threatens

UN Security Council to meet on Maduro’s abduction as Trump insists US in control of Venezuela.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

US president says a military operation focused on Colombia’s government ‘sounds good’ to him.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, in the wake of Washington’s abduction of Venezuela’s leader, and said he believed the government in Cuba, too, was likely to fall soon.

Trump made the comments late on Sunday while speaking to reporters on board Air Force One.

“Venezuela is very sick. Colombia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you,” the US president said.

When asked if he meant an operation by the US on Colombia, Trump said: “Sounds good to me.”

He added that a US military intervention in Cuba is unlikely because the country appears to be ready to fall on its own.

“Cuba is ready to fall. Cuba, looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know how they , if they can hold that, but Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil,” Trump said.

“They’re not getting any of it. Cuba literally is ready to fall. And you have a lot of great Cuban Americans that are going to be very happy about this.”

Trump’s comments come a day after US forces captured and detained Maduro and his wife in a surprise attack on Caracas. The Venezuelan leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, are due to appear in court on drug-related charges in New York later on Monday.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump also insisted the US was ‘in charge’ of Venezuela, even though the country’s Supreme Court has appointed the country’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as interim leader.

He also reiterated a threat to send the US military back to Venezuela if it “doesn’t behave”.

Trump has made no secret of his ambitions to expand US presence in the Western hemisphere and revive the 19th century Monroe Doctrine that states Latin America falls under the US sphere of influence. Trump has called his 21st century version the “Don-roe Doctrine”.

The US president has also previously threatened both Colombia and Cuba. Over the weekend he said that Petro has to “watch his ass” and that the political situation in Cuba was “something we’ll end up talking about because Cuba is a failing nation”.

Embattled Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted of obstruction last month for helping an immigrant evade federal officers, has sent her resignation letter to the governor.

The letter was sent Saturday. Republicans had been making plans to impeach her since her Dec. 19 conviction. A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers said his office received Dugan’s letter, and he would work to fill the vacancy without delay.

Dugan wrote that over the last decade she handled thousands of cases with “a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberately and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”

But she said the case against her is too big of a distraction.

“As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary,” Dugan said in her letter.

Last April, federal prosecutors accused Dugan of distracting federal officers trying to arrest a Mexican immigrant outside her courtroom and leading the man out through a private door. A federal jury convicted her of felony obstruction.

The case against Dugan was highlighted by President Trump as he pressed ahead with his sweeping immigration crackdown. Democrats insisted the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.

Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos praised Dugan’s decision.

“I’m glad Dugan did the right thing by resigning and followed the clear direction from the Wisconsin Constitution,” Vos said.

Democrat Ann Jacobs, who is chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission board, said she agreed with Dugan that Milwaukee should have a permanent judge in place while this fight plays out.

“Despite her situation, she is ever the champion of justice, wanting to remove the judiciary from a political battle over her fate. I’m sure this is terribly hard for her but she is true to her faith and her principles,” Jacobs said in a post on X.

On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and directed them to the office of her boss, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, because she told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.

After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.

Funk writes for the Associated Press.

Brazilian president says it is now or never after Italy joins France in saying it is not ready to sign trade deal.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has warned he may abandon a long-awaited trade deal between members of the South American bloc Mercosur and the European Union after key countries sought a delay.

The Brazilian leader issued the threat on Wednesday after Italy joined fellow heavyweight France in saying it was not ready to commit to the pact to create the world’s biggest free-trade area.

The EU had expected its 27 member states to approve the deal in time for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to fly to Brazil to sign an agreement with the host, along with Mercosur partners Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, on Saturday.

“I’ve already warned them: If we don’t do it now, Brazil won’t make any more agreements while I’m president,” Lula told a cabinet meeting.

“We have given in on everything that diplomacy could reasonably concede.”

‘Premature’ to sign: Meloni

The deal, more than two decades in the making, has been keenly backed by economic powerhouse Germany, along with Spain and the Nordic countries, amid rising Chinese competition and recent United States tariffs, which have increased the incentive to diversify trade.

It would allow the EU to export more vehicles, machinery, spirits and wine to Latin America, and more beef, sugar, rice, honey and soya beans to flow in the opposite direction.

France, eager to protect its agriculture industry, had already called for a delay on a vote to approve the deal, and gained the support necessary to potentially block the agreement when Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Wednesday that Rome was also not ready.

“It would be premature to sign the deal in the coming days,” she told parliament, saying that some of the safeguards Italy is seeking on behalf of farmers were yet to be finalised.

She said Italy did not seek to block the deal altogether, and was “very confident” that her government’s concerns would have been addressed to allow it to be signed early next year,

French President Emmanuel Macron told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that his government would “firmly oppose” any attempts to force through the deal.

Hungary and Poland are also lukewarm on the agreement.

By contrast, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday he would push “intensively” for the bloc to approve the deal by the year’s end, in what he described as a test of the EU’s “ability to act”.

EU reaches agreement on agricultural safeguards

In an effort to allay some of the concerns, the EU struck a provisional deal on Wednesday to set tighter controls on imports of farm products, amid a background of farmer protests against the deal.

It determined the trigger for launching an investigation into such imports if import volumes rose by more than 8 percent per year or prices fell by that amount in one or more EU members.

EU leaders will discuss the matter at a Brussels summit on Thursday, a commission spokesman said.