managed the bus service to the site for three decades.

Cusco’s Office of Foreign Trade and Tourism said the unrest has caused cancellation of about 15% of tour packages, which could mean losses of nearly $80 million by the end of the year.

SEOUL, Sept. 15 (UPI) — North Korea said Monday that its status as a nuclear weapons state is “permanently specified” by law and “irreversible” in a statement condemning the United States’ latest call for denuclearization.

The statement came in response to remarks by interim Charge d’Affaires Howard Solomon of the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna at a meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency last week.

On Tuesday, Solomon expressed concern over the North’s “destabilizing weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.”

“We remain committed to the complete denuclearization of North Korea,” Solomon said.

The North’s permanent mission to the U.N. office in Vienna called the remarks a “grave provocation.”

“We strongly denounce and reject the U.S. provocative act of revealing once again its invariable hostile intention against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea … and express serious concern over the negative consequences to be entailed by it,” the mission said in a statement carried by state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

“The position of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as a nuclear weapons state which has been permanently specified in the supreme and basic law of the state has become irreversible,” the mission said.

The mission also claimed that the IAEA has “no legal right and moral justification” to interfere in the North’s internal affairs, pointing out that Pyongyang has not had official relations with the nuclear watchdog for over 30 years.

North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1994 after a standoff with the United States and the agency over nuclear inspections.

The North passed a law declaring itself a nuclear-armed state in 2022 and later amended its constitution to enshrine the permanent growth of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.

In recent years, the country has repeatedly dismissed the notion of restarting dialogue or denuclearization talks with the United States and South Korea.

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test of a new solid-fuel engine for intercontinental ballistic missiles and said it “heralds a significant change in expanding and strengthening the nuclear strategic forces of the DPRK.”

Sept. 3 (UPI) — Tropical Storm Kiko strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane on Tuesday, according to forecasters who expect it to become a major hurricane in the next day or two.

The storm had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, the National Hurricane Center said in its 5 p.m. HST update.

It was located about 1,740 miles east of Hilo, Hawaii, and was moving westerly at 7 mph, and was expected to continue moving in that direction along open waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the forecasters said.

“The main steering feature continues to be a subtropical ridge located to the north of Kiko,” the NHC said.

“A slow westward motion should continue for the next couple of days,” followed by a “turn toward the west-northwest” in three to four days, the NHC forecast said.

There are no weather watches or warnings in effect because the hurricane is expected to stay over the waters of the Pacific Ocean.

It’s forecast to enter drier air and cooler waters in three or four days, but gain strength until it does. It is expected to remain a hurricane for at least five days.

The storm formed on Sunday, making it the 11th named storm in the Eastern North Pacific this year.

Administration has sought to prematurely end status for 600,000 Venezuelans, leaving them vulnerable to deportation.

A federal appeals court has blocked an effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to end special protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling, which kept in place Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans. The status will remain in place as the legal challenges proceed through the courts.

Before leaving office, the Biden administration had extended TPS for about 600,000 Venezuelans through October 2026.

The Trump administration has sought to end the extension, meaning that the status would expire for approximately 350,000 Venezuelans, who were initially granted protection in 2023, in April of this year, and for approximately 250,000 Venezuelans, who were initially granted the status in 2021, by September.

That would leave those affected unable to legally work and vulnerable to deportation.

US District Judge Edward Chen had previously ruled in March that plaintiffs challenging the end of the protection were likely to prevail on their claim that the administration overstepped its authority.

Lawyers for affected Venezuelans had argued the administration had been motivated by racial animus.

At the time, Chen ordered a freeze on the termination. However, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling in an emergency appeal, temporarily allowing the administration to move forward in cancelling the status.

TPS targeted

Congress created Temporary Protected Status as part of the Immigration Act of 1990.

It allows the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to grant legal immigration status to individuals fleeing countries experiencing civil strife, environmental disasters, or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return to their home country.

The Trump administration has increasingly targeted TPS recipients in its hardline approach to immigration, moving to terminate the programme for citizens of Haiti, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras and Nicaragua.

While the administration has the authority to choose not to renew TPS, several courts have ruled against efforts to change already designated timelines.

In Friday’s ruling, the judges wrote: “In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics”.

The U.S. Navy says the impacts from a fire that burned for approximately 12 hours aboard the USS New Orleans earlier this week are limited to forward areas of the ship, though a full assessment of the damage is still ongoing. The San Antonio class amphibious warfare ship, with its crew still aboard, arrived under its own power today at the White Beach Naval Facility on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Readers can first get caught up on what had previously been known about the incident in our initial report here.

A full statement put out today from the U.S. 7th Fleet reads:

“The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans (LPD 18) returned under its own propulsion to White Beach Naval Facility, Okinawa, Japan, Aug. 22.

New Orleans is providing its own berthing and galley services remain open, allowing for the crew of nearly 380 Sailors to continue to work and reside aboard their ship. Several Sailors were treated for minor injuries and have returned to full duty. Family members have been updated on the status of the ship and crew.

The cause of the fire is currently under investigation, and damage assessors are presently aboard inspecting the impact, which was limited to the forward area of the ship.”

An initial Navy statement said two sailors sustained unspecified injuries, and that they were treated aboard the ship, before that was changed to “several.” A press release today from the U.S. Embassy in Japan also only mentions two injured sailors, adding that they have returned to duty. TWZ has reached out for more information.

“Another defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details about the ship, said the fire appeared to be contained to the middle decks near the ship’s bow,” Military Times had also reported on Tuesday, which is in line with the Navy’s latest statement. “The official added that multiple decks had been affected, without specifying how many decks were burned.”

The fire first broke out at about 4:00 PM local time on Aug. 20 and was extinguished at approximately 4:00 AM local time on Aug. 21, according to the Navy. The Japan Coast Guard separately told multiple news outlets that firefighting activities continued until 9:00 AM local time.

“New Orleans Sailors’ firefighting efforts were supported by the crew of the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS San Diego (LPD 22), which is moored at White Beach Naval Facility,” the Navy also said in a release put out on the night of Aug. 20-21. “Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force; Japan Coast Guard; and U.S. Navy commands from across Commander, Fleet Activities Okinawa also provided critical support to the firefighting efforts.”

If a major hurricane approaches Central Florida this season, Maria knows it’s dangerous to stay inside her wooden, trailer-like home. In past storms, she evacuated to her sister’s sturdier house. If she couldn’t get there, a shelter set up at the local high school served as a refuge if needed.

But with accelerating detentions and deportations of immigrants across her community of Apopka, 20 miles northwest of Orlando, Maria, an agricultural worker from Mexico without permanent U.S. legal status, doesn’t know if those options are safe. All risk encountering immigration enforcement agents.

“They can go where they want,” said Maria, 50, who insisted the Associated Press not use her last name for fear of detention. “There is no limit.”

Natural disasters have long posed singular risks for people in the United States without permanent legal status. But with the arrival of peak Atlantic hurricane season, immigrants and their advocates say President Donald Trump’s robust immigration enforcement agenda has increased the danger.

Places considered neutral spaces by immigrants such as schools, hospitals and emergency management agencies are now suspect, and advocates say agreements by local law enforcement to collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement make them more vulnerable and compel a choice between being physically safe and avoiding detention.

“Am I going to risk the storm or risk endangering my family at the shelter?” said Dominique O’Connor, an organizer at the Farmworker Association of Florida. “You’re going to meet enforcement either way.”

For O’Connor and for many immigrants, it’s about storms. But people without permanent legal status could face these decisions anywhere that extreme heat, wildfires or other severe weather could necessitate evacuating, getting supplies or even seeking medical care.

Federal and state agencies have said little on whether immigration enforcement would be suspended in a disaster. It wouldn’t make much difference to Maria: “With all we’ve lived, we’ve lost trust.”

New policies deepen concerns

Efforts by Trump’s Republican administration to exponentially expand immigration enforcement capacity mean many of the agencies active in disaster response are increasingly entangled in immigration enforcement.

Since January, hundreds of law enforcement agencies have signed 287(g) agreements, allowing them to perform certain immigration enforcement actions. Most of the agreements are in hurricane-prone Florida and Texas.

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management oversees building the state’s new detention facilities, like the one called “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades. Federal Emergency Management Agency funds are being used to build additional detention centers around the country, and the Department of Homeland Security temporarily reassigned some FEMA staff to assist ICE.

The National Guard, often seen passing out food and water after disasters, has been activated to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations and help at detention centers.

These dual roles can make for an intimidating scene during a disaster. After floods in July, more than 2,100 personnel from 20 state agencies aided the far-reaching response effort in Central Texas, along with CBP officers. Police controlled entry into hard-hit areas. Texas Department of Public Safety and private security officers staffed entrances to disaster recovery centers set up by FEMA.

That unsettled even families with permanent legal status, said Rae Cardenas, executive director of Doyle Community Center in Kerrville, Texas. Cardenas helped coordinate with the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio to replace documents for people who lived behind police checkpoints.

“Some families are afraid to go get their mail because their legal documents were washed away,” Cardenas said.

In Florida, these policies could make people unwilling to drive evacuation roads. Traffic stops are a frequent tool of detention, and Florida passed a law in February criminalizing entry into the state by those without legal status, though a judge temporarily blocked it.

There may be fewer places to evacuate now that public shelters, often guarded by police or requiring ID to enter, are no longer considered “protected areas” by DHS. The agency in January rescinded a policy of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, to avoid enforcement in places like schools, medical facilities and emergency response sites.

The fears extend even into disaster recovery. On top of meeting law enforcement at FEMA recovery centers, mixed-status households that qualify for help from the agency might hesitate to apply for fear of their information being accessed by other agencies, said Esmeralda Ledezma, communications associate with the Houston-based nonprofit Woori Juntos. “Even if you have the right to federal aid, you’re afraid to be punished for it,” Ledezma said.

In past emergencies, DHS has put out messaging stating it would suspend immigration enforcement. The agency’s policy now is unclear.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an email that CBP had not issued any guidance “because there have been no natural disasters affecting border enforcement.” She did not address what directions were given during CBP’s activation in the Texas floods or whether ICE would be active during a disaster.

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management did not respond to questions related to its policies toward people without legal status. Texas’ Division of Emergency Management referred The Associated Press to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, which did not respond.

Building local resilience is a priority

In spite of the crackdown, local officials in some hurricane-prone areas are expanding outreach to immigrant populations. “We are trying to move forward with business as usual,” said Gracia Fernandez, language access coordinator for Alachua County in Central Florida.

The county launched a program last year to translate and distribute emergency communications in Spanish, Haitian Creole and other languages. Now staffers want to spread the word that county shelters won’t require IDs, but since they’re public spaces, Fernandez acknowledged there’s not much they can do if ICE comes.

“There is still a risk,” she said. “But we will try our best to help people feel safe.”

As immigrant communities are pushed deeper into the shadows, more responsibility falls on nonprofits, and communities themselves, to keep each other safe.

Hope Community Center in Apopka has pushed local officials to commit to not requiring IDs at shelters and sandbag distribution points. During an evacuation, the facility becomes an alternative shelter and a command center, from which staffers translate and send out emergency communications in multiple languages. For those who won’t leave their homes, staffers do door-to-door wellness checks, delivering food and water.

“It’s a very grassroots, underground operation,” said Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, the center’s executive director.

Preparing the community is challenging when it’s consumed by the daily crises wrought by detentions and deportations, Sousa Lazaballet said.

“All of us are in triage mode,” he said. “Every day there is an emergency, so the community is not necessarily thinking about hurricane season yet. That’s why we have to have a plan.”

Angueira writes for the Associated Press.

Aug. 19 (UPI) — Mafioso, a high-pedigree Argentine Brangus breeding bull, sold for $200,000 for 50% ownership — the highest price ever paid for such an animal at a livestock auction in the country.

The sale took place at the Rural Society of Jesús María in Córdoba during an annual auction of elite breeding stock. The bull belonged to El Porvenir, an award-winning livestock producer.

Mafioso, a 3-year-old Brangus bull that weighs 2,041 pounds, is the son of Picante, an elite bull who won several national competitions. His lineage makes him a high-value genetic sire, giving the sale significance not only nationally, but also internationally.

Half of the bull was purchased by a group of ranchers along with Select Debernardi, an Argentine company that specializes in genetic improvement and bovine semen production for beef and dairy cattle.

Mafioso, regarded as a true “sire” of the Brangus breed, is expected to have his genetics used by leading breeding operations, securing his legacy in elite cattle production worldwide.

From a young age, Mafioso stood out. He won the titles of “Best National Calf” and “Best Pen Calf.” In 2025, he reached the elite of the breed as Grand Champion at the National Exhibition in Corrientes.

Walter Orodá, owner of El Porvenir ranch, said the sale price exceeded all expectations.

“We did not expect such a figure,” he said. “The price was not something we imagined, and it really surprised all of us. The bull will be used not only in Argentina but in many countries,” he told the Argentine outlet Perfil.com.

The Brangus breed is among the most prized in cattle ranching for its tender, high-quality meat with excellent flavor. It originated from a cross between the Brahman breed from India and the Aberdeen Angus from England and was introduced to Argentina in the mid-20th century. Brangus cattle are docile and highly resistant to parasites and common diseases.

In recent years, the Brangus breed has become Argentina’s leading exporter of bovine semen, surpassing the long-dominant Angus. Its expansion across South America, especially in tropical and subtropical regions, is driven by regulatory, genetic and strategic factors that have made the Argentine Brangus a regional benchmark.

In 2018, Brangus led Argentina’s bovine semen exports for the first time, with nearly 487,000 doses, representing 49.5% of all beef cattle breeds. By 2024, that share had grown to 56%, according to the Argentine Chamber of Biotechnology and Animal Reproduction.

Brazil is the main buyer of Argentine Brangus genetics, followed by Uruguay and Colombia, with growing interest from Mexico and Costa Rica.

Aug. 15 (UPI) — Erin became the first hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic season on Friday morning and is forecast to rapidly strengthen as it heads near the Leeward Islands, and later Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

In its 10 a.m. EDT update, the National Hurricane Center said Erin became a hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph — just 2 mph above the tropical storm designation.

In the 7 p.m. update, Erin increased to 85 mph.

Erin was 310 miles east of the Northern Leeward Islands, and was moving west-northwest at 17 mph in warm waters.

The NHC said the motion is expected to continue through the weekend with some decrease in forward speed.

With rapid strengthening the next two to three days, Eric is forecast to become a major hurricane during the weekend with winds at least 111 mph.

On the forecast track, Erin is likely to go just north of the Northern Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico over the weekend. Erin is forecast to reach Category 4 at 130 mph on Monday, the NHC said.

By 2 p.m., Wednesday, the storm was forecast to be a few hundred miles west of Bermuda and outside the big tracking cone.

“While the threat of direct impacts in the Bahamas and along the East coast of the United States appears to be gradually decreasing, there will still be a significant risk of dangerous surf and rip currents along western Atlantic beaches next week,” NHC forecaster Jack Beven wrote in a discussion.

Tropical storm warnings remain in effect for Anguilla St. Martin and St. Barthelemy, Saba and St. Eustatius, and Sint Maarten.

Hurricane-force winds extend up to 75 miles from the center, and tropical-force winds outward to 115 miles.

Marine warnings are in effect for the Atlantic, Caribbean and southwest Atlantic and the southwest North Atlantic.

The NHC said Puerto Rico and the northern Leeward Islands — which include Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Martin, St. Barts, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Montserrat — should expect heavy rainfall Friday night through Sunday. Rainfall totals of 2 to 4 inches are forecast with isolated totals of 6 inches. It could lead to flash and urban flooding, along with landslides and mudslides.

Swells will begin affecting this area and will spread to the western Atlantic next week.

Wind gusts or tropical storm-force winds are possible in rainbands over portions of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico this weekend.

“Do not underestimate the power of a major hurricane even passing by offshore,” Alex DaSilva, the lead hurricane expert with AccuWeather, said. “These massive storms produce very rough surf and lethal rip currents that can impact beaches even hundreds of miles away.”

The previous four named Atlantic storms this year were Andrea, Barry, Chantal and Dexter. None of them became hurricanes, and Chantal was the only one to make landfall in the United States, causing significant flooding in North Carolina.

Helene struck that state last year as a tropical storm, causing an estimated $53 billion in damage, after hitting western Florida as a Category 4 hurricane.

Four other hurricanes made landfall in the United States in 2024: Beryl, Debby, Francine and Milton.

‘Most officers want that information out there’

The Hollywood Premiere Motel doesn’t get a lot of rave reviews — in fact, it’s among the lowest ranked lodgings in the city. But thanks to its mid-century Googie design, it is the first motel to join the L.A.’s Historic-Cultural Monument List.

The City Council approved that designation on Wednesday, singling out the 1960 motel and its weathered neon sign as prime examples from the glory days of roadside architecture. There was no opposition or discussion, nor did the motel owner, listed as Yang Hua Xi, take a position.

“It may have a 1.7-star Tripadvisor rating, but we don’t judge our landmarks by thread count,” said Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose 13th District includes the motel, in a statement.

That Tripadvisor score ranks the motel 110th of 118 motels in Los Angeles, and its Yelp reviews aren’t any better. “Felt like puking,” wrote one Yelp user in May.

The two-story motel, which stands at Hollywood Boulevard and Serrano Avenue, was nominated by preservationist James Dastoli.

“This, to me, is a landmark that defines the entire neighborhood of East Hollywood,” Dastoli said at a city Cultural Heritage Committee meeting in March.

“My initial response, looking at the nomination, was, really?” said commission President Barry Milofsky. But he went on to support the designation.

Though the motel parking lot is often empty, its look has attracted frequent filming in the last decade, including TV’s “Twin Peaks,” “Fargo” and “NCIS: Los Angeles,” along with Justin Timberlake’s 2016 “Can’t Stop the Feeling” music video.

In their report on the site, city staffers found that the motel serves as “an excellent example of a 1960s motel that accommodated automobile tourism in Hollywood” and is “a highly intact and rare example of a 1960s motel in Hollywood.”

After the 1960s, the staff report noted that “motels began to fall out of favor as chains such Holiday Inn increasingly dominated the industry” and tourists turned to more compact building types with corridors indoors, not outside.

Soto-Martinez called the Hollywood Premiere “a survivor — still standing after decades of change in Hollywood.”

The Hollywood Premiere was built in 1960 with 42 units in a two-story, stucco-clad building, with a tall, Googie-style neon sign on a pole, parking near the guest rooms and a swimming pool at the corner of the lot behind breeze blocks. It once had a coffee shop, but that space is now idle. The architect was Joyce Miller, a woman working in a trade then dominated by men.

With Tuesday’s vote, the motel joins a Historic-Cultural Monuments list that includes more than 1,300 businesses, homes and landscape features. Begun in 1962, the list includes familiar icons like Union Station, the Bradbury Building and the Hollywood sign but also many less obvious choices, including Taix French Restaurant (built in 1929); the Studio City site of the Oil Can Harry’s bar (which operated from 1968 to 2021; and Leone’s Castle, a 1936 San Pedro apartment building designed to resemble a French castle.

Designation as a city Historic-Cultural Monument doesn’t automatically protect a building from changes or demolition, nor does it trigger any government spending on preservation. But once a building is designated a landmark, the city’s Office of Historic Resources must review permit application before any alterations are allowed. Demolition is forbidden unless an environmental review has been approved.

The city’s staff report also cited several other roadside lodgings that serve as “exemplary and intact examples of the Mid-Century Modern architectural style,” including the Beverly Laurel Motor Hotel (1964), the Wilshire Twilighter Motor Hotel (1958; now known as the Dunes Inn) and the Hollywood Downtowner Motel (1956), which is being converted into 30 interim residences for people at risk of homelessness as part of the state’s Project Homekey. So far, the Downtowner’s twinkling neon sign above Hollywood Boulevard has been preserved.

Spain had dominated possession, but they had struggled to break through a resilient defence in Zurich as Christian Wuck’s side dug deep to force extra time.

But with the game looking destined for a penalty shootout, Bonmati stepped up when it mattered – sending Spain to their first Women’s Euro final.

“It was not easy for [Bonmati] at the beginning of the tournament but she has a special personality to be at the maximum level,” said Spain boss Montse Tome.

Bonmati had cleverly darted into space between Germany defenders Rebecca Knaak and Franziska Kett, before receiving Del Castillo’s pass on the half-turn.

Despite the tight angle, she buried the ball in at the near post.

“Top-class players turn up in the moments and that’s what Spain needed. That’s why Bonmati is a Ballon d’Or winner,” ex-Scotland defender Jen Beattie said on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Former England defender Steph Houghton added: “I honestly thought from Spain’s point of view she was definitely their best player and she’s got them through to their first-ever European Championship final.”

The goal sent the Spanish fans at Stadion Letzigrund into pandemonium, while the scorer was immediately embraced by members of La Roja’s bench.

“When the ball was in, I started running and I saw the bench standing so I celebrated with them,” said Bonmati.

“Scoring in a game like this one is super-special. If I can help the team write history, it’s very special.”

She added: “I was confident in my mentality and my physical situation. I wanted to get to this game at my best level. Thanks to all people who were next to me to help me reach this level.”

SACRAMENTO — For nearly 20 years, Maria would call her sister — a nurse in Mexico — for advice on how to manage her asthma and control her husband’s diabetes instead of going to the doctor in California.

She didn’t have legal status, so she couldn’t get health insurance and skipped routine exams, relying instead on home remedies and, at times, getting inhalers from Mexico. She insisted on using only her first name for fear of deportation.

Things changed for Maria and many others in recent years when some Democratic-led states opened up their health insurance programs to low-income immigrants regardless of their legal status. Maria and her husband signed up the day the program began last year.

“It changed immensely, like from Earth to the heavens,” Maria said in Spanish of Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. “Having the peace of mind of getting insurance leads me to getting sick less.”

At least seven states and the District of Columbia have offered coverage for immigrants, mostly since 2020. But three of them have done an about-face, ending or limiting coverage for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who aren’t in the U.S. legally — California, Illinois and Minnesota.

The programs cost much more than officials had projected at a time when the states are facing multibillion-dollar deficits now and in the future. In Illinois, adult immigrants ages 42 to 64 without legal status have lost their healthcare to save an estimated $404 million. All adult immigrants in Minnesota no longer have access to the state program, saving nearly $57 million. In California, no one will automatically lose coverage, but new enrollments for adults will stop in 2026 to save more than $3 billion over several years.

Cuts in all three states were backed by Democratic governors who once championed expanding health coverage to immigrants.

The Trump administration this week shared the home addresses, ethnicities and personal data of all Medicaid recipients with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Twenty states, including California, Illinois and Minnesota, have sued.

Healthcare providers told the Associated Press that all of those factors, especially the fear of being arrested or deported, are having a chilling effect on people seeking care. And states may have to spend more money down the road because immigrants will avoid preventive healthcare and end up needing to go to safety-net hospitals.

“I feel like they continue to squeeze you more and more to the point where you’ll burst,” Maria said, referencing all the uncertainties for people who are in the U.S. without legal permission.

‘People are going to die’

People who run free and community health clinics in California and Minnesota said patients who got on state Medicaid programs received knee replacements and heart procedures and were diagnosed for serious conditions like late-stage cancer.

CommunityHealth is one of the nation’s largest free clinics, serving many uninsured and underinsured immigrants in the Chicago area who have no other options for treatment. That includes the people who lost coverage July 1 when Illinois ended its Health Benefits for Immigrants Adults Program, which served about 31,500 people ages 42 to 64.

One of CommunityHealth’s community outreach workers and care coordinator said Eastern European patients she works with started coming in with questions about what the change meant for them. She said many of the patients also don’t speak English and don’t have transportation to get to clinics that can treat them. The worker spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to protect patients’ privacy.

Health Finders Collective in Minnesota’s rural Rice and Steele counties south of Minneapolis serves low-income and underinsured patients, including large populations of Latino immigrants and Somali refugees. Executive director Charlie Mandile said his clinics are seeing patients rushing to squeeze in appointments and procedures before 19,000 people age 18 and older are kicked off insurance at the end of the year.

Free and community health clinics in all three states say they will keep serving patients regardless of insurance coverage — but that might get harder after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided this month to restrict federally qualified health centers from treating people without legal status.

CommunityHealth Chief Executive Stephanie Willding said she always worried about the stability of the program because it was fully state funded, “but truthfully, we thought that day was much, much further away.”

“People are going to die. Some people are going to go untreated,” Alicia Hardy, chief executive officer of CommuniCARE+OLE clinics in California, said of the state’s Medicaid changes. “It’s hard to see the humanity in the decision-making that’s happening right now.”

A spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Health said ending the state’s program will decrease MinnesotaCare spending in the short term, but she acknowledged healthcare costs would rise elsewhere, including uncompensated care at hospitals.

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a Republican, said the state’s program was not sustainable.

“It wasn’t about trying to be non-compassionate or not caring about people,” she said. “When we looked at the state budget, the dollars were not there to support what was passed and what was being spent.”

Demuth also noted that children will still have coverage, and adults lacking permanent legal status can buy private health insurance.

Healthcare providers also are worried that preventable conditions will go unmanaged, and people will avoid care until they end up in emergency rooms — where care will be available under federal law.

One of those safety-net public hospitals, Cook County Health in Chicago, treated about 8,000 patients from Illinois’ program last year. Dr. Erik Mikaitis, the health system’s CEO, said doing so brought in $111 million in revenue.

But he anticipated other providers who billed through the program could close, he said. “Things can become unstable very quickly,” he said.

Monthly fees, federal policies create barriers

State lawmakers said California’s Medi-Cal changes stem from budget issues — a $12-billion deficit this year, with larger ones projected ahead. Democratic state leaders last month agreed to stop new enrollment starting in 2026 for all low-income adults without legal status. Those under 60 remaining on the program will have to pay a $30 monthly fee in 2027.

States are also bracing for impact from federal policies. Cuts to Medicaid and other programs in President Trump’s massive tax and spending bill include a 10% cut to the federal share of Medicaid expansion costs to states that offer health benefits to immigrants starting October 2027.

California health officials estimate roughly 200,000 people will lose coverage after the first full year of restricted enrollment, though Gov. Gavin Newsom maintains that even with the rollbacks, California provides the most expansive healthcare coverage for poor adults.

Every new bill requires a shift in Maria’s monthly calculations to make ends meet. She believes many people won’t be able to afford the $30-a-month premiums and will instead go back to self-medication or skip treatment altogether.

“It was a total triumph,” she said of Medi-Cal expansion. “But now that all of this is coming our way, we’re going backwards to a worse place.”

Fear and tension about immigration raids are changing patient behavior, too. Providers told the AP that, as immigration raids ramped up, their patients were requesting more virtual appointments, not showing up to routine doctor’s visits and not picking up prescriptions for their chronic conditions.

Maria has the option to keep her coverage. But she is weighing the health of her family against risking what they’ve built in the U.S.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” Maria said of her decision to remain on the program. “If it comes to the point where my husband gets sick and his life is at risk, well then, obviously, we have to choose his life.”

Nguyễn and Shastri write for the Associated Press and reported from Sacramento and Milwaukee, respectively. AP journalist Godofredo Vasquez in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last month that temporary protected status for about 5,000 Haitians would end Sept. 2, five months earlier than planned. The Trump administration has cited flawed and contradictory assessments of conditions in Haiti — which, make no mistake, remains unsafe.

Although a U.S. district court halted the action — at least temporarily — and reinstated the original termination date of Feb. 3, the administration is likely to challenge the ruling. The outcome of such a challenge could hinge on whether the courts receive and believe an accurate representation of current events in Haiti.

The administration asserts that “overall, country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety.” Nothing could be further from the truth. But few outsiders are entering and leaving the country lately, so the truth can be hard to ascertain.

In late April and early May, as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I traveled to the northern city of Cap-Haïtien. For the first time in the several years I have been working in Haiti, violence kept me from reaching the capital, Port-au-Prince, where the airport remains under a Federal Aviation Administration ban since November when gangs shot Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines passenger jets in flight.

In Cap-Haïtien, I spoke with dozens of people who fled the capital and other towns in recent months. Many shared accounts of killings, injuries from stray bullets and gang rapes by criminal group members.

“We were walking toward school when we saw the bandits shooting at houses, at people, at everything that moved,” a 27-year-old woman, a student from Port-au-Prince, told me. “We started to run back, but that’s when [my sister] Guerline fell face down. She was shot in the back of the head, then I saw [my cousin] Alice shot in the chest.” The student crawled under a car, where she hid for hours. She fled the capital in early January.

This rampant violence is precisely the sort of conditions Congress had in mind when it passed the temporary protected status law in 1990. It recognized a gap in protection for situations in which a person might not be able to establish that they have been targeted for persecution on the basis of their beliefs or identity — the standard for permanent asylum claims — but rather when a person’s life is at real risk because of high levels of generalized violence that make it too dangerous for anyone to be returned to the place.

When an administration grants this designation, it does so for a defined period, which can be extended based on conditions in the recipients’ home country. For instance, protected status for people from Somalia was first designated in 1991 and has been extended repeatedly, most recently through March 17, 2026.

Almost 1.3 million people are internally displaced in Haiti. They flee increasing violence by criminal groups that killed more than 5,600 people in 2024 — 23% more than in 2023. Some analysts say the country has the highest homicide rate in the world. Criminal groups control nearly 90% of the capital and have expanded into other places.

Perversely, the Department of Homeland Security publicly concedes this reality, citing in a Federal Register notification “widespread gang violence” as a reason for terminating temporary protected status. The government argues that a “breakdown in governance” makes Haiti unable to control migration, and so a continued designation to protect people from there would not be in the “national interests” of the United States.

Even judging on that criterion alone, revoking the legal status of Haitians in the U.S. is a bad idea. Sending half a million people into Haiti would be highly destabilizing and counter to U.S. interests — not to mention that their lives would be at risk.

The Trump administration has taken no meaningful action to improve Haiti’s situation. The Kenya-led multinational security support mission, authorized by the U.N. Security Council and initially backed by the United States, has been on the ground for a year. Yet because of severe shortages of personnel, resources and funding, it has failed to provide the support the Haitian police desperately need. In late February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recommended steps to strengthen the mission, but the Security Council has yet to act.

The humanitarian situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate. An estimated 6 million people need humanitarian assistance. Nearly 5.7 million face acute hunger.

On June 26, just one day before Homeland Security’s attempt to end Haitians’ protected status prematurely, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau described the ongoing crisis in Haiti as “disheartening.” He said that “public order has all but collapsed” as “Haiti descends into chaos.” Two days earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a security alert urging U.S. citizens in the country to “depart as soon as possible.” These are not indications that “country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety,” as Homeland Security claimed on June 27.

The decision to prematurely end temporary protected status is utterly disconnected from reality. The Trump administration itself has warned that Haiti remains dangerous — and if anything has become more so in recent months. The U.S. government should continue to protect Haitians now living in the United States from being thrown into the brutal violence unfolding in their home country.

Nathalye Cotrino is a senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch.