Today

UK’s King Charles III praises Schloss for her lifelong work on ‘overcoming hatred and prejudice’ around the world.

Eva Schloss, the Auschwitz survivor who dedicated decades to educating people about the Holocaust, and who was the stepsister of diarist Anne Frank, has died aged 96, according to her foundation.

The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was the honorary president, said on Sunday that she died on Saturday in London, where she lived.

The United Kingdom’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who co-founded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice.

“The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend, and yet, she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding and resilience through her tireless work for the Anne Frank Trust UK and for Holocaust education across the world,” the king said.

In a statement posted on X, the European Jewish Congress said it was “deeply saddened” by the passing of Schloss, who it described as a “powerful voice” for Holocaust education.

Born Eva Geiringer in Vienna in 1929, Schloss fled with her family to Amsterdam after Nazi Germany annexed Austria.

She became friends with another Jewish girl of the same age, Anne Frank, whose diary would become one of the most famous chronicles of the Holocaust.

Like the Franks, Eva’s family spent two years in hiding to avoid capture after the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. They were eventually betrayed, arrested and sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

Schloss and her mother, Fritzi, survived until the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. Her father, Erich, and brother, Heinz, died in Auschwitz.

After the war, Eva moved to the UK, married German-Jewish refugee Zvi Schloss, and settled in London.

In 1953, her mother married Frank’s father, Otto, the only member of his immediate family to survive.

Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15, months before the end of the war.

Schloss did not speak publicly about her experiences for decades, later saying that wartime trauma had made her withdrawn and unable to connect with others.

“I was silent for years, first because I wasn’t allowed to speak. Then, I repressed it. I was angry with the world,” she told The Associated Press news agency in 2004.

But after she addressed the opening of an Anne Frank exhibition in London in 1986, Schloss made it her mission to educate younger generations about the Nazi genocide.

Over the following decades, she spoke in schools, prisons and international conferences, and told her story in books, including Eva’s Story: A Survivor’s Tale by the Stepsister of Anne Frank.

She kept campaigning into her 90s.

“We must never forget the terrible consequences of treating people as ‘other’,” Schloss said in 2024.

Schloss is survived by their three daughters, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is planning to meet with executives from US oil companies later this week to discuss boosting Venezuelan oil production after US forces abducted its leader, Nicolas Maduro, the Reuters news agency has reported, citing unnamed sources.

The meetings are crucial to the administration’s hopes of getting top US oil companies back into the South American nation after its government, nearly two decades ago, took control of US-led energy operations there, the Reuters news agency report said on Monday.

The three biggest US oil companies – Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron – have not yet had any conversations with the Trump administration about Maduro’s ouster, according to four oil industry executives familiar with the matter, contradicting Trump’s statements over the weekend that he had already held meetings with “all” the US oil companies, both before and since Maduro was abducted.

“Nobody in those three companies has had conversations with the White House about operating in Venezuela, pre-removal or post-removal, to this point,” one of the sources said on Monday.

The upcoming meetings will be crucial to the administration’s hopes to boost crude oil production and exports from Venezuela, a former OPEC nation that sits atop the world’s largest reserves, and whose crude oil can be refined by specially designed US refineries. Achieving that goal will require years of work and billions of dollars of investment, analysts say.

It is unclear what executives will be attending the upcoming meetings, and whether oil companies will be attending individually or collectively.

The White House did not comment on the meetings, but said it believed the US oil industry was ready to flood into Venezuela.

“All of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

Exxon, Chevron and ConocoPhillips did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

One oil industry executive told Reuters the companies would be reluctant to talk about potential Venezuela operations in group settings with the White House, citing antitrust concerns that limit collective discussions among competitors about investment plans, timing and production levels.

Political risks, low oil prices

US forces on Saturday conducted a raid on Venezuela’s capital, arresting Maduro in the dead of night and sending him back to the US to face narcoterrorism charges.

Hours after Maduro’s abduction, Trump said he expects the biggest US oil companies to spend billions of dollars boosting Venezuela’s oil production, after it dropped to about a third of its peak over the past two decades due to underinvestment and sanctions.

But those plans will be hindered by a lack of infrastructure, along with deep uncertainty over the country’s political future, legal framework and long-term US policy, according to industry analysts.

“While the Trump administration has suggested large US oil companies will go into Venezuela and spend billions to fix infrastructure, we believe political and other risks, along with current relatively low oil prices, could prevent this from happening anytime soon,” wrote Neal Dingmann of William Blair in a note.

Material change to Venezuelan production will take a lot of time and millions of dollars of infrastructure improvement, he said.

And any investment in Venezuelan infrastructure right now would take place in a weakened global energy market. Crude prices in the US are down by 20 percent compared with last year. The price for a barrel of benchmark US crude has not been above $70 since June, and has not touched $80 per barrel since June of 2024.

A barrel of oil cost more than $130 in the leadup to the US housing crisis in 2008.

Chevron is the only US major currently operating in Venezuela’s oil fields.

Exxon and ConocoPhillips, meanwhile, had storied histories in the country before their projects were nationalised nearly two decades ago by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Conoco has been seeking billions of dollars in restitution for the takeover of three oil projects in Venezuela under Chavez. Exxon was involved in lengthy arbitration cases against Venezuela after it exited the country in 2007.

Chevron, which exports about 150,000 barrels per day of crude from Venezuela to the US Gulf Coast, meanwhile, has had to carefully manoeuvre with the Trump administration in an effort to maintain its presence in the country in recent years.

A US embargo on Venezuelan oil remained in full effect, Trump has said.

The S&P 500 energy index rose to its highest since March 2025, with heavyweights Exxon Mobil rising by 2.2 percent and Chevron jumping by 5.1 percent.

Provisional results show Faustin-Archange Touadera received 76.15 percent of the vote in December 28 election.

Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera has won a third term in office, securing an outright majority in the presidential election held on December 28, according to provisional results.

The results announced on Monday showed Touadera received 76.15 percent of the vote, while former Prime Minister Anicet-Georges Dologuele received 14.66 percent and former Prime Minister Henri-Marie Dondra received 3.19 percent.

Voter turnout ‍was 52.42 percent.

Touadera, a 68-year-old mathematician who took power a decade ago, was seeking a third term ⁠after a constitutional referendum in 2023 scrapped the presidential term limit.

He campaigned on his security record in the ​chronically unstable nation after enlisting help from Russian mercenaries and Rwandan soldiers. He also signed peace ‍deals with several rebel groups this year.

The ⁠main opposition coalition, known by its French acronym BRDC, boycotted the election, saying it would not be fair.

Even before the results were announced, Dologuele and Dondra had cast doubt on their credibility, calling separate news conferences to denounce what they described as election fraud.

Dologuele, the runner-up in the 2020 election, told a news conference on Friday that there had been “a methodical attempt to manipulate” the outcome.

“The Central African people spoke on December 28,” Dologuele said. “They expressed a clear desire for change.”

Touadera’s government has denied ​that any fraud took place.

The Constitutional Court has until January 20 to adjudicate any ‌challenges and declare definitive results.

Hadramout governor says ports and airports will soon be operational after Saudi-backed government forces ousted secessionists from the south.

About 400 tourists are stuck on the Yemeni island of Socotra after flights were grounded because of clashes on the mainland between government troops backed by Saudi Arabia and secessionists with links to the United Arab Emirates.

Over the past few days, flights in and out of Yemen have been largely restricted during heavy fighting between rival armed factions loosely grouped under the Yemen’s fractious government, which is based in the southern port city of Aden.

The Socotra islands, 380km (236 miles) south of the mainland, are under the control of the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council, which has clashed with Yemen’s Saudi-backed government in the provinces of Hadramout and al-Mahra.

Yahya bin Afrar, the deputy governor for culture and tourism on Socotra, the largest island in the Socotra archipelago, said that “more than 400 foreign tourists” are stranded after their flights were “suspended”.

A local official, who spoke to the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity, said that 416 people of different nationalities were stranded on Socotra, including “more than 60 Russians”.

An unnamed Western diplomat said that “British, French and American” nationals were also among the stranded tourists.

Highly unstable region

In a post on X on Sunday, Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Maciej Wewior, said Polish tourists were stuck too, adding that flights to Socotra by an Emirati airline had been suspended until Tuesday.

“Socotra is located in a highly unstable region, where an armed conflict has been ongoing for years. Currently, the security situation has further deteriorated. Due to the intensification of military operations, airspace has been closed,” the post said.

A travel agent in Socotra said at least two Chinese nationals were also there.

Tourists stuck on the island, many of whom went there to for New Year’s celebrations, are now reaching out to their embassies for help to be evacuated, according to another Western diplomat.

“Their relevant embassies have reached out to the Saudi and Yemeni governments to seek their evacuation,” said the diplomat.

The airport in Aden has been functional since Sunday, after disruptions that lasted for several days.

Pledge to restore order

Yemen’s civil war entered a new phase last month when secessionists with the UAE-backed STC extended its presence in southeastern Yemen with the aim of establishing an independent state.

But this week, the Saudi-backed “Homeland Shield” forces took back the oil-rich southern governorates of Hadramout and al-Mahra, which make up nearly half of Yemen’s territory, from the STC rebels.

In the past, the opposing forces were allied under the umbrella of the Aden-based  Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) – the governing organ of the internationally recognised government – against the Houthis, who control most of northwestern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa.

On Friday, Salem al-Khanbashi, the governor of Hadramout, was chosen by the government to command the Saudi-led forces in the governorate.

In an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic on Monday, al-Khanbashi said that ports and airports in the governorate would soon be operational, stressing the need to restore service at the Seiyun airport in northern Hadramout.

He pledged to re-establish security and stability, saying meetings will be held with all political and tribal groups to form a united front to protect the governorate against future attacks.

Compensation will be extended for damage to public and private property caused during the STC’s advance. The authorities are focused on getting electricity, water and health services up and running again, al-Khanbashi said.

Open-source tracking data and spotters on the ground are showing a sudden surge of U.S. aircraft to Europe. The deployments include C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets, possibly packed with helicopters, emanating from the home of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, and a shadowy special operations turboprop aircraft. While U.S. aircraft routinely transit to and through that continent, the number of flights and their origin have raised speculation of potential future special operations missions in the region, and that speculation could be well founded.

The deployments of these aircraft increasingly seem like they are in support of a future operation to board the Russian-flagged Crude Oil Tanker Marinera, which until recently has been known as the Bella-1, and has been pursued by the Coast Guard since last month. CBS News on Monday afternoon reported that the U.S. will likely try to intercept the vessel, now in the North Atlantic. We’ll discuss that more later, including why the 160th SOAR may be needed for such an operation, in this story.

Here is what we have seen over the past 36 hours. Online flight tracking data shows that there were at least 10 Globemaster flights that left the U.S. for Europe on Jan. 3. At least four of these flights were from Fort Campbell in Kentucky, fueling unconfirmed speculation of an influx of U.S. special operations aviation assets. Fort Campbell is home to the 160th SOAR, also known as the Night Stalkers, the elite aviation unit that played a key role in locating and capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife. You can read more about that in our story about Operation Absolute Resolve here.

There are claims that several of the Night Stalkers’ highly modified MH-47 Chinooks and MH-60M Black Hawks, presumably dropped off by the C-17s, were seen at RAF Fairford; however, no visual evidence has emerged to confirm that. 

“As I think we have offered many times previously, we do not comment on the operational activity of other nations, including use of UK bases,” a U.K. Defense Ministry (MoD) official told us. “Likewise, neither the MOD or RAF would offer comment on speculation on what [U.S. bases in England] assets are or indeed are not doing.”

The 160th did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Beyond the possibility of the helicopters being delivered, at least two AC-130J Ghostrider gunships landed Sunday at RAF Mildenhall, where they still remain, according to Andrew McKelvey, a local spotter who was kind enough to share his photos of the aircraft with us. U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, which operates those aircraft, declined to comment.

AC-130 GUNSHIPS ARRIVE IN UK

One of the U.S. Air Force’s shadowy CASA CN-235 intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance planes was also deployed to RAF Fairford.

U.S. European Command, which oversees American military operations in that region, declined to offer any specifics about the nature of these flights.

 “U.S. European Command routinely hosts transient U.S. military aircraft (and personnel) in accordance with access, basing, and overflight agreements with Allies and partners,” the command told us in an early Monday morning email. “Taking into account operational security for U.S. assets and personnel, further details are not releasable at this time.”

While the nature of these flights remains unclear, there was a similar surge from Fort Campbell in the days leading up to Operation Absolute Resolve.

The 160th SOAR works across the globe on a daily basis, deploying for operational tasking to execute a huge array of mission sets. These include training and large-force exercises and combat operations. Night Stalker crews get experience all over the world in many environments. Movements of this kind are not that unusual, but after the Venezuelan mission, they certainly are drawing more attention.

The Marinera is another connection to Venezuela. The vessel is laden with Venezuelan oil and part of a so-called shadow fleet transporting oil for Russia, Iran and Venezuela in violation of sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries. The Trump administration said this weekend they would continue to interdict these vessels. The Coast Guard attempted to board the ship on Dec. 20, but the crew refused to allow it. As we saw last month, personnel fast-roping from helicopters played a key role in the seizure of the M/V Skipper, another sanctioned oil tanker. Night Stalker assets could very well assist in any attempt to capture the Marinera, which could be considered a more dangerous operation due to the intelligence gathered and interactions with its crew.

You can see video of the boarding of the Skipper below.

Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. For multiple… pic.twitter.com/dNr0oAGl5x

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) December 10, 2025

Highlighting the potential danger of this kind of operation, CBS News reported that “Venezuelan officials had discussed placing armed military personnel on tankers — disguising them as civilians for defense purposes — as well as portable Soviet-era air defense systems.” The discussions took place before the capture of Maduro and his wife, the network added.

Night Stalkers are far better prepared for taking down a defended ship like this, including with their defensive systems and the ability to provide their own air support. The AC-130J is also capable of making pinpoint gun strikes on vessels for exactly this kind of operation as we have showcased in our previous reporting.

27th Special Operations Wing conducts sinking exercise during RIMPAC 2024

Bolstering the theory that a special operations boarding mission may be imminent, U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft have been observed by online trackers following the Marinera.

Other nations are following the oil tanker. Irish Air Corps C-295W maritime search aircraft have also been observed by flight trackers operating near the location of the Marinera.

There are other potential reasons for the special operations aviation assets to be deployed to Europe. One possibility is a NATO exercise called Steadfast Dart 2026 that kicked off on Jan. 2.

The exercise “is a Joint Deployment Exercise to test and train the operational deployment and reinforcement of the [Allied Reaction Force] ARF 25 Elements to NATO Vigilance Area Center under peacetime conditions,” according to NATO. However, given that this was a long-planned exercise, the snap nature of the deployments from Fort Campbell and elsewhere makes it unlikely there is a connection.

Meanwhile, SOAR is also conducting a recruiting drive in Germany that begins Jan. 6, the regiment stated on X. It is unclear how many, if any, SOAR aircraft have been forward deployed for the recruitment effort. SOAR did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

KATTERBACH / ANSBACH,GERMANY. The 160th SOAR recruitment team will hold career opportunity briefs on 06 JANUARY 2026 at Katterbach/Ansbach. Looking to Go Beyond the Conventional in your military aviation career you’ll want to attend. Learn More & Apply at https://t.co/lM8G5cgcF9. pic.twitter.com/aTixBcpAm8

— Go160thSOAR (@Go160thSoar) January 4, 2026

Beyond these possibilities, there has been speculation that some U.S. assets might be heading to the Middle East ahead of a potential future conflict with Iran. We saw similar movements in the run-up to Operation Midnight Hammer, the June attack on Iran that saw U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers drop 14 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities.

It is also possible that the cargo flights to the Middle East are routine. There is a lot of air traffic back and forth from that region.

For example, five US Air Force C-17s landed in the region Wednesday, i didn’t even post about it because it is very normal, i dont do fearmongering pic.twitter.com/ZgfjXlJ0LS

— MenchOsint (@MenchOsint) January 4, 2026

Still, given that other major U.S. operations have followed these kinds of aircraft deployments, and the situation with the now Russian-flagged Marinera tanker and reports of it being a harder target than what has been seen in other recent boarding operations, the 160th SOAR may be back at it on a world stage very soon.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

High street retailers Claire’s and The Original Factory Shop are being put into administration, risking 2,500 jobs.

It comes amid a turbulent time for Claire’s, popular with tweens for its brightly coloured accessories, which was seeking a buyer after its US owner filed for bankruptcy last year.

Modella Capital, which owns both chains, said the retailers would enter insolvency proceedings across the UK and Ireland. The administration will give them breathing space to find a new buyer.

Modella said tough trading conditions and “alarming” low Christmas trading left both in a “vulnerable” position.

Claire’s has 154 stores and 1,355 staff, while The Original Factory shop has 140 stores and 1,220 staff.

Modella purchased Claire’s in September, six weeks after its previous collapse into administration, in a deal which saw around 1,000 job losses at the retailer, while 145 stores closed.

The investment firm has owned The Original Factory Shop since early last year.

“This has been a very tough decision,” said Modella. “We have worked intensively in an effort to save both businesses, having made last-ditch attempts to rescue them, but neither has a realistic possibility of trading profitably again.”

Modella said that the chains were “highly vulnerable” even before it bought them. It also blamed challenges including the climate on the high street, which it said “remains extremely challenging”, and government policy.

The two shops are the latest casualties of a tough trading environment which has seen high street sales fall as shoppers move online, ditching old favourites facing the high cost of maintaining brick-and-mortar stores.

“A combination of very weak consumer confidence, highly adverse government fiscal policies and continued cost inflation is causing many established and much-loved businesses to suffer badly,” Modella said.

The investment firm has become increasingly prominent on Britain’s high streets, having bought WH Smith’s high street chain last year and taken over arts and crafts retailer Hobbycraft a year earlier.

Modella is the latest business to criticise measures by Chancellor Rachel Reeves which have seen operating costs rise, making trading even more difficult as high inflation – the price at which prices rise – squeezes household budgets.

Her last Budget hiked taxes, while her previous Budget increased the minimum wage and raised employer National Insurance contributions.

One London pub owner warned he may have to close after tax rises announced in the last Budget.

James Fitzgerald, landlord of the Thatched House in Hammersmith, said his costs have risen by £22,000 over the past year – with the increase in National Insurance a major factor.

The Treasury was asked to comment.

Caracas, January 5, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan social movements and political parties held a massive rally in Caracas on January 4 to reject the US military attacks against the country and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.

The Sunday march took place in the center of the Venezuelan capital and ended close to Miraflores Presidential Palace.

Demonstrators held handmade signs demanding the release and return of Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, who were abducted in the early hours of January 3 by a US special operations team. US forces bombed several military sites in Caracas and surrounding states.

Venezuelan authorities have yet to report on damages and casualties, with unofficial sources claiming at least 80 people killed.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has taken over the presidency on an interim basis after a ruling from the Supreme Court. Following a Sunday cabinet meeting, Rodríguez called on the US to respect the country’s sovereignty and invited Washington to agree to an “agenda of cooperation.”

Photos by Rome Arrieche.

“We are here fulfilling our duties until you return.” The son of abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro delivered a message to his father from the floor of the country’s congress, where he also serves as a lawmaker. He also mentioned his mother, Cilia, who is also in US custody.

Ofcom has made “urgent contact” with Elon Musk’s company xAI following reports its AI tool Grok can be used to make “sexualised images of children” and undress women.

A spokesperson for the regulator said it was also investigating concerns Grok has been producing “undressed images” of people.

The BBC has seen several examples on the social media platform X of people asking the chatbot to alter real images to make women appear in bikinis without their consent, as well as putting them in sexual situations.

X has not responded to a request for comment. On Sunday, it issued a warning to users not to use Grok to generate illegal content including child sexual abuse material.

Elon Musk also posted to say anyone who asks the AI to generate illegal content would “suffer the same consequences” as if they uploaded it themselves.

XAI’s own acceptable use policy prohibits “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner”.

But people have been using Grok to digitally undress people without their consent and without notifying them.

The European Commission – the EU’s enforcement arm – said on Monday it was “seriously looking into this matter” and authorities in France, Malaysia and India were reportedly assessing the situation.

Meanwhile, the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation told the BBC it had received reports from the public relating to images generated by Grok on X.

But it said it had so far not seen images which would cross the UK’s legal threshold to be considered child sexual abuse imagery.

Grok is a free virtual assistant – with some paid for premium features – which responds to X users’ prompts when they tag it in a post.

Samantha Smith, a journalist who discovered users had used the AI to create pictures of her in a bikini, told the BBC’s PM programme on Friday it had left her feeling “dehumanised and reduced into a sexual stereotype”.

“While it wasn’t me that was in states of undress, it looked like me and it felt like me and it felt as violating as if someone had actually posted a nude or a bikini picture of me,” she said.

Under the Online Safety Act (OSA), Ofcom says it is illegal to create or share intimate or sexually explicit images – including “deepfakes” created with AI – of a person without their consent.

Tech firms are also expected to take “appropriate steps” to reduce the risks of UK users encountering such content, and take it down “quickly” when made aware of it.

Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, said the reports were “deeply disturbing”.

She said the Committee found the OSA to be “woefully inadequate” and called it “a shocking example of how UK citizens are left unprotected whilst social media companies act with impunity”.

And she called for the government to take up recommendations by the Committee to compel social media platforms “to take greater responsibility for their content”.

Meanwhile, European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said on Monday it was aware of posts made by Grok “showing explicit sexual content,” as well as “some output generated with childlike images”.

“This is illegal,” he said, also calling it “appalling” and “disgusting”.

“This is how we see it, and this has no place in Europe,” he said.

Regnier said X was “well aware” the EU was “very serious” about enforcing its rules for digital platforms – having handed X a €120m (£104m) fine in December for breaching its Digital Services Act.

A Home Office spokesperson said it was legislating to ban nudification tools, and under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tech would “face a prison sentence and substantial fines”.

For many years before becoming president, Donald Trump publicly criticised the George W Bush administration over its decision to launch the war on Iraq. And yet, today, in his second term as president, he finds himself presiding over a military debacle that is quite reminiscent of Bush’s.

Trump ordered a military intervention to remove an antagonistic foreign leader, based on a flimsy argument of national security, with the goal of accessing that country’s oil. In both cases, we see a naive confidence that the United States can simply achieve its goals through regime change. US intervention into Venezuela reeks of the same hubris that surrounded the Iraq invasion two decades ago.

Yet there are also important differences to consider. The most important distinguishing feature of the operation in Venezuela is its lack of an overarching vision. On Saturday after Trump finished an hour-long news conference alongside his secretaries of defence and state, it was not clear what the plan was for Venezuela going forward, or if there was a plan at all. His statements threatening more attacks in the following days brought no clarity either.

Past instances of US-led regime change fit into the larger ideological visions of the incumbent US commander-in-chief. In 1823, President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European colonialism. As the United States spent the 20th century consolidating its sphere of influence across the Americas, the Monroe Doctrine would justify various interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Cold War added new justifications for the United States to overthrow leftist regimes and install friendly governments in the Americas.

As the Cold War ended, President George HW Bush sought to serve as a caretaker for a “new world order” in which the US had emerged as the world’s lone superpower. When Bush sent troops to Somalia in 1992 and his successor Bill Clinton reversed a military coup in Haiti in 1994, they did so under the paradigm of “humanitarian intervention”. When George W Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, it was done under the umbrella of the post-9/11 “war on terror”. When President Barack Obama intervened against the forces of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, he was guided by the “responsibility to protect” doctrine concerning civilians in danger.

But in the case of the US attack on Venezuela, there has been no ideological justification. Trump and his team have haphazardly thrown around references to humanitarianism, counterterrorism and more to justify the attack. The president even brought up the Monroe Doctrine. But just as it seemed that he was grounding his foreign policy in a larger ideology, albeit one borrowed from two centuries ago, he made a joke of the concept.

“The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal,” Trump explained on Saturday. “But we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a lot. They now call it the Donroe Doctrine.” Trump did not make up this pun; it was used by the New York Post a year ago to describe Trump’s aggressive foreign policy as he threatened to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.

The president’s decision to embrace the tongue-in-cheek term illustrates a disturbing reality of his foreign policy: Any notion that he is promoting an ideological vision is a joke.

The truth is Trump is pursuing an increasingly aggressive and militaristic foreign policy in his second term, not because he wants to impose a grand vision, but because he has discovered he can get away with it.

Striking a variety of foreign “bad guys” who have little capacity to fight back – ISIL (ISIS) affiliates in Nigeria who are “persecuting” Christians and “narcoterrorists” in Latin America – appeals to members of Trump’s base.

After he mentioned the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua during Saturday’s news conference, he went on a minutes-long tangent to brag about his military interventions into US cities. While the president’s inability to stay on topic may be concerning for those questioning his health and mental fitness, this digression into domestic affairs had some relevance for his Venezuelan intervention, at least as far as he was concerned: His increasingly militarised war on drugs and crime abroad justifies an increasingly militarised war on drugs and crime at home.

Past presidents have used US power to pursue a wide variety of ideologies and principles. Trump appears to be paying lip service to past ideologies to justify the use of US power. Many times, the “good” intentions of previous  presidents paved the way to hellish outcomes for the peoples who found themselves on the receiving end of US intervention. But those intentions at least created a level of predictability and consistency for the foreign policies of various US administrations.

Trump, by contrast, seems driven solely by immediate political concerns and short-term prospects for glory and profit. If there is a saving grace of such an unprincipled foreign policy, it may be the ephemeral nature of interventions conducted without an overarching vision. An unprincipled approach to military intervention does not foster the kind of ideological commitment that has led other presidents to engage in long-term interventions like the Iraq occupation.

But it also means that Trump could conceivably use military intervention to settle any international dispute or to pursue any ostensibly profitable goal – say assuming control of Greenland from Denmark.

Last year, he decided tariffs were a potent tool for asserting his interests and started applying them almost indiscriminately on allies and adversaries alike. Now that Trump has grown comfortable using the US military to achieve a range of goals – profit, gunboat diplomacy, distraction from domestic scandals, etc – the danger is that he will grow similarly haphazard in his use of force.

That does not bode well for the US nor for the rest of the world. At a time when multiple global crises are overlapping – climate, conflict and impoverishment – the last thing the world needs is a trigger-happy superpower without a clear strategy or a day-after plan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Former Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez, discusses how Colombia’s could play a supporting role in Venezuela transition after the abduction of Nicolas Maduro. US President Donald Trump has threatened military action against Colombia, accusing its government of making and selling cocaine to the United States.

The move comes after star Bangladesh fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman was dropped by his IPL team on the BCCI’s directives.

Bangladesh’s interim government has banned broadcast ‍of this ‍year’s Indian Premier League (IPL), the latest flashpoint in a growing row with neighbouring India, which has now extended to cricket ties between the two nations.

The move follows the decision by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to have the Kolkata Knight Riders drop Bangladesh pacer Mustafizur Rahman, ​who had signed for the IPL franchise for ‍this season.

The unceremonious dumping of a “star player” like Mustafizur from the IPL “defied logic” and had “hurt people”, the country’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said in a statement explaining its decision.

Bangladesh have also refused to play their matches of next month’s Twenty20 (T20) World Cup in India, demanding that those ‍be staged ⁠in Sri Lanka, co-host of the 20-team tournament.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board’s directors met in an emergency meeting on Sunday and confirmed their decision shortly afterwards.

“Following a thorough assessment of the prevailing situation and the growing concerns regarding the safety and security of the Bangladesh contingent in India and considering the advice from the Bangladesh Government, the board of directors resolved that the Bangladesh national team will not travel to India for the tournament under the current conditions,” it said.

“The board believes that such a step is necessary to safeguard the safety and wellbeing of Bangladeshi players, team officials, Board members and other stakeholders and to ensure that the team can participate in the tournament in a secure and appropriate environment,” the statement added, urging the ICC to take swift action.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has not publicly responded to Bangladesh’s ‌demand to play World Cup matches in Sri Lanka.

Tensions have risen ‌in recent weeks between India ⁠and Bangladesh.

Following the protests, the Indian board asked ‍Knight Riders to drop Mustafizur.

The IPL, the ​world’s richest T20 league, is scheduled ‌from March 26 to May 31.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is to appear in a New York court on Monday, two days after he was abducted by US special forces in a military operation in Caracas.

The US military arrested Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on Saturday and brought them to New York, where they face multiple federal charges, including drugs and weapons charges.

Here is more about Maduro’s scheduled court appearance:

When and where will it take place?

Maduro is to appear before a federal judge at noon (17:00 GMT).

The appearance is scheduled to happen in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in the Southern District of New York. Maduro is to appear before US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.

A court spokesperson told NBC News that Flores, who is also listed as a defendant in a US indictment unsealed on Saturday, will appear in court on Monday as well.

What are the charges?

According to the indictment, the US accuses Maduro of being at the forefront of corruption to “use his illegally obtained authority” to “transport thousands of tons of cocaine” to the US with his coconspirators.

Additionally, the indictment alleges that Maduro has “tarnished” every public office he has held. It adds that Maduro “allows cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, for the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members”.

Maduro faces four counts:

• Count 1, narcoterrorism conspiracy: US prosecutors say Maduro and his coconspirators knowingly provided something of financial value to US-designated “foreign terrorist organizations” and their members. The indictment lists these organisations as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftist rebel group that signed a peace deal in 2016 but has dissidents who refused to lay down their arms and are still involved in the drug trade; Segunda Marquetalia, the largest dissident FARC group; National Liberation Army, another leftist Colombian rebel group; Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel; Los Zetas/Cartel del Noreste, another Mexican drug cartel; and Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang.
• Count 2, cocaine importation conspiracy: It accuses Maduro and his codefendants of conspiring to manufacture, distribute and import cocaine into the US.
• Count 3, possession of machineguns and destructive devices: The indictment accuses the defendants of possessing, carrying and using machineguns in relation to the above drug‑trafficking counts.
• Count 4, conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices: It further accuses the defendants of conspiring to use, carry and possess those weapons in furtherance of drug trafficking.

The indictment also says Maduro and his codefendants should forfeit to the US government any proceeds and assets obtained from the alleged crimes.

Is there evidence for these charges?

There is little evidence that drugs are trafficked from Venezuela on a large scale. The 2023 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report said global cocaine production hit a record of 3,708 tonnes, up nearly one‑third from 2022, with most coca cultivation taking place in Colombia, followed by Peru and Bolivia.

Trafficking routes into the US in 2023-2024 primarily passed through Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, not Venezuela, although it does serve as a minor transit corridor for Colombian cocaine moving into the eastern Caribbean.

Who is named in the indictment?

Maduro

Maduro, 63, who became Venezuela’s president in 2013, was declared the winner of 2024’s election. His re-election was rejected as fraudulent by the US and independent observers, such as the Carter Center. A UN expert panel said the 2024 vote failed to meet international standards.

Nine Latin American countries called for a review of the results with independent oversight.

Maduro defended the election results and accused his opponents of undermining the country’s sovereignty.

Since returning to the White House nearly a year ago, US President Donald Trump has expanded sanctions and punitive measures against Maduro and senior officials in his government.

The Trump administration ramped up military pressure starting in August when it deployed warships and thousand of its service members in the Caribbean near Venezuela. It has since carried out dozens of air strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats, killing more than 100 people.

Maduro has pushed back by mobilising Venezuelan military personnel.

During this time, the Caracas-based news network Globovision quoted Maduro as saying: “From the north, the empire has gone mad and, like a rotten rehash, has renewed its threats to the peace and stability of Venezuela.”

But a day before Saturday’s US attack on the country, Maduro had offered to hold talks to combat drug trafficking.

Flores

Flores, 69, has been married to Maduro since 2013.

Known as the “first combatant” rather than first lady, Flores is a veteran lawyer and politician who rose to prominence by defending future President Hugo Chavez after his failed 1992 coup. She helped secure his release and later became a key Chavismo figure and the first woman to preside over Venezuela’s National Assembly. Chavismo, which promotes socialism and anti-imperialist politics, is the political movement started by Chavez, Maduro’s mentor.

The indictment accuses Flores of joining Maduro’s cocaine importation conspiracy.

Other defendants

The indictment names four other people as Maduro’s coconspirators, namely Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s interior minister; Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, former Venezuelan interior minister; Nicolas Maduro Guerra, Maduro’s son and a Venezuelan politician; and Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the leader of Tren de Aragua, which was designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” by the US in February. But most experts do not define Tren de Aragua as a “terrorist organisation”.

It is not clear yet who will represent Maduro, Flores and the other defendants.

Who is the judge?

Hellerstein was born in 1933 in New York. He was appointed to the federal bench in 1998 by former President Bill Clinton.

He is likely on Monday to advise Maduro and Flores about their rights and ask them if they want to enter a plea.

What’s at stake?

Maduro’s freedom is primarily at stake. If convicted, he could face 30 years to life in prison.

“This is less about Maduro as it is about access to Venezuela’s oil deposits,” Ilias Bantekas, a professor of transnational law at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera. “This is the number one target. Trump is not content with just allowing US oil firms to get concessions but to ‘run’ the country, which entails absolute and indefinite control over Venezuela’s resources.”

Venezuela’s oil reserves are concentrated primarily in the Orinoco Belt, a region in the eastern part of the country stretching across roughly 55,000sq km (21,235sq miles).

While the country is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves – at an estimated 303 billion barrels as of 2023 – it earns only a fraction of the revenue it once did from exporting crude due to mismanagement and US sanctions.

Last month, Trump accused Venezuela in a post on his Truth Social platform of “stealing” US oil, land and other assets and using that oil to fund crime, “terrorism” and human trafficking.

Trump repeated his false claims after Maduro’s arrest. During a news conference on Saturday, Trump said the US would “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be carried out.

“Given the opposition of all South American states, save for Argentina, to US dominance in the region, Trump’s plan requires a vast military deployment. We need to see how countries like Brazil and Colombia react to this, including also BRICS,” said Bantekas from Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

In a joint statement released on Sunday, the governments of Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay said the US actions in Venezuela “constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and endanger the civilian population”.

Was Maduro’s abduction legal?

This case is unusual because there are questions about how Maduro was captured and whether it was legal. Russia, China and other Venezuelan allies have accused the US of violating international law.

“If there was an armed conflict between Venezuela and the USA and, given that Maduro is the head of his country’s armed forces, then he would be a legitimate target,” Bantekas said.

“However, under the circumstances there is no armed conflict between the two countries and in the absence of an armed attack by Venezuela against the US, the latter’s invasion in Venezuela violates article 2(4) of the UN Charter, as does the abduction of the country’s President. It is a blatant act of aggression.”

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter bars UN members from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

A United Nations Security Council meeting on Monday will determine the legality of the US abduction of Maduro.

“Given that Maduro is already in US custody and in the USA, it is in the interests of all parties that he appear before a court. At the very least, Maduro can challenge the legality of his arrest and the jurisdiction of the court,” Bantekas said.

“The court itself has an obligation to decide if it has jurisdiction and as a preliminary issue decide whether Maduro enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution. If these issues are dispensed the court nonetheless finds that it has jurisdiction and that Maduro does not enjoy immunity, then the prosecutor must prove its case.”

What’s next?

The Trump administration has not explicitly stated a clear plan for Venezuela, with analysts saying the administration has sent out confusing signals.

In an interview with the NBC news channels on Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Washington will not govern Venezuela on a day-to-day basis besides enforcing an existing “oil quarantine”.

Rubio told ABC news on Sunday that the US had leverage over Venezuela and the US would “set the conditions” to ensure that Venezuela is no longer a “narco-trafficking paradise”.

But on Sunday, Trump told reporters that the US is ready to carry out a second military strike on Venezuela if its government refuses to cooperate with his plan to ‘resolve’ the situation there.

She could “pay a very big price” if she “does not do what’s right”, Trump said, refering Venezuela’s new leader, Delcy Rodriguez.

During his Saturday conference, Trump said that Rodriguez told Rubio that she will do what the US needs her to. “She really doesn’t have a choice,” Trump had said.

In his first press conference after Maduro’s illegal abduction on Saturday, Trump ruled out the possibility of working with opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running in the 2024 presidential elections.

Machado, a member of the Venezuelan National Assembly, is seen as the most credible adversary of Maduro’s leftist government.

On Monday, Rodriguez, the interim leader, offered to cooperate with Trump. In a statement posted on social media, she invited Trump to “collaborate” and sought “respectful relations”.

“President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war,” she wrote.

Her conciliatory tone came a day after she appeared on state TV declaring that Maduro was still Venezuela’s sole legitimate president.

Last week, a prominent Saudi Sheikh, Mohammed Al-Issa, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its liberation, which signalled the end of the Nazi Holocaust. Although dozens of Muslim scholars have visited the site, where about one million Jews were killed during World War Two, according to the Auschwitz Memorial Centre’s press office, Al-Issa is the most senior Muslim religious leader to do so.

Visiting Auschwitz is not a problem for a Muslim; Islam orders Muslims to reject unjustified killing of any human being, no matter what their faith is. Al-Issa is a senior ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who apparently cares little for the sanctity of human life, though, and the visit to Auschwitz has very definite political connotations beyond any Islamic context.

By sending Al-Issa to the camp, Bin Salman wanted to show his support for Israel, which exploits the Holocaust for geopolitical colonial purposes. “The Israeli government decided that it alone was permitted to mark the 75th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Auschwitz [in modern day Poland] in 1945,” wrote journalist Richard Silverstein recently when he commented on the gathering of world leaders in Jerusalem for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Holocaust event.

READ: Next up, a Saudi embassy in Jerusalem 

Bin Salman uses Al Issa for such purposes, as if to demonstrate his own Zionist credentials. For example, the head of the Makkah-based Muslim World League is leading rapprochement efforts with Evangelical Christians who are, in the US at least, firm Zionists in their backing for the state of Israel. Al-Issa has called for a Muslim-Christian-Jewish interfaith delegation to travel to Jerusalem in what would, in effect, be a Zionist troika.

Zionism is not a religion, and there are many non-Jewish Zionists who desire or support the establishment of a Jewish state in occupied Palestine. The definition of Zionism does not mention the religion of its supporters, and Israeli writer Sheri Oz, is just one author who insists that non-Jews can be Zionists.

Mohammad Bin Salman and Netanyahu – Cartoon [Tasnimnews.com/Wikipedia]

We should not be shocked, therefore, to see a Zionist Muslim leader in these trying times. It is reasonable to say that Bin Salman’s grandfather and father were Zionists, as close friends of Zionist leaders. Logic suggests that Bin Salman comes from a Zionist dynasty.

This has been evident from his close relationship with Zionists and positive approaches to the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, calling it “[the Jews’] ancestral homeland”. This means that he has no issue with the ethnic cleansing of almost 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, during which thousands were killed and their homes demolished in order to establish the Zionist state of Israel.

“The ‘Jewish state’ claim is how Zionism has tried to mask its intrinsic Apartheid, under the veil of a supposed ‘self-determination of the Jewish people’,” wrote Israeli blogger Jonathan Ofir in Mondoweiss in 2018, “and for the Palestinians it has meant their dispossession.”

As the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Bin Salman has imprisoned dozens of Palestinians, including representatives of Hamas. In doing so he is serving Israel’s interests. Moreover, he has blamed the Palestinians for not making peace with the occupation state. Bin Salman “excoriated the Palestinians for missing key opportunities,” wrote Danial Benjamin in Moment magazine. He pointed out that the prince’s father, King Salman, has played the role of counterweight by saying that Saudi Arabia “permanently stands by Palestine and its people’s right to an independent state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital.”

UN expert: Saudi crown prince behind hack on Amazon CEO 

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid of Israel’s Channel 13 News reported Bin Salman as saying: “In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed one opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given. It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.” This is reminiscent of the words of the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, one of the Zionist founders of Israel, that the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Bin Salman’s Zionism is also very clear in his bold support for US President Donald Trump’s deal of the century, which achieves Zionist goals in Palestine at the expense of Palestinian rights. He participated in the Bahrain conference, the forum where the economic side of the US deal was announced, where he gave “cover to several other Arab countries to attend the event and infuriated the Palestinians.”

US President Donald Trump looks over at Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud as they line up for the family photo during the opening day of Argentina G20 Leaders’ Summit 2018 at Costa Salguero on 30 November 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina [Daniel Jayo/Getty Images]

While discussing the issue of the current Saudi support for Israeli policies and practices in Palestine with a credible Palestinian official last week, he told me that the Palestinians had contacted the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to ask him not to relocate his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. “The Saudis have been putting pressure on us in order to relocate our embassy to Jerusalem,” replied the Brazilian leader. What more evidence of Mohammad Bin Salman’s Zionism do we need?

The founder of Friends of Zion Museum is American Evangelical Christian Mike Evans. He said, after visiting a number of the Gulf States, that, “The leaders [there] are more pro-Israel than a lot of Jews.” This was a specific reference to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and his counterpart in the UAE, Mohammed Bin Zayed.

“All versions of Zionism lead to the same reactionary end of unbridled expansionism and continued settler colonial genocide of [the] Palestinian people,” Israeli-American writer and photographer Yoav Litvin wrote for Al Jazeera. We may well see an Israeli Embassy opened in Riyadh in the near future, and a Saudi Embassy in Tel Aviv or, more likely, Jerusalem. Is Mohammad Bin Salman a Zionist? There’s no doubt about it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

I listened to the January 3 press conference with a knot in my stomach. As a Venezuelan American with family, memories, and a living connection to the country being spoken about as if it were a possession, what I heard was very clear. And that clarity was chilling.

The president said, plainly, that the United States would “run the country” until a transition it deems “safe” and “judicious.” He spoke about capturing Venezuela’s head of state, about transporting him on a U.S. military vessel, about administering Venezuela temporarily, and about bringing in U.S. oil companies to rebuild the industry. He dismissed concerns about international reaction with a phrase that should alarm everyone: “They understand this is our hemisphere.”

For Venezuelans, those words echo a long, painful history.

Let’s be clear about the claims made. The president is asserting that the U.S. can detain a sitting foreign president and his spouse under U.S. criminal law. That the U.S. can administer another sovereign country without an international mandate. That Venezuela’s political future can be decided from Washington. That control over oil and “rebuilding” is a legitimate byproduct of intervention. That all of this can happen without congressional authorization and without evidence of imminent threat.

We have heard this language before. In Iraq, the United States promised a limited intervention and a temporary administration, only to impose years of occupation, seize control of critical infrastructure, and leave behind devastation and instability. What was framed as stewardship became domination. Venezuela is now being spoken about in disturbingly similar terms. “Temporary Administration” ended up being a permanent disaster.

Under international law, nothing described in that press conference is legal. The UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against another state and bars interference in a nation’s political independence. Sanctions designed to coerce political outcomes and cause civilian suffering amount to collective punishment. Declaring the right to “run” another country is the language of occupation, regardless of how many times the word is avoided.

Under U.S. law, the claims are just as disturbing. War powers belong to Congress. There has been no authorization, no declaration, no lawful process that allows an executive to seize a foreign head of state or administer a country. Calling this “law enforcement” does not make it so. Venezuela poses no threat to the United States. It has not attacked the U.S. and has issued no threat that could justify the use of force under U.S. or international law. There is no lawful basis, domestic or international, for what is being asserted.

But beyond law and precedent lies the most important reality: the cost of this aggression is paid by ordinary people in Venezuela. War, sanctions, and military escalation do not fall evenly. They fall hardest on women, children, the elderly, and the poor. They mean shortages of medicine and food, disrupted healthcare systems, rising maternal and infant mortality, and the daily stress of survival in a country forced to live under siege. They also mean preventable deaths,  people who die not because of natural disaster or inevitability, but because access to care, electricity, transport, or medicine has been deliberately obstructed. Every escalation compounds existing harm and increases the likelihood of loss of life, civilian deaths that will be written off as collateral, even though they were foreseeable and avoidable.

What makes this even more dangerous is the assumption underlying it all: that Venezuelans will remain passive, compliant, and submissive in the face of humiliation and force. That assumption is wrong. And when it collapses, as it inevitably will, the cost will be measured in unnecessary bloodshed.  This is what is erased when a country is discussed as a “transition” or an “administration problem.” Human beings disappear. Lives are reduced to acceptable losses. And the violence that follows is framed as unfortunate rather than the predictable outcome of arrogance and coercion.

To hear a U.S. president talk about a country as something to be managed, stabilized, and handed over once it behaves properly, it hurts. It humiliates. And it enrages.

And yes, Venezuela is not politically unified. It isn’t. It never has been. There are deep divisions, about the government, about the economy, about leadership, about the future. There are people who identify as Chavista, people who are fiercely anti-Chavista, people who are exhausted and disengaged, and yes, there are some who are celebrating what they believe might finally bring change.

But political division does not invite invasion. 

Latin America has seen this logic before. In Chile, internal political division was used to justify U.S. intervention, framed as a response to “ungovernability,” instability, and threats to regional order, ending not in democracy, but in dictatorship, repression, and decades of trauma.

In fact, many Venezuelans who oppose the government still reject this moment outright. They understand that bombs, sanctions, and “transitions” imposed from abroad do not bring democracy, they destroy the conditions that make it possible. 

This moment demands political maturity, not purity tests. You can oppose Maduro and still oppose U.S. aggression. You can want change and still reject foreign control. You can be angry, desperate, or hopeful, and still say no to being governed by another country.

Venezuela is a country where communal councils, worker organizations, neighborhood collectives, and social movements have been forged under pressure. Political education didn’t come from think tanks; it came from survival. Right now, Venezuelans are not hiding. They are closing ranks because they recognize the pattern. They know what it means when foreign leaders start talking about “transitions” and “temporary control.” They know what usually follows. And they are responding the way they always have: by turning fear into collective action.

This press conference wasn’t just about Venezuela. It was about whether empire can say the quiet part out loud again, whether it can openly claim the right to govern other nations and expect the world to shrug.

If this stands, the lesson is brutal and undeniable: sovereignty is conditional, resources are there to be taken by the U.S., and democracy exists only by imperial consent.

As a Venezuelan American, I refuse that lesson.

I refuse the idea that my tax dollars fund the humiliation of my homeland. I refuse the lie that war and coercion are acts of “care” for the Venezuelan people. And I refuse to stay silent while a country I love is spoken about as raw material for U.S. interests, not a society of human beings deserving respect.

Venezuela’s future is not for U.S. officials, corporate boards, or any president who believes the hemisphere is his to command. It belongs to Venezuelans.

Michelle Ellner is a Latin America campaign coordinator of CODEPINK. She was born in Venezuela and holds a bachelor’s degree in languages and international affairs from the University La Sorbonne Paris IV, in Paris. After graduating, she worked for an international scholarship program out of offices in Caracas and Paris and was sent to Haiti, Cuba, The Gambia, and other countries for the purpose of evaluating and selecting applicants.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Following overnight U.S. airstrikes on Caracas, the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro, and President Donald Trump’s declaration that Washington will take control of Venezuela’s oil and effectively run the country, analysts Steve Ellner and Ricardo Vaz warn that the operation constitutes an unlawful use of force.

They cite the combination of military assault, extraterritorial abduction, resource seizure, and alleged extrajudicial killings at sea as violations of international law and Venezuelan sovereignty.

Events in Yemen are escalating quickly and dramatically, reaching the point of armed clashes erupting between the Arab coalition supporting the internationally recognised government in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, and the so‑called “Southern Transitional Council” (STC), backed by the United Arab Emirates.

Many view these developments as a natural outcome of a long, cumulative trajectory of complexities the country has experienced since the civil war erupted in late 2014, and the humanitarian and economic repercussions that followed.

External interventions had a profound impact in creating political and administrative chaos that intensified internal divisions and exposed what remained of the legitimate state to further weakness, culminating in the loss of its most important sovereign tools: unity of territory and decision-making. These developments and events add further complexity to an already complex picture, and Yemen will not be safe from their future repercussions.

On the other hand, others view the situation from another, less bleak angle. The strong reaction to the STC’s moves — on the part of the Yemeni president (chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, or PLC) and, behind him, the Saudi‑led Arab coalition — is a new and important variable, completely different from the usual approach to many similar events. So, there is hope that these events and changes will mark a new phase that works to correct the imbalances and deviations that accompanied the Arab coalition’s intervention over more than a decade.

Watching carefully are the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen, who have remained silent, apparently waiting to see what these events will produce as they continue to strike at the unity of the components of the Arab coalition’s leadership and undermine the legitimate government. In any case, they realise that the eventual outcome will ultimately be in their favour. Therefore, the Houthis, according to multiple reports, are currently intensifying their military preparations, redeploying and dispersing their forces along the theatre of operations adjacent to contact points on the fronts: the northeast (Marib), and the southwest in Taiz and Bab al-Mandeb, preparing for zero hour.

So, what is the nature and background of this bilateral conflict between allies? Where have these events and developments led Yemen, and where will they lead it? And what are their implications for the future of the country and the region?

There is broad agreement that what is happening today is merely an initial result of a deep internal conflict of interests between the two main coalition states — Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Although most of this conflict remained hidden, its accumulations continued to roll and grow like a snowball.

To understand how matters reached this point of an explosion of conflict between allies, we must first understand the background of this rivalry and conflict.

In late March 2015, Saudi Arabia led a coalition of 10 Arab and Muslim countries to intervene militarily in Yemen — later it was called the Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen, with the aim of restoring the authority of Yemen’s former legitimate president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, from the grip of the Houthi coup forces.

At the outset, the coalition achieved major, tangible successes on the ground before differences began to emerge between the two main allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

There is a widespread and well‑grounded belief that the UAE entered this war with a plan to achieve purely geopolitical and strategic interests. Some argue, however, that this was not necessarily the case at the beginning, but that it may later have turned to exploiting weakness, vacuum, and internal divisions in order to redraw its strategy anew in light of that.

On the ground, the UAE formed, trained, and financed local forces loyal to it, using them to achieve its own objectives, away from the coalition and the legitimate government. Within just two years of its intervention, it managed — through its own local forces — to impose control over all strategic maritime outlets along southern and eastern Yemen, reaching the western coast of Taiz governorate in the country’s southwest, where the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait lies.

Over 10 years of the coalition’s intervention, the UAE established and built a hard-hitting army of its own militias, becoming the strongest force on the ground and the greatest threat to the interests of its ally (Saudi Arabia) in Yemen, including the system and the legitimate government that it had supported and sponsored from the outset. It can be affirmed that Riyadh committed fatal strategic mistakes in dealing with these deviations, remaining silent and failing to take decisive action on the ground to curb its ally’s overreach — perhaps settling for minor protective measures, and often acting merely as a “mediator” to resolve disputes that flared up from time to time — until the axe finally struck the head.

Military escalation

In early December, the STC, which was founded and backed by the UAE, triggered a military escalation by seizing control of the governorates of Hadramout and al-Mahra in eastern Yemen. This angered Saudi Arabia and pushed it out of its usual diplomacy and calm. Many may interpret this major shift in its policy as stemming from the fact that it views these two eastern governorates bordering it as a geographic extension of its national security, and that any compromise to their security constitutes a direct threat to its national security, something Riyadh stated explicitly in its recent statements issued in the wake of the crisis.

Accordingly, the head of the PLC dealt with these developments with great seriousness, describing them as unacceptable “unilateral measures”. Under the authority granted by the Power Transfer Declaration (April 2022), he called on the Saudi-led Arab coalition to intervene militarily.

The next day, coalition aircraft struck military equipment that had arrived on two ships from the UAE’s Fujairah port to the port of Mukalla in Hadramout. In response, Yemeni President Rashad al-Alimi declared a state of emergency and called on the UAE to end its presence in Yemen. Later that day, the UAE Ministry of Defence announced the withdrawal of what remained of its forces in Yemen (the UAE had previously announced in October 2019 that it was withdrawing its forces from Yemen).

The military escalation led to major, rapidly unfolding military and political repercussions, particularly after the STC continued to refuse to heed calls and threats by the coalition leadership and the Yemeni president to withdraw its forces from the two governorates.

Someone could ask: Why does the STC refuse to withdraw its forces despite the threats and successive strikes? The answer is that doing so would deal a powerful blow to its secessionist project. Clearly, the council’s takeover of these two governorates — both of which reject its project — raised broad hopes among southern separatists of declaring their state, but Saudi Arabia’s decisive intervention (in the name of the Arab coalition) dealt a crushing blow to that project.

Escalation and repercussions

With the start of the new year, government ground forces — formed by the Yemeni president through a presidential decision on January 27, 2023 under the name Homeland Shield, with Saudi support — began moving towards Hadramout and al-Mahra (east) to liberate them from STC forces, under air cover and support from coalition aircraft, and liberation and control operations began. In response, forces from the UAE-backed Giants Brigades, coming from Taiz’s western coast, moved towards Hadramout governorate to reinforce and support STC forces.

Amid the accelerating escalation and its repercussions, the head of the STC, Aidarous al-Zubaidi — also a member of the PLC — moved quickly to issue what he called a “constitutional declaration” (January 2, 2026), in which he announced what he termed the independent “State of the Arab South”, during a two-year transitional period.

While the country’s official institutions at the national, regional, and global levels have so far ignored this declaration, many Yemenis dealt with it ambivalently, each according to their affiliations and loyalties.

For the Southern separatists, they expressed overwhelming joy at the announcement of their state, while their opponents mocked the move as a leap over reality, an attempt to escape forward over facts and local and international laws and regulations. Some considered it merely a desperate attempt to rid the council of the pressure of promises it had made to those dreaming of secession, at a time when it became evident that secession was no longer easy after the recent events and developments.

Regardless of interpretations, even if this declaration has no legal effect, its political, economic, and administrative impacts will not be easy, whether in terms of deepening divisions among Yemen’s elite and the public (North-South), preserving the legal standing of the Yemeni state, or even the continuity of managing the fragile state.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, its dangerous repercussions for the main battle to restore the state and relieve Yemenis from the consequences of a decade of war and state collapse.

Clearly, the Yemeni scene is becoming more complex, with events accelerating, positions erupting, and reactions escalating. No one knows precisely where developments in Yemen are headed.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Russia’s Defence Ministry had published a video of a downed drone it said Ukraine had launched at Putin’s residence, which Kyiv rejected.

United States President Donald Trump has dismissed claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence had been attacked by Ukraine as the war grinds on, saying he did not “believe that strike happened”, after having initially accepted the Kremlin’s version of events at face value.

On Sunday night, Trump, on board Air Force One, told reporters that “nobody knew at that moment” whether a report about the alleged incident was accurate. He added that “something” happened near Putin’s residence, but after US officials reviewed the evidence, they did not believe Ukraine targeted it.

Ukraine immediately denied its involvement, accusing Russia of a false-flag type operation to undermine peace negotiations. Moscow promptly said the incident would harden its peace talks stance.

Reports of the attack emerged last week after Russia’s Ministry of Defence published a video of a downed drone it said Kyiv had launched at Putin’s residence in the Novgorod region.

According to the ministry, the residence was not damaged, and Putin was elsewhere at the time.

Alongside Ukraine, its Western allies also heavily disputed that the attack had occurred at all.

The claim of the attack came as Russia and Ukraine work towards agreeing to a ceasefire deal to end the nearly four-year-long war.

European leaders are expected to meet in France on Tuesday for further talks on a US-backed ceasefire plan, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was “90 percent ready”. Territorial issues over ceding land conquered in war or not remain at the heart of the matter.

First civilian deaths in Kyiv in 2026

Ukraine’s authorities reported on Monday morning that an overnight Russian attack on the Kyiv region had killed two people, in the first casualties in the capital in 2026.

According to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, the Russian attack set a medical facility in the Obolonskyi district in Kyiv’s northern sector, where an inpatient ward was operating, on fire.

The service said once the fire was extinguished, a body was found inside. A woman was also injured, and 25 people were evacuated, the service added on Telegram.

Towns and villages across the Kyiv region were also damaged and critical infrastructure hit, leading to the killing of a man in his 70s in the Fastiv district, southwest of the capital, Governor Mykola Kalashnyk said on Telegram.

Kalashnyk added that small parts of the region were left without power.

Russia has not commented on the overnight strike yet.

It was his 26th birthday, so Wilmer Castro was not surprised by the flurry of messages that lit up his phone.

However, as he began scrolling on Saturday morning, he realised the messages were not birthday wishes, but news of something he had long hoped for: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had been removed from power.

“I think it is the best gift that I will ever receive, one I will never forget,” the university student said from Ejido.

Castro told Al Jazeera that he was so elated by the news that he began daydreaming about his future self recounting the story of Maduro’s fall to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“I will tell them that on January 3, 2026, a dictator fell, and [that moment] is going to be very beautiful.”

The abduction of Venezuela’s long-time authoritarian leader – and his wife – by the United States followed months of escalating tensions between the two countries, including US strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels and the deployment of US ships near Venezuela’s coastal waters.

But by Sunday morning, Castro’s initial jubilation was clouded by a heavy quiet. The weight of uncertainty brought the city to a sombre pause, one that closed in on him and felt unlike anything he had experienced before.

“It’s like being in a field with nothing else around. It’s a mournful silence; I can’t describe it,” he said.

That uncertainty was felt by many Venezuelans on Sunday morning.

Venezuela has had a socialist government since 1999, first under President Hugo Chavez and later Maduro, a period that began with oil-funded social programmes but unravelled into economic mismanagement, corruption and repression – with international sanctions further squeezing the population.

Momentum around the 2024 presidential election raised hopes that the opposition alliance would take control. But when Maduro declared victory, despite opposition claims of a landslide win for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a crackdown on dissent followed. It left many Venezuelans concluding that any real transition might depend on pressure — or even intervention — from outside the country.

‘Deathly silence’

In southeastern Caracas on Saturday, 54-year-old Edward Ocariz was jolted awake by a loud crash and the vibrating windows of his home near the Fort Tiuna military barracks. He thought it was an earthquake, but when he looked outside, he saw unfamiliar helicopters flying low above smoke rising in the city.

“The noise kept coming,” he said. “I could immediately tell the helicopters were not Venezuelan because I had never seen them here.”

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.

“There was a deathly silence,” Ocariz said, adding that the brief suspension of mobile phone services and power outages contributed to the silence. “We were waiting to understand what was happening.”

Fear accompanied the fragments of information that did manage to seep through, Ocariz said. “But it was a fear mixed with joy – tremendous joy. It’s hard to explain.”

On Sunday, when images of a blindfolded and handcuffed Maduro began circulating, Ocariz reflected on the suffering he had endured under the president’s regime.

The human rights activist said he was wrongfully charged with “terrorism” and spent nearly five months as a political prisoner in Tocuyito prison, a maximum-security facility in Carabobo state.

Under Maduro, the country had a long history of jailing those who dissent. After the disputed 2024 election, nearly 2,500 protesters, human rights activists, journalists and opposition figures were arrested. While some were later released, others remain behind bars.

“I felt satisfied. A process of justice is finally beginning,” Ocariz said, fully aware that Maduro will not have to endure the dire prison conditions he did, or be denied food and legal representation.

Despite the joy he and other Venezuelans now feel, Ocariz warns that much remains to be done.

“The population still feels a huge amount of fear [from the authorities] — psychological fear — because it’s well known how the police and justice system use their power to criminalise whoever they choose.”

So far, key institutions remain in the hands of figures from Nicolas Maduro’s inner circle, including Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who has been named acting president.

But for many Venezuelans — including Castro and Ocariz — seeing a senior Chavista figure still in power is unsettling, particularly as the Trump administration continues to engage with her.

“It is certainly frustrating for me. However, I understand that Venezuela needs to continue with its administrative, functional, and operational management as a country, as a nation,” Ocariz said, adding that the US must maintain some order to control the power vacuum and stamp out repression.

Economic concerns

Venezuela remains heavily militarised, and fears of further unrest linger. During periods of dissent, the authorities relied not only on formal security forces but also on “colectivos”, armed civilian groups accused by rights organisations of intimidation and violence.

Jose Chalhoub, an energy and political risk analyst at Jose Parejo & Associates in Caracas, said he is concerned about the possibility of more attacks and social unrest.

“Any potential new government that will move ahead with the cleansing of the top ranks of the armed forces and security and police forces will lead to the disarmament of the colectivos,” he said, adding that fixing the lingering economic crisis should also be one of the main priorities.

“A new government that applies quick economic measures leading to a recovery will outshine the ideological legacy of the Bolivarian revolution,” he said, referring to the ideology of Chavismo, defined by anti-imperialism, patriotism and socialism.

Those loyal to Maduro have long blamed Venezuela’s economic woes on the US — namely, the sanctions it imposed on the oil sector.

Chalhoub said he believed Trump’s promise to boost the country’s oil production could help the economy, though he found the US president’s assertion that the US will “run the country” baffling.

However, not everyone is happy with the Trump administration’s attack.

Alex Rajoy, a mototaxi driver in Caracas, said the US president was on an imperialist crusade with the goal of “robbing” Venezuela of its natural resources.

Despite his anger, Rajoy said he will stay home over the coming days because he is fearful of further attacks.

“These missiles aren’t aimed only at Chavistas,” he said, referring to those loyal to Venezuela’s socialist ideology.

“They threaten opposition people, too,” he said, adding that anyone supporting foreign intervention amounts to a betrayal. “It’s treason against the homeland,” he said.

What now?

For Castro, the university student, the elation he felt on Saturday has been interrupted by fear for his immediate needs – concerns over whether stores would remain open in Ejido and rising costs. Under Maduro, he has long struggled to afford basic items.

“People in the street were going crazy yesterday,” he said. “Everyone was buying food with half of what they had in their bank accounts, buying what they could, because we don’t know what the future holds.”

The scenes brought back memories of the shortages of 2016, when hyperinflation and scarcity plunged the country into crisis, forcing people to queue for hours and rush between shops with limits on how much each person could buy.

But a day after the attack, Castro said Venezuelans are reflecting on the future of their country and the uncertainty of that future.

“There’s happiness, there’s fear, there’s gratitude, there’s the ‘what will happen next?’” he said. “For my next birthday, I want total freedom for Venezuela – and hopefully, God willing, we will have it.”

Caracas, January 4, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The governments of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and Spain issued a joint statement Sunday rejecting “unilateral US actions in Venezuelan territory.”

“These actions contravene basic principles of international law and represent a very dangerous precedent for peace and regional security,” the communique read.

The joint statement followed widespread regional and global condemnation of Washington’s January 3 strikes against Venezuelan military sites and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.

The countries went on to issue calls for dialogue and urged the United Nations secretary general and member states to help “de-escalate tensions and preserve peace.” 

In response to US President Donald Trump’s claim that he would “run” Venezuela, the signatories expressed concern over “attempts at foreign government control or seizure of natural resources.” However, the declaration made no mention of Maduro nor called for his release.

The diplomatic response to the US attacks also included an emergency summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean nations (CELAC), held on Sunday, January 4. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil decried the US actions as blatant violations of international law and the United Nations Charter.

“The US has violated the personal immunity of a sitting head of state,” Gil told regional leaders in the conference call. “Kidnapping a president is kidnapping a people’s sovereignty.”

Venezuela’s top diplomat urged CELAC member-states to “take a step forward,” warning that silence would amount to acceptance of Washington’s unilateral acts.

A number of countries, including Venezuelan allies Russia and China, have forcefully denounced the US military operation. In a Sunday statement, Beijing charged Washington with a “clear violation of international law” and called for Maduro and Flores’ “immediate release.”

The UN Security Council is scheduled to hold an emergency session on Monday.

For her part, Venezuela Vice President and now acting Interim President Delcy Rodríguez reiterated demands for Maduro’s release and vowed that the country would not submit “to any empire.” Rodríguez held a press conference Saturday afternoon and confirmed the enactment of a decree establishing a “state of external commotion.” The instrument grants the executive additional tools, including the ability to mobilize troops or restrict civil liberties, for a period of 90 days that can be extended.

On Saturday night, the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled that Maduro’s kidnapping and rendition to US soil constituted a temporary absence and that Rodríguez was mandated to take over the presidency on an interim basis.

Footage surfaced Saturday evening showing Maduro being walked out of an airplane in New York. He was later taken to a DEA facility before being moved, along with Flores, to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. He made no statements but greeted DEA officers and appeared upbeat in photos, making a peace sign and holding his thumbs up.

The Venezuelan president was indicted by a New York district court on Saturday, with charges including “narcoterrorism conspiracy” and “possession of machine guns.” A hearing is reportedly scheduled for Monday.

For their part, Venezuela’s National BolivarianArmed Forces (FANB) likewise issued a communique on Sunday, rejecting the “cowardly kidnapping” of Maduro and Flores and reiterating its mission to “confront imperial aggression.”

The FANB voiced support for Rodríguez taking over the presidency on an acting basis and vowed to maintain readiness to preserve “peace and internal order.” 

The Defense Ministry has yet to provide a report on damages and casualties from the US strikes, though Sunday’s communiqué condemned the “cold-blooded murder” of members of Maduro’s security detail. Unconfirmed reports have put forward a figure of 80 deaths.

Venezuelan popular movements and political parties took to the streets for a second consecutive day on Sunday, holding marches and rallies in Caracas and other cities. Public transportation and retail functioned to a greater degree than on Saturday.

The US attacks also spurred numerous international solidarity demonstrations over the weekend. Crowds gathered in dozens of Latin American, European and US cities. A demonstration was called for Sunday outside the Brooklyn detention center where Maduro is being held.

The January 3 operation came on the heels of the largest ever US Caribbean military build-up, with Trump having previously ordered dozebs of strikes against small boats accused of carrying drugs, killing over 100 civilians. The US president has repeatedly expressed intentions of using military threats to extract favorable oil deals for US corporations.

In a Sunday interview, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned the acting government in Caracas to “make the right decisions” and affirmed that the US retained “leverage” mechanisms, including a naval blockade stopping oil exports.