Today

Scotland’s resident doctors have called off a planned four-day strike over pay.

They had been set to go on the first national walkout staged by NHS workers on Tuesday, having accused ministers of going back on promises over pay.

But after further negotiations, the British Medical Association union is to suspend the strike and put a fresh pay offer to members – and is recommending that it is accepted.

Health secretary Neil Gray said it was “great news” which would avoid disruption to patient care.

Resident doctors – who used to be called junior doctors – make up about 42% of all Scotland’s doctors and range from newly qualified doctors to those with 10 years or more experience.

Members will now consider an offer of a 4.25% pay rise in 2025-26, followed by a 3.75% increase in 2026-27.

The pay deal offered by the Scottish government matches one already accepted by nurses and other healthcare staff, and was previously rejected by the BMA last year.

However it now comes alongside a separate package of contractual reform.

Gray said the deal had been struck following “days of intensive and constructive talks” between the government and the union.

He added that total investment in the offer – covering both pay and contract reform over the two-year period – will be £133m.

Dr Chris Smith, who chairs BMA Scotland’s resident doctors committee, said just before Christmas that discussions between the union and the government had been “useful” and welcomed a “constructive approach”.

Scotland has been the only part of the UK to have avoided strike action by NHS workers.

A previous proposed strike in Scotland in the summer of 2023 was called off at the last minute after a deal was agreed.

The aid is earmarked to help support both countries in border stabilisation efforts, demining and tackling drug trafficking and cyberscams.

The United States has announced it will provide $45m in aid to help solidify a fragile truce brokered by President Donald Trump between Thailand and Cambodia.

Michael DeSombre, the US assistant secretary for East Asia, said on Friday that the US would offer $20m to help both countries combat drug trafficking and cyberscams, which have become a major concern in Cambodia.

DeSombre was meeting with senior Thai and Cambodian officials in Bangkok and Phnom Penh on Friday and Saturday to discuss implementation of the peace accords, according to a senior State Department official.

DeSombre also said $15m would be given for border stabilisation efforts to help support people displaced by the recent fighting, as well as $10m for de-mining and unexploded ordnance clearance.

“The United States will continue to support the Cambodian and Thai governments as they implement the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accords and pave the way for a return to peace, prosperity and stability for their people and the region,” DeSombre said in a statement.

DeSombre was referring to an agreement signed between the two countries in Trump’s presence during his October visit to Malaysia, then head of the ASEAN regional bloc.

Border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand flared up again last month, after the collapse of a truce brokered in July by Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to end a previous round of conflict.

The Southeast Asian neighbours agreed on another ceasefire on December 27, halting 20 days of fighting that killed at least 101 people and displaced more than half a million on both sides.

Thailand accused Cambodia of violating this latest ceasefire, though later retracted the accusation, with the Thai military saying the Cambodian side had contacted them to explain the so-called violation was an accidental fire.

Cambodia, meanwhile, has called on Thailand to pull its forces out of several border areas that Phnom Penh claims as its own.

The nations’ longstanding conflict stems from a dispute over France’s colonial-era demarcation of their 800km (500-mile) border, where both sides claim territory and several centuries-old temple ruins.

Trump has listed the conflict as one of several wars he says he has solved as he loudly insists he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump, on taking office, drastically slashed foreign aid, including for months freezing longstanding assistance to Cambodia for de-mining, with the administration saying it will provide money only in support of narrow US interests.

US citizens have been targeted by financial fraud operations taking place at scam centres throughout Southeast Asia.

Thailand is a longtime US ally, while the US has sought to improve relations with Cambodia to try to woo it away from strategic rival China.

DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,

The STC, which Saudi Arabia says is backed by the UAE, launched an offensive against Yemeni gov’t troops in December.

Yemen’s main southern separatists ‍have decided to disband following talks in Saudi Arabia, the secretary-general of the organisation has announced.

The Southern Transitional Council (STC) Secretary-General Abdulrahman Al-Subaihi said in a broadcast on Yemeni television on Friday that the dissolution of the group was taken to preserve peace and security in the south and in neighbouring countries.

He praised “the measures taken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the solutions it has provided that meet the needs of the people of the South”.

However, there was no immediate ‍comment from those members of the separatist group who are not taking part in the ‍talks in Riyadh.

The STC had said it had lost contact with all members ‍of the delegation in Riyadh, indicating a split was emerging within the group.

A feud between Saudi Arabia and the UAE that came to light after the STC, which Riyadh says is backed by Abu Dhabi, launched an offensive against Saudi-backed Yemeni government troops in December.

On Thursday, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in Yemen said the STC leader Aidarous ‌al-Zubaidi had fled to the UAE via Somaliland after skipping the talks in Riyadh, accusing the UAE of smuggling him out of the country.

More to come…

AS STORM Goretti sweeps across the UK, many airports have been forced to delay or cancel flights.

The storm is currently battering the UK, with thousands of Brits experiencing power cuts, travel disruption and school closures.

Some winds are measuring up to 99mph and a rare red alert has been issued by the Met Office.

As for airports across the UK, more than 25 flights have been cancelled, meaning thousands are being affected.

Heathrow Airport is currently experiencing lots of delays and some cancellations, including to British Airways flights.

Flights cancelled from London Heathrow include:

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• 9:20am British Airways to Billund
• 9:45am Eurowings to Cologne
• 9:50am Aer Lingus to Dublin
• 10:20am Scandinavian to Copenhagen
• 11:05am Brussels Airlines to Brussels
• 11:25am British Airways to Berlin
• 11:25pm Iberia to Madrid
• 11:30am Lufthansa to Frankfurt
• 12:00pm United Airlines to New York City
• 12:00pm Air Canada to Ottawa
• 12:35pm American Airlines to Chicago
• 2:25pm British Airways to Frankfurt
• 2:25pm British Airways to Munich
• 3:20pm British Airways to Hamburg
• 5:10pm Swiss Air to Zurich
• 6:30pm Lufthansa to Frankfurt

Birmingham Airport was forced to suspend flights on the evening of January 8 due to snow but reduced runway operations have since resumed.

In a statement the airport said: “The safety of our colleagues and customers is our number one priority.

“We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Passengers due to travel should contact their airline regarding the status of flights.”

Flights cancelled from Birmingham Airport include:

• 8:15am Aer Lingus to Dublin
• 8:25am easyJet to Edinburgh
• 8:35am easyJet to Glasgow
• 9:45am easyJet to Edinburgh
• 10:25am Air France to Paris

East Midlands Airport was also forced to close its runway in the early hours of this morning.

Flights have since resumed though the airport has warned of some delays.

Southampton Airport is telling passengers: “With a weather warning still in place today (Friday, 9th January), we advise passengers to check the status of the flight before travelling to the airport.”

Flights cancelled from Southampton Airport include:

• 6:50am Loganair to Newcastle
• 8:40am Loganair to Edinburgh

Aberdeen Airport has issued the same warning.

Flights cancelled from Aberdeen Airport include:

• 9:00am British Airways to London Heathrow
• 9:00am KLM to Amsterdam
• 10:35am Loganair to Kirkwall

Flight compensation rules

A look at your rights if a flight is delayed or cancelled, when your entitled to compensation and if your travel insurance can cover the costs.

What are my rights if my flight is cancelled or delayed?

Under UK law, airlines have to provide compensation if your flight arrives at its destination more than three hours late.

If you’re flying to or from the UK, your airline must let you choose a refund or an alternative flight.

You will be able to get your money back for the part of your ticket that you haven’t used yet.

So if you booked a return flight and the outbound leg is cancelled, you can get the full cost of the return ticket refunded.

But if travelling is essential, then your airline has to find you an alternative flight. This could even be with another airline.

When am I not entitled to compensation?

The airline doesn’t have to give you a refund if the flight was cancelled due to reasons beyond their control, such as extreme weather.

Disruptions caused by things like extreme weather, airport or air traffic control employee strikes or other ‘extraordinary circumstances’ are not eligible for compensation.

Some airlines may stretch the definition of “extraordinary circumstances” but you can challenge them through the aviation regulator the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Will my insurance cover me if my flight is cancelled?

If you can’t claim compensation directly through the airline, your travel insurance may refund you.

Policies vary so you should check the small print, but a delay of eight to 12 hours will normally mean you qualify for some money from your insurer.

Remember to get written confirmation of your delay from the airport as your insurer will need proof.

If your flight is cancelled entirely, you’re unlikely to be covered by your insurance.

In other flight news, UK gets new flight route to world’s best airport – under 4 hours from the UK.

Plus, major airport forced to cancel another 700 flights with trains axed and passengers stranded.

On Saturday, United States military forces carried out a dramatic strike in Venezuela that resulted in the capture and forcible removal of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. They were flown to New York and are now in federal custody. Maduro appeared in federal court on drug and weapons charges and pleaded not guilty. Several governments, international legal experts and United Nations officials have described the military operation as an illegal “kidnapping” and a breach of international law. The UN secretary-general warned that it sets a “dangerous precedent”, undermining foundational norms of sovereignty under the UN Charter.

Yet, as Washington justifies its operation primarily with rhetoric about oil and narcotics, a deeper inspection reveals another dynamic: This was first and foremost an ideological battle, shaped by domestic political incentives in the US – in particular the strategic influence of Florida’s electorate and its political elite.

Oil is not the prime motive

The mainstream narrative frames Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves – officially among the largest proven in the world at roughly 298 billion to 303 billion barrels – as the core strategic prize. But a closer, evidence-based analysis shows the immediate economic rationale to be weak.

US crude imports from Venezuela, once significant, have dwindled to about 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) as of 2024, representing less than 4 percent of US crude imports. By contrast, imports from Canada dominate, accounting for roughly 60 to 63 percent of US crude import needs, and US production of light crude has risen sharply, reducing dependence on foreign sources. This shift undermines claims that Venezuelan oil alone is a strategic imperative.

Why does Venezuelan crude matter at all? The answer lies in its composition. Venezuelan oil is heavy and sour, the type that many US Gulf Coast refineries were designed to process. This, however, reflects refinery configuration rather than any compelling immediate strategic case. Furthermore, Venezuelan oil infrastructure has deteriorated over years of underinvestment with output falling from about 3.5 million bpd to roughly 1 million bpd by 2025, and a meaningful revival would require many years of sustained and consistent investment. Markets reacted only modestly to the capture of Maduro with global oil prices remaining relatively stable, suggesting that oil was not the main driver of the operation.

Not drugs either: Pretext vs reality

US officials have cited drug trafficking and “narcoterrorism” as part of the justification for the intervention. Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials are indicted in the US on charges linked to alleged cocaine trafficking, and these accusations have been reiterated in court. However, research by international agencies and independent analysts suggests that, while Venezuelan territory is used as a transit route, it is not a major source of the drugs entering the US, which are overwhelmingly produced and trafficked through Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. This gap between the scale of the drug trade and the rationale invoked has led many analysts to view the narcotics argument as a pretext rather than a primary driver of the operation.

Florida, ideology and domestic political incentives

A more persuasive rationale emerges when the domestic political incentives shaping US foreign policy are examined, particularly the role of Florida’s electorate and elite networks. With 31 electoral votes, Florida remains a pivotal state in presidential elections, where narrow margins mean even modest shifts among key constituencies can determine national outcomes.

This political reality is reinforced by Florida’s large and politically mobilised Latino communities. Cuban American voters have long prioritised anti-communist foreign policy positions while Venezuelan American communities, many of whom settled in the state over the past decade, have expressed strong opposition to authoritarian leftist governance in Caracas. Political scientists note that these constituencies constitute a significant voting bloc in closely contested elections, giving political elites strong incentives to adopt hardline positions against leftist regimes that resonate with these voters.

At the centre of this dynamic stands Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state and a Florida native whose political biography is deeply rooted in opposition to leftist governments in Latin America. Rubio’s family fled communist Cuba, and he has consistently championed confrontational policies towards socialist and authoritarian regimes in the region. Reports suggest that, during negotiations, Maduro offered concessions on oil and economic matters that could have been commercially beneficial, but advisers aligned with Florida’s political interests reportedly pushed for a harder line, prioritising ideological confrontation over economic pragmatism.

Florida’s political ecosystem also includes influential donor networks that have historically supported hawkish foreign policy positions, including well-organised pro-Israel constituencies with leverage at state and national levels. In recent months, high-profile visits by Israeli leaders to Florida and sustained engagement with US political figures have reinforced ideological alignments that frame regimes perceived as hostile to Israel or aligned with its adversaries as challenges requiring decisive responses. The convergence of electoral incentives, ideological commitments and elite networks helps explain why US policy towards Venezuela has been shaped as much by domestic political drivers as by external strategic interests.

Lessons for the Middle East

The implications for Middle Eastern actors are profound.

First, international law appears weakened. The US capture of a sitting head of state without multilateral authorisation underscores a willingness to sidestep international legal norms when domestic political imperatives are prioritised. The ineffectiveness UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force absent Security Council approval or clear self-defence appears to have been discounted, eliciting global concern.

Second, the Middle East’s strategic relevance persists, albeit in an evolving context. While global energy markets are less dependent on Middle Eastern oil than in prior decades, other factors – capital flows, counterterrorism cooperation, strategic geography and enduring security partnerships – maintain the region’s importance. Intensifying US-China competition and Washington’s concern over closer China-Middle East ties will likely continue to anchor US engagement in the region. Israel, for its part, is expected to sustain robust lobbying efforts in Washington and European capitals to preserve its strategic relationships.

Yet the Venezuela episode illustrates that alliances predicated chiefly on energy security can be fragile and ideological and domestic political drivers can abruptly reshape foreign policy priorities. Middle Eastern states must, therefore, pursue a calibrated diplomatic strategy: engaging the US where interests converge while hedging against abrupt shifts driven by internal political calculations.

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

A mountain of rubbish collapsed at a landfill in the central Philippines on Thursday, killing a 22-year-old woman and leaving more than 30 people missing, authorities have said.

Rescuers pulled 12 injured sanitation workers from debris at the Binaliw Landfill in Cebu City, who were later hospitalised.

Many of the missing are believed to be workers at the landfill. The mayor of Cebu told news outlet ABS-CBN that it may be difficult to reach survivors because of the potential for further collapse.

The cause of the collapse is still unclear, but Cebu City councillor Joel Garganera said it was likely the result of poor waste management practices.

Some 300 people from various government agencies and civilian groups have been deployed to the privately-owned landfill. Several excavators, ambulances and fire trucks have also been seen on site.

“All response teams remain fully engaged in search and retrieval efforts to locate the remaining missing persons,” Cebu Mayor Nestor Archival said in a Facebook post on Friday.

“This is not like other landslides that you can just excavate. If you pull from the top, the bottom is soft. Let’s say there is a person there, when you get the debris, it might get worse,” he said, ABS-CBN reported.

Cebu City councillor Joel Garganera said the incident may have happened suddenly, but was likely a result of poor waste management practices.

Operators had been cutting into the mountain, mining the soil, and then piling garbage to form another mountain of waste, Garganera told local newspaper The Freeman.

“It’s not a sanitary landfill. It’s already an open dumpsite,” he said.

Families are waiting for updates on their loved ones trapped in the debris.

One Binaliw resident, Belen Antigua, told Rappler that her son had survived the landslide but she was still waiting for her other relatives to be found. Another said that families had been gathered at the landfill to look for their children since Friday morning.

“I could not understand my emotions. They said those trapped are calling for help, so there is a possibility that my brother is still there,” Michelle Lumapas, whose brother works at the landfill, told ABS-CBN.

The Binaliw landfill is about 15 hectares (37 acres).

Landfills are common in major Philippine cities like Cebu, which is the trading centre and transportation gateway of the Visayas, the archipelago nation’s central islands.

The Sino-Pakistani JF-17 Thunder has emerged as a surprise candidate for Saudi Arabia’s next fighter jet, according to a recent report. While a mutual defense pact signed with Pakistan would help open the door to the transfer of JF-17s to Saudi Arabia, the fighter faces very strong competition. Furthermore, it isn’t clear if the Saudis even would want a light fighter like this at all, especially considering it could cause a rift with the U.S. at a critical time. In the past months, the kingdom has been offered the U.S.-made F-35, as you can read about here, and has been linked with several other multirole fighters.

According to a report today from Reuters, talks are now underway between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, with a view to the kingdom obtaining an undisclosed number of JF-17s. These would be paid for by converting some of the billions of dollars of Saudi loans taken out by Islamabad, a sign of the deepening relationship between the two countries, including at a military level. The report cites two different Pakistani sources, one of whom says the talks are limited to the JF-17, while the other claims that the jets are the “primary option,” but that different military equipment could also be made available.

Reportedly, the deal would be worth $4 billion in terms of offsetting the loan, while Saudi Arabia would also spend $2 billion on top of that.

This week, Pakistan’s Air Chief Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu was in Saudi Arabia to discuss what the Pakistani military described as “bilateral defense cooperation, the regional security environment, and future avenues of collaboration” with his Saudi counterpart, Lieutenant General Turki bin Bander bin Abdulaziz.

The JF-17 was developed jointly by China’s Chengdu and the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC), and the first prototype took to the air in 2003. The aircraft is powered by a single Russian-designed RD-93 turbofan engine, an improved version of the RD-33 that is found in the twin-engined MiG-29 Fulcrum.

The Thunder has been steadily improved since the first series-built JF-17s began to come off the PAC line at its Kamra facility in 2008. After the first 50 JF-17s were delivered to Pakistan, production switched to the enhanced JF-17 Block 2 version, with improved avionics, strengthened wing roots for additional stores carriage, and an in-flight refueling probe, among other changes.

The latest Block 3 version of the jet has an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, as well as an improved fly-by-wire flight-control system, infrared search and track system, helmet-mounted display, and a larger holographic wide-angle head-up display for the pilot.

Pakistan Air Force JF-17 participates in Virtual Air Tattoo 2021

In terms of performance and specifications, the Block 2 version has a maximum takeoff weight of a little over 27,000 pounds, a maximum speed of Mach 1.6, and an unrefueled range of 840 miles. It can carry 3,300 pounds of stores carried on seven external hardpoints. This puts it broadly in the same class as the Saab Gripen C/D.

The unclassified version of an annual Pentagon report to Congress on China’s military stated that, as of May 2024, the JF-17 had been sold to Azerbaijan, Burma, and Nigeria — as well as Pakistan. The report also says that, as of 2024, negotiations were underway regarding a possible JF-17 transfer to Iraq.

That same story stressed heavily the growing presence of the JF-17, as well as other Chinese-made fighters, on the export market, as you can read more about here.

Last month, Pakistan reportedly struck a weapons deal worth more than $4 billion with the Libyan National Army, which is also said to include JF-17. Additionally, Pakistan has held talks with Bangladesh on the possible sale of the same jets.

As for Saudi Arabia, the claimed interest in the JF-17 comes after it signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan last September. This is the latest development in a long-running security partnership between the two nations, which has seen extensive provision of defense equipment to the kingdom, as well as training.

“The agreement states that any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both,” the office of the Pakistani prime minister said in a statement about the pact. This raised questions of whether the Pakistani nuclear umbrella might even be extended to protect Saudi Arabia, too.

For its part, Saudi Arabia has regularly provided Pakistan with economic support. In 2018, Riyadh agreed on a support package for its ally that included a loan worth $6 billion. Since then, it has allowed Islamabad to defer payments.

Were it to happen, a deal involving JF-17s and potentially other arms could help balance the books between the countries.

While the JF-17 is less advanced than other fighters that Saudi Arabia has been looking at buying, most notably the F-35, the Thunder’s status has been enhanced by claims of its performance during Pakistan’s clashes with India last year. Pakistan has long pitched the JF-17 as a cheaper and more sustainable fighter option, but now it is combat-proven too, although the results of its performance against the Indian Air Force are hard to verify.

Last month, it became clear that the Trump administration intended to sell up to 48 F-35s to Saudi Arabia, which marked a significant policy shift. Previously, Washington had been unwilling to export these jets to Arab states in the region, for fear of upsetting the strategic balance in relation to Israel — also an F-35 operator.

As we noted at the time:

Even without the F-35, the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) operates an extremely modern and advanced fleet of fighters. It received 84 of the new-build F-15SA, which was the most advanced variant of the Strike Eagle family available until the appearance of the Qatari F-15QA and the U.S. Air Force’s F-15EX Eagle II. Meanwhile, the 68-strong fleet of earlier F-15S aircraft has been upgraded locally to a similar standard, known as F-15SR (for Saudi Retrofit).

The RSAF also received 72 Eurofighter Typhoons. Older, but still capable, are around 80 British-supplied Panavia Tornado IDS swing-wing strike aircraft, which continue in service in the strike role.

Other fighters have been linked with a sale to Saudi Arabia, as it seeks to further boost its fighter fleet.

For a long time, more Typhoons were seen as the most likely option, but a potential deal has been frustrated by Germany — which has a stake in Eurofighter via the German arm of Airbus — which has consistently blocked further sales of the jets to Saudi Arabia, citing human rights concerns.

Saudi Arabia also entered talks to buy 54 Dassault Rafale multirole fighters, as we reported back in 2023.

More recently, Boeing confirmed that it was offering the F-15EX Eagle II to Saudi Arabia.

The JF-17 is far less capable than these options, but it is not irrelevant, especially in its Block 3 version with AESA radar and Chinese-made PL-15 air-to-air missiles.

At the same time, the Thunder would be a far less expensive option and could be acquired in greater numbers, creating a high-low force mix.

Still, the idea that Saudi Arabia would actually be interested in Pakistan’s proposal seems remote due to multiple factors.

Whether the JF-17 could be operated alongside the F-35 is highly questionable, on the grounds that its sensitive technologies might be exposed to Chinese intelligence. On the other hand, even without the JF-17, Saudi Arabia has long been a customer of Chinese-made defense equipment, including drones and ballistic missiles. But these are not fighter platforms with sensors that can give away critical capabilities, as well as weapon systems that need highly integrated tactics across a force in order to be effective. The very idea that a deal like this could even threaten the long-awaited acquisition of the F-35 seems to disqualify it on its face.

There is also the question of why Saudi Arabia would even want this aircraft when they have access to far more capable fighters that accommodate the weapons and networks their force already uses? A high-low mix may hold some relevance, but we have seen no indication that Saudi Arabia believes this to be the case.

It also comes at a time of extremely close ties between the kingdom and the U.S., with the Trump administration seeing Saudi Arabia as a top ally and economic partner. Risking that for a cheap fighter aircraft seems remote.

At the same time, Islamabad sees arms sales, including to non-traditional clients, as critical to helping address its economic troubles.

“Our aircraft have been tested, and we are receiving so many orders that Pakistan may not need the International Monetary Fund in six months,” Pakistani Minister of Defense Khawaja Asif recently told local media.

However, as has been the case in earlier Saudi procurements, the most important dimension in selecting a new fighter may well be the political one.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

In this episode of the “Decline & Fall” podcast, Alexander Mckay and Kit Klarenberg look at the US empire’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the absurd criminal case and the legal challenges ahead.

Mckay and Klarenberg also place the attack on Venezuela within the bigger picture of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Source: Decline and Fall

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has vetoed a bill that would have reduced the prison sentence of his right-wing rival and predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of plotting a coup.

On Thursday, Lula followed through with his promise to block the legislation, which had passed Brazil’s opposition-controlled Congress last year.

“In the name of the future, we do not have the right to forget the past,” Lula wrote in a series of social media posts, saying that it would have benefitted “those who attacked Brazilian democracy”.

The veto came on the third anniversary of the 2023 attack on the Three Powers Plaza in the capital of Brasilia, where government buildings representing the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court stand.

On January 8 of that year, thousands of Bolsonaro supporters stormed the buildings in an apparent attempt to provoke a military response that would remove Lula from power.

In marking the anniversary of the attack, Lula called on Brazilians to stand up for their young democracy, which began after a period of violent dictatorship in the late 20th century.

“January 8th is marked in history as the day of democracy’s victory. A victory over those who tried to seize power by force, disregarding the popular will expressed at the ballot box. Over those who have always defended dictatorship, torture, and the extermination of opponents,” Lula wrote online.

“The attempted coup on January 8, 2023, reminded us that democracy is not an unshakeable achievement.”

Bolsonaro’s sentence

The January 8 attack caused millions of dollars in property damage and dozens of injuries, as police and protesters clashed in the government plaza.

The incident evoked comparisons to the violent riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, where supporters of President Donald Trump attempted to disrupt the certification of his 2020 election defeat.

Likewise, Bolsonaro, a former army captain, had refused to concede his defeat to Lula after a narrow loss in the 2022 elections.

Rather, he and his allies had argued that Brazil’s electronic voting machines were susceptible to fraud, and they challenged the election results in court. Their petition, however, was thrown out for its “total absence of any evidence”.

Still, many of Bolsonaro’s supporters backed his claims and took to the streets to protest the election results. The weeks surrounding Lula’s inauguration in January 2023 were fraught, with reports of a bomb threat and an attack on police headquarters in Brasilia.

Prosecutors later accused Bolsonaro and his allies of leading a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election results.

One of the options the defendants allegedly weighed was to declare a “state of siege” in Brazil, which would allow the military to take control and new elections be held. Another option was reportedly to assassinate Lula and his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin.

Bolsonaro has pleaded not guilty to the charges and denied any wrongdoing, framing the accusations instead as a political hit job.

Still, in September, he was sentenced to 27 years in prison after being found guilty on counts including attempting a coup, causing damage to public property, attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, participation in a criminal enterprise, and the deterioration of a listed national heritage site.

He began his prison term in November, after he was found to have damaged the ankle monitor used to ensure he was not a flight risk.

Weighing October’s election

Conservative politicians, however, have decried the prison sentence as excessive and called for its reduction.

Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo has petitioned the Trump administration in the US to intervene on behalf of the imprisoned ex-president, and his eldest child, Flavio Bolsonaro, even hinted he might suspend his 2026 presidential bid if his father were released.

On December 10, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies passed legislation that would reduce the sentences of nearly 1,000 people linked to the January 8 attack, including Bolsonaro.

A week later, on December 17, the Senate followed suit, sending the leniency bill to the president for his signature.

But Lula had repeatedly pledged to reject the bill, risking the possibility that Brazil’s Congress could override his veto.

“ This is a bill that really is a litmus test in Brazilian politics,” Gustavo Ribeiro, a journalist and founder of The Brazil Report, told Al Jazeera. “Conservatives overwhelmingly supported it, while liberals are adamantly against it.”

Still, Ribeiro described the bill as a compromise between Brazil’s centre-right and far-right forces.

“The centre-right tried to work a sort of a middle-of-the-road solution that is not full amnesty but would allow Bolsonaro to leave incarceration after two years, in what we call in Brazil a semi-open prison sentence,” he explained.

He sees Brazil’s general election in October as a significant factor in Congress’s passage of the bill, noting that Bolsonaro remains a popular figure on the right.

“Because Bolsonaro has such a big clout with conservatives, many in Congress – many right-of-centre lawmakers – fear that if they do not lend their full support to any cause that Bolsonaro espouses, they will lose support,” Ribeiro said.

Lula is seeking a fourth term as president in October’s election, and he is expected to face Bolsonaro’s son Flavio at the ballot box.

US president signals he is not ready to back the Israel-aligned opposition figure to lead Iran in case of regime change.

United States President Donald Trump has ruled out meeting with Iran’s self-proclaimed Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, suggesting that Washington is not ready to back a successor to the Iranian government, should it collapse.

On Thursday, Trump called Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah who was toppled by the Islamic revolution of 1979, a “nice person”. But Trump added that, as president, it would not be appropriate to meet with him.

“I think that we should let everybody go out there and see who emerges,” Trump told The Hugh Hewitt Show podcast. “I’m not sure necessarily that it would be an appropriate thing to do.”

The US-based Pahlavi, who has close ties to Israel, leads the monarchist faction of the fragmented Iranian opposition.

Trump’s comments signal that the US has not backed Pahlavi’s offer to “lead [a] transition” in governance in Iran, should the current system collapse.

The Iranian government is grappling with protests across several parts of the country.

Iranian authorities cut off access to the internet on Thursday in an apparent move to suppress the protest movement as Pahlavi called for more demonstrations.

The US president had previously warned that he would intervene if the Iranian government targets protesters. He renewed that threat on Thursday.

“They’re doing very poorly. And I have let them know that if they start killing people – which they tend to do during their riots, they have lots of riots – if they do it, we’re going to hit them very hard,” Trump said.

Iranian protests started last month in response to a deepening economic crisis as the value of the local currency, the rial, plunged amid suffocating US sanctions.

The economy-focused demonstrations started sporadically across the country, but they quickly morphed into broader antigovernment protests and appear to be gaining momentum, leading to the internet blackout.

Pahlavi expressed gratitude to Trump and claimed that “millions of Iranians” protested on Thursday night.

“I want to thank the leader of the free world, President Trump, for reiterating his promise to hold the regime to account,” he wrote in a social media post.

“It is time for others, including European leaders, to follow his lead, break their silence, and act more decisively in support of the people of Iran.”

Last month, Trump also threatened to attack Iran again if it rebuilds its nuclear or missile programmes.

The US bombed Iran’s three main nuclear facilities in June as part of a war that Israel launched against the country without provocation.

On top of its economic and political crises, Iran has faced environmental hurdles, including severe water shortages, deepening its domestic unrest.

Iran has also been dealt major blows to its foreign policy as its network of allies has shrunk over the past two years.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled by armed opposition forces in December 2024; Hezbollah was weakened by Israeli attacks; and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been abducted by the US.

But Iran’s leaders have continued to dismiss US threats. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei doubled down on his defiant rhetoric after the US raid in Caracas on Saturday.

“We will not give in to the enemy,” Khamenei wrote in a social media post. “We will bring the enemy to its knees.”

Federal agents in the United States have shot and injured two people in the city of Portland, Oregon, a city where the administration of President Donald Trump has led an immigration enforcement crackdown.

The shooting was the second time in less than a day that federal immigration authorities claimed to have fired upon a vehicle in self-defence, following a deadly shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On Thursday, the Portland Police Department announced they had responded to reports of gunfire on southeast Main Street at about 2:18pm local time (22:18 GMT).

“Officers confirmed that federal agents had been involved in a shooting,” the city said in a statement.

Emergency responders then received a call for assistance from one of the shooting victims, a man, at about 2:24pm (22:24 GMT) near Northeast 146th Avenue and East Burnside in Portland’s Hazelwood neighbourhood.

“Officers responded and found a male and female with apparent gunshot wounds,” the statement said. “Officers applied a tourniquet and summoned emergency medical personnel.”

The two shooting victims were transported to hospital. Their conditions remain unknown, according to the police, who were not involved in the shooting.

The local bureau of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed the shooting in a now-deleted post on social media, saying that the incident involved Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents.

“This remains an active and ongoing investigation led by the FBI,” Portland’s FBI bureau said in the post.

Later, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offered its own account of what happened, describing the shooting as self-defence during a “targeted vehicle stop”.

In a social media post, DHS said its target was a passenger travelling inside a vehicle, who was affiliated with a “transnational Tren de Aragua prostitution ring and involved in a recent shooting”. The driver, DHS claimed, was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang.

“When agents identified themselves to the vehicle occupants, the driver weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents,” DHS said in the post.

“Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with the passenger, fleeing the scene.”

Second agent-involved shooting

Details about Thursday’s shooting remain unknown. But the administration of President Donald Trump has faced criticism for misrepresenting incidents where federal agents deployed violence as part of its nationwide immigration crackdown.

The Portland shooting comes one day after an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in her car in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

“Just one day after the horrific violence in Minnesota at the hands of federal agents, our community here in Portland is now grappling with another deeply troubling incident,” Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement.

“We cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts.”

Good’s death has triggered widespread outrage, as well as criticism that the Trump administration rushed to disseminate a misleading narrative about the Minneapolis shooting.

Video of Good’s shooting showed the 37-year-old stopped in her SUV on a snowy Minneapolis road, appearing to wave other drivers by.

A vehicle carrying ICE officers stopped next to her vehicle, and agents approached her, reaching for the handle of her car door. One approached the front of her vehicle. As her car appeared to turn and manoeuvre away, that agent fired multiple times into the vehicle, killing Good.

In that case, too, Trump administration officials claim the ICE agent acted in self-defence, despite the fact that the vehicle did not seem to make contact with his body.

Trump asserted – without evidence – that Good was a “professional agitator” who “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer”. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also accused Good of a “domestic act of terrorism”, despite there being no evidence Good sought to harm the ICE agent.

Democratic officials have accused the Trump administration of spreading false narratives to distract from its own abuses during the immigration crackdown.

Still, officials in Portland repeatedly called for calm in the aftermath of Thursday’s shooting, while acknowledging the parallels between the incidents.

“We are still in the early stages of this incident,” Portland Police Chief Bob Day said in a statement.

“We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more.”

Mayor Wilson, meanwhile, called for federal immigration agents to leave the city, arguing that they had endangered local citizens with their heavy-handed actions.

“Portland is not a ‘training ground’ for militarized agents, and the ‘full force’ threatened by the administration has deadly consequences,” Wilson said.

“As Mayor, I call on ICE to end all operations in Portland until a full investigation can be completed. Federal militarization undermines effective, community‑based public safety, and it runs counter to the values that define our region.”

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, meanwhile, expressed “huge concern” over the incident and suggested that responding with anger would only fuel the Trump administration’s fixation with Portland.

“Trump wants to generate riots,” he wrote. “Don’t take the bait.”

Portland under a microscope

Portland has long been a focal point of Trump’s immigration enforcement actions, and the increased federal presence has ignited largely nonviolent protests in response.

Long seen as a Democratic stronghold, Portland was identified in May as one of the “sanctuary jurisdictions” that the Trump administration identified as resisting its immigration crackdown.

The Republican president hinted he could surge federal agents to the area in response.

In September, those threats appeared to materialise when Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he would be sending the US military to support immigration operations in the city.

The announcement came five days after Trump declared antifa – the loose-knit antifascist movement – a “domestic terrorist organisation”.

“I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” Trump wrote. “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”

It was the latest in the string of instances where Trump attempted to send federal troops to largely Democratic urban areas, including Los Angeles and Chicago, Illinois.

Local officials denounced the deployment as a violation of the law and a misuse of executive authority. But the Trump administration doubled down, describing Portland as overrun by criminal behaviour.

“ In Portland, Oregon, antifa thugs have repeatedly attacked our officers and laid siege to federal property in an attempt to violently stop the execution of federal law,” Trump said at an October roundtable.

In response, some protesters in Portland began arriving in inflatable frog costumes, in an effort to cast Trump’s warnings about violent extremists as absurd. The Portland Frog Brigade, as the protesters were called, inspired similar demonstrations nationwide.

State and local leaders fought Trump’s troop deployment in court, and on November 7, US District Judge Karin Immergut permanently blocked the deployment.

The US Supreme Court in December declined the Trump administration’s appeal to allow National Guard troops in areas where lower courts had barred them.

On Thursday, Mayor Wilson called for accountability in the recent shootings, saying he would protect local residents’ civil liberties.

“ICE agents and their Homeland Security leadership must be fully investigated and held responsible for their violence against the American people, in Minnesota, in Portland, and across the nation,” he said.

He repeated the message that Portland residents should not seek retribution in the aftermath of the gunfire.

“Portland does not respond to violence with violence. We respond with clarity, unity, and a commitment to justice. We must stand together to protect Portland,” he said.

United States President Donald Trump has dismissed international law, saying only his “own morality” can curb the aggressive policies he is pursuing across the world after the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.

“I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people,” Trump told The New York Times on Thursday.

Asked whether he needs to abide by international law, Trump said he does, but it “depends what your definition of international law is”.

Trump has shown a willingness to use the brute force of the US military to achieve his foreign policy goals.

On Saturday, the US launched an early-morning attack on Venezuela, with explosions reported across the capital Caracas and at Venezuelan military bases.

US troops ultimately abducted Venezuelan President Maduro from Caracas in what critics say was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.

The attack on Venezuela appears to have supercharged the belligerence of the US president, who received the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize Award last month.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Trump said the US would “run” Venezuela and exploit the country’s vast oil reserves, though his administration has said it would cooperate with interim President Delcy Rodriguez.

Still, the Trump administration said it would “dictate” policy to the interim government and repeatedly threatened a “second wave” of military actions if US demands were disobeyed.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump said of Rodriguez in a Sunday interview with The Atlantic.

Earlier this week, Trump also suggested that the US may carry out a strike against Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro, and he has escalated his campaign to acquire the Danish territory of Greenland.

In June, Trump joined Israel’s unprovoked war against Iran, ordering the bombing of the country’s three main nuclear sites.

Trump aide Stephen Miller has criticised the post-World War II international order, saying that, from here forward, the US would “unapologetically” use its military force to secure its interests in the Western Hemisphere.

“We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” Miller told CNN on Monday.

But experts warn that disregard for international law could have catastrophic consequences for the entire global community, including the US.

International law is the set of rules and norms that govern ties between states. It includes UN conventions and multilateral treaties.

Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told Al Jazeera earlier this week that US statements dismissing international law are “extremely dangerous”.

Satterthwaite said she is concerned the world may be returning to an “age of imperialism”, stressing that degrading international laws may embolden Washington’s adversaries to launch their own acts of aggression.

“International law cannot stop states from doing terrible things if they’re committed to doing them,” Satterthwaite told Al Jazeera.

“And I think that the world is aware of all of the atrocities that have happened in Gaza recently, and despite efforts by many states and certainly by the UN to stop those atrocities, they continued. But I think we’re worse off if we don’t insist on the international law that does exist. We’ll simply be going down a much worse kind of slippery slope.”

Yusra Suedi, an assistant professor of international law at the University of Manchester, warned against the belief that “might is right” and the trend towards disregarding international law.

“It signals something very dangerous, in that it gives permission to other states to essentially follow suit – states such as China, who might be eyeing Taiwan, or Russia with respect to Ukraine,” Suedi told Al Jazeera.

Ian Hurd, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, said history illustrates the perils of US policies in Latin America.

The region has witnessed more than a century of US invasions and US-supported military coups, leading to instability, repression and human rights abuses.

“There are innumerable examples historically of this, from Panama to Haiti to Nicaragua to Chile in the ’70s and on and on,” Hurd told Al Jazeera.

He added that Trump’s policies in Venezuela are “in line” with how the US has previously attempted to decide how other parts of the Americas are governed.

“You can see that in every one of those cases, the US came to regret its choice to intervene. These never work well.”

Sparked by anger over rising prices, devalued currency, a devastating drought, and brutal government crackdowns, protestors have taken to the streets in cities across Iran. These demonstrations, further fueled by the son of the former Shah, represent perhaps the biggest internal threat to the regime since it took control 47 years ago.

This comes at the same time as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered new plans to attack Iran over concerns about its nuclear weapons ambitions and the rebuilding of the country’s military capabilities. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to “hit [Iran] very hard” should the government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei carry out a large, deadly response against the protestors in Iran. Still, there have been no observable movements of U.S. forces to the region as of yet due to either of those contingencies.

Videos emerging on social media show fires raging in several cities, huge jeering crowds clogging streets, and people chanting anti-government slogans.

The United States government has said it aims to control Venezuelan oil sales indefinitely.

“We need to have that leverage and that control of those oil sales to drive the changes that simply must happen in Venezuela,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Wednesday.

His comments come days after US forces abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on Saturday. Since then, the administration of US President Donald Trump has announced a deal under which Venezuela would turn over 30 million to 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the US to sell.

That comes against a backdrop of demands that Venezuelan government officials open up access to US oil companies or risk further military action.

On Friday, executives from several major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, are slated to meet with the president to discuss potential investments in Venezuela.

Can the US control Venezuelan oil sales indefinitely?

“The US federal government can absolutely intervene, make demands, capture what it wants, and redirect those barrels accordingly. I don’t know of anything that would meaningfully interfere with the federal government if that’s what it decided to do,” Jeff Krimmel, founder of Krimmel Strategy Group, a Houston, Texas-based energy consulting firm, told Al Jazeera.

There are, however, geopolitical hurdles. The US has less leverage than it did more than two decades ago when the US military and its allies entered Iraq, another oil-rich country. Today, other superpowers could stand in the way in ways they did not in 2003.

“When we went into Iraq, we were living in a unipolar moment as the world’s only great power. That era is over. China is now a great power, and most experts consider it a peer competitor. That means it has ways to hurt the US economy and to push back militarily, including through proxy conflicts, if it chooses to oppose such actions,” Anthony Orlando, professor of finance and law at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, told Al Jazeera.

China is the largest purchaser of Venezuelan crude, although it only imports about 4 percent of its oil from the South American nation.

“It’s a question of whether they want to draw a line in the sand with the United States and say, ‘You can’t do this, because if we allow it, you’ll keep pushing further,’” Orlando said.

“If you’re a minor power like Venezuela, not China or Russia, you’re a country vulnerable to US intervention. That creates an incentive to align more closely with China or Russia to prevent it from happening, and that’s not a good outcome for the United States,” Orlando continued.

In the days since Maduro’s abduction, members of the Trump administration have also renewed calls to take over Greenland.

How does this compare with Iraq?

The US intervention in Venezuela has been compared to its involvement in Iraq, which began under the administration of former President George W Bush in 2003. At the time, Iraq had the second-largest oil reserves in the world, with 112 billion barrels.

However, production was limited. Prior to the invasion, Iraq produced 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), rising to 4.5 million bpd by 2018.

While the Iraqi government retained ownership of oil, US companies were often given no-bid contracts to operate there, including ExxonMobil and BP, and the majority of sales went to Asian and European markets.

In 2021, Iraq’s then-President Barham Salih claimed that an estimated $150bn in money stolen through corrupt deals had been “smuggled out of Iraq” since the 2003 US-led invasion.

Unlike during the Bush administration and its aims for Iraq’s oil, the Trump administration has been explicit about the role of oil in its attack on Venezuela.

“The difference between Iraq and this is that [Bush] didn’t keep the oil. We’re going to keep the oil,” Trump said in a conversation with MS Now anchor Joe Scarborough.

Comparatively, in 2002, prior to the US invasion, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserted that the operation to take control of post-war reconstruction had “literally nothing to do with oil”.

“When the Bush administration went into Iraq, they claimed it wasn’t about that, even though there was substantial evidence it was a factor. This time it’s more explicit, so it’s clear it will impact oil markets. [But] one lesson from the Iraq war is that it’s easier said than done,” Orlando, the professor, told Al Jazeera.

Will this benefit oil companies?

Analysts argue that investments in Venezuela might not actually benefit oil companies due to rising economic uncertainty, the need for major infrastructure improvements, and the fact that large companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron already have capital programmes planned for the remainder of the decade.

“Either [the companies] will have to take on more debt or issue more equity to raise the capital needed, or they’ll have to divert capital expenditures from other regions into Venezuela. In either scenario, I expect substantial shareholder pushback,” Krimmel, the energy consultant, said.

Increased production will also require infrastructure improvements. Venezuelan oil is dense, which makes it more difficult and expensive to extract compared to oil from Iraq or the US.

Venezuelan oil is often blended with lighter grades from the US. It is comparable in density to Canadian oil, which, despite tensions between Ottawa and Washington, comes from a US ally with more modern extraction infrastructure.

“I don’t think Canada’s going to be too happy about all this,” Orlando said.

However, Chevron, the only US company currently operating in Venezuela, is seeking authorisation from Washington to expand its licence to operate in the country after the US placed restrictions on it last year, the Reuters news agency reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

The US role in energy, particularly oil and gas, has surged in recent years amid the rise of fracking technology. The US is now the largest producer of oil in the world. But recent cuts to alternative energy programmes and increasing energy demands from the artificial intelligence industry have led Republicans to double down on expanding the oil and gas sector.

“There is an oil supply surplus. Even if we were in a supply deficit right now, military action in Venezuela wouldn’t unlock incremental barrels quickly. So even if you were trying to solve a short-term supply deficit, which, to be clear, we do not have, Venezuela wouldn’t be an answer because it would take too long and be too expensive to ramp production up,” Krimmel added.

While Venezuela holds the world’s largest oil reserves, the OPEC member represents only 1 percent of global oil output.

Currently, Chevron is the only US company operating in Venezuela. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips operated in Venezuela before Hugo Chavez nationalised the oil sector in 2007, leading to a downturn in production over years of disinvestment and poorly run facilities. In the 1990s, Venezuela produced as much as 3.5 million bpd. That has since fallen due to limited investment, with production averaging 1.1 million bpd last year.

“Venezuela’s infrastructure has deteriorated under both the Chavez and Maduro regimes. While they are extracting oil, returning to production levels from 10 or 20 years ago would require significant investment,” Orlando said.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu announcemed the Bulgarian diplomat as the ‘designated’ director-general for Trump’s ‘board of peace’.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that former United Nations Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov will direct a proposed United States-led “board of peace” in Gaza.

Netanyahu made the announcement after meeting Mladenov in Jerusalem on Thursday, referring to the Bulgarian diplomat as the “designated” director-general for the proposed board, a key part of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian people of Gaza.

Trump’s Gaza plan led to a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October, but Israeli forces have continued to carry out attacks in the territory on a near-daily basis. Since the first full day of the truce on October 11, 2025, Israeli attacks have killed at least 425 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

In a statement on Thursday, Netanyahu’s office said Mladenov “is slated to serve as Director General of the ‘Peace Council’ in the Gaza Strip”. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog also met Mladenov on Thursday, a spokesperson from his office said, without elaborating.

Under Trump’s plan to end the war, the proposed Board of Peace would supervise a new technocratic Palestinians government, the disarmament of Hamas, the deployment of an international security force, the further pushback of Israeli troops, and the reconstruction of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Trump is expected to announce appointments to the board next week, according to the Axios news outlet, citing US officials and sources familiar with the matter.

“Among the countries expected to join the board are the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Turkiye,” Axios reported.

Mladenov, a former Bulgarian defence and foreign minister, previously served as the UN envoy to Iraq before being appointed as the UN Middle East peace envoy from 2015 to 2020.

During his time as Middle East envoy, Mladenov had good working relations with Israel and frequently worked to ease tensions between Israel and Hamas.

The Marine Corps’ pursuit of a fully missionized version of Kratos’ stealthy XQ-58A Valkyrie drone has taken another step forward with a new announcement that Northrop Grumman is now aiding in the effort. Northrop Grumman says it will deliver a “mission kit” that includes its Prism autonomy package, sensors, and other capabilities to help fully turn the Valkyrie into what looks set to be the Marines’ first operational Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).

Northrop Grumman announced today it has received a competitively awarded deal in relation to what is formally known as the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Uncrewed Expeditionary Tactical Aircraft (MUX TACAIR) Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. U.S. officials confirmed last year that the Marine Corps was moving to transition its experimental work with the XQ-58 into a full program of record to develop and field an operational CCA-type drone. The Marines have acquired at least three Valkyries since 2023. The U.S. Air Force is the only other known current operator of the XQ-58 and has been using the type for test and evaluation work since its first flight in 2019.

Under the newly announced deal, “Northrop Grumman will develop and rapidly deliver platforms that include” the aforementioned mission kit, “inclusive of sensors and software-defined technologies designed specifically for uncrewed aircraft,” according to a company press release. “The mission kit’s flexible technology can perform various kinetic and non-kinetic effects, making the platform a combat-ready asset.”

“Northrop Grumman’s open architecture autonomy software package – known as Prism – will manage the aircraft’s operations autonomously,” the release adds. The company has already been conducting flight testing involving Prism using the Model 437 Vanguard jet, now also referred to as Beacon, which was developed and built by its subsidiary Scaled Composites.

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“Northrop Grumman remains at the forefront of advanced sensing capabilities, delivering innovative solutions that meet the needs of the warfighter with unmatched speed and reliability,” Krys Moen, Vice President for Advanced Mission Capabilities, said in an accompanying statement. “This enhanced capability set ensures optimal performance for both crewed and uncrewed platforms.”

“The integration of the Kratos Valkyrie aircraft system configured with the world’s best multifunction mission systems from Northrop Grumman results in a high-capability CCA at a price point that enables the uncrewed systems to be deployed in mass with crewed aircraft,” Steve Fendley, President of Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division, also said in a statement included in the release.

Northrop Grumman’s press release also highlights Kratos’ work on a derivative of the XQ-58 with built-in landing gear. As originally designed, Valkyrie is fully runway independent and takes off via a rocket-assisted method from a static launcher. The drone is then recovered via parachute at the end of the sortie. Kratos has also developed a special trolley that allows versions without fixed landing gear to take off from traditional runways.

Northrop Grumman has separately told Breaking Defense that its MUX TACAIR CCA deal is valued at approximately $231.5 million and covers work over a period of 24 months, and that is a so-called Other Transactional Agreement (OTA). The U.S. military uses the OTA mechanism to support rapid prototyping and other research and development work without having to go through more traditional and often more drawn-out contracting processes.

Official U.S. military budget documents released last year said that the Marines were looking to acquire at least one MUX TACAIR CCA prototype in a conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) configuration. Kratos has referred to the fixed landing gear Valkyrie derivative as the CTOL version. However, whether that is the only configuration the Marines are eyeing now is unclear, and TWZ has reached out to Northrop Grumman, Kratos, and the Marine Corps for more details.

“So we’re obviously, we’ve been doing a lot of development work for the Marines, a lot of integration of mission systems, a lot of ground and flight test of those mission systems,” Kratos’ Fendley had told TWZ on the show floor of the annual Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C., last year. “And that’s continued to where we’re pretty close to having a couple final versions of the aircraft.”

TWZ has previously highlighted the value a runway-independent version would bring to the Marine Corps, given the service’s current focus on future expeditionary and distributed operations. Flexibility to operate from traditional runways, which could offer benefits in terms of total payload capacity and maximum range, could still be desirable, as well.

Overall, “the uncrewed weapons systems under development [as part of the MUX TACAIR program] will enhance Marine Corps Aviation’s lethality and ability to support the Stand-in Force (SiF) by delivering air-to-ground, reconnaissance, and Electronic Warfare (EW) capabilities,” per the aforementioned budget documents. “The Marine Corps will use a spiral approach for capability insertion into TACAIR. MUX TACAIR Increment I will rapidly accelerate the time between development and fielding, ensuring rapid and relevant capability delivery of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to the warfighter.”

There has also been explicit talk about pairing the XQ-58 with the Marine Corps F-35B Joint Strike Fighters, and flight tests to explore this kind of crewed-uncrewed teaming have been carried out in the past.

Outside of work for the Marine Corps, beyond the aforementioned developments related to launching and recovering the Valkyrie, Kratos has been steadily working to expand the performance and other capabilities of the design. The company is separately working on a miniature cruise missile called Ragnarok, which the XQ-58 can carry in its internal bay and externally under its wings, and that you can read more about here. Renderings have also shown Valkyries with AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) under their wings. Northrop Grumman has put forward the uncrewed aircraft as a notional launch platform for its Lumberjack loitering one-way attack drone, as well.

The XQ-58 has a high degree of modularity baked in from the start. Kratos has long put heavy emphasis on open-architecture systems to make it easier to integrate new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line, as well.

Regardless of the aircraft’s physical configuration, there are many other questions the Marine Corps will still need to answer before it can truly field an operational CCA force, something the service itself has been open about and that TWZ regularly highlights. Much remains to be settled about how CCA-type drones will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated on a day-to-day basis, let alone employed tactically in a real-world combat environment.

“We still have a lot to learn simply to get this thing airborne, flying, and executing next to an F-35, and not hitting each other,” Col. Derek Brannon, director of the Marine Corps’ Cunningham Group, said at the Modern Day Marine exhibition last year. “I know there’s a lot of work out there, but that’s important to make sure that we become lethal.”

The Cunningham Group, which falls under the office of the Deputy Commandant for Aviation, is charged with plotting out the overall future course for Marine Corps aviation developments.

This all applies equally to the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy CCA programs. All three services are pursuing their efforts in very close cooperation, including in the development of common command and control architectures. By the Navy’s own admission, the Air Force and Marine Corps CCA programs are much more mature than its effort.

Joining the Marine Corps MUX TACAIR program is an important development for Northrop Grumman as a company, which has been making other inroads in the growing CCA market space recently. In December, the Air Force announced that it had assigned a formal designation, YFQ-48A, to the Project Talon drone design developed by Northrop Grumman and its subsidiary Scaled Composites. The service also said at that time that the YFQ-48A, which had only been unveiled publicly earlier in the month, was a “strong contender” for inclusion in its CCA efforts. Project Talon leveraged lessons from Northrop Grumman’s losing entry in the competition for the first phase, or Increment 1, of the Air Force’s CCA program, as you can learn more about here. Last September, the Navy also confirmed that Northrop Grumman was among the companies it had awarded contracts to for the development of concepts for future carrier-based CCAs.

The Marine Corps moving to field an operational version of the Valkyrie has been significant for Kratos, as well. The company has been very actively pitching versions of the XQ-58 to other customers, including ones overseas. It is working now with Airbus to craft a version for the German armed forces. Kratos has also been seeing growing export success with other designs in its tactical drone portfolio.

When it comes to the Marine Corps CCA plans, the service has said it hopes to take delivery of the first prototype before the end of this year, and Northrop Grumman has now joined Kratos in working to make that a reality.

Update: 5:10 pm EST—

Northrop Grumman has now provided additional details about how it is working together with Kratos in relation to the MUX TACAIR CCA effort, and about what the company will be contributing.

“Northrop Grumman and Kratos teamed up to respond together to the Naval Aviation Systems Consortium Statement of Need Request for White Papers for USMC TACAIR Increment 1 (N00019-24-9-0021).  Northrop Grumman and Kratos have collaborated successfully together on multiple projects in prime and support roles including Valkyrie,” a company spokesperson explained to TWZ. “Due to the collaborative integration needed for this solution, the team jointly decided Northrop Grumman as Lead Systems Integrator and Kratos as airframe subcontractor provided the best approach for MUX TACAIR.”

“The mission kit is a fully integrated sensor suite covering multiple functions and frequency bands,” they added. “Northrop Grumman is integrating both Northrop sensors and a variety of best of breed industry sensors into a low-cost integrated solution.”

“Kratos is teamed with NGC for mission configured Valkyrie derivatives and is also a subcontractor on the MUX TACAIR contract providing Valkyrie aircraft, supporting development and testing including flight testing, and supporting integration of NGC mission systems for the ultimate Marines CCA product, which Kratos will manufacture in Oklahoma City,” a spokesperson for that company also separately told TWZ.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

resh snowfall hit Italy’s Alpine resort of Livigno less than a month before the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, where freestyle skiing and snowboarding events will be held, after officials raised concerns over reliance on artificial snow.

The ability to sense and understand activities in the air and on the sea is one of Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Maj. Gen. Chris McKenna’s main responsibilities as operational commander for the Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Region (CANR). However, he faces a number of hurdles to accomplish that mission. Canada has no organic airborne early warning and control aircraft and is relying on an aging satellite system with many users competing for its products.

In the third installment from our exclusive interview last month, McKenna gives us a candid view of what Canada needs to do to modernize its sensing capabilities to get a better handle on the myriad threats NORAD is facing. He also talks about Canadian deliberations over the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense system and how to defend against the threat to military installations from drones. You can catch up with the previous installments here and here.

Some of the questions have been slightly edited for clarity.

Q: Are there any updates to the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative from Canada’s point of view? And does Canada back the placement of kinetic interceptors in space?

A: I think that’s a political decision. So I’m not going to speak to the space-based interceptor piece. That’s up to my politicians to answer that. But certainly, the advocacy that I do is all about integrated missile defense. And how does Canada become a bigger player, a more reliable player, in how we sense things in the Arctic? 

From an integrated missile defense point of view, I think we need to be looking at what ground-based effectors look like. And how do we protect ourselves from an integrated missile defense point of view? How do we be more additive in the NORAD partnership with more capability?

Q: How do you do that? 

A: Well, I think one is the recapitalization and modernizing our command and control and modernizing the way that we sense. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in the space domain as well. Canada signed a partnership between two Canadian companies, MDA and Telsat, that I think will bear fruit, from a polar communications point of view, in the next number of months. We have a project ongoing for space-based ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], which is likely to progress in the next month or two, and there’ll be some news on that. So there’s, there’s a lot of money moving, finally, on defense spending.

Why Telesat is expanding in Canada

Q: Are you able to provide any details about the space-based ISR?

A: We currently operate a government-of-Canada-owned constellation of four satellites called RADARSAT Constellation Mission. All the orbital axes are based on [the] Arctic, [but] obviously, it’s global. It’s a Low Earth Orbit constellation and it’s radar. 

It’s all about looking through clouds. And for us, it’s about looking at dark ships [with the AIS transponders turned off] with an actual picture of what ships are out there, and figuring out what ships are being non-compliant, and then queuing either ISR assets or the Coast Guard to go and have a look at those ships. 

That was launched in 2019, and its service life is expected to last until about 2026. It’s still giving us good data, and likely will give us good data until the 2030s. So DESSP, or the Defense Enhanced Surveillance of Space Project, is anchored on having a defense-only constellation of satellites, because you can imagine those are satellites are being looked at for, ‘hey, where are the whales?’ ‘Where’s the ice?’ Environmental pollution control. There’s a lot of demand on it. We do get sort of primacy over it, but we do need more ISR in the Arctic, and I think we need our defense-only constellation. So part of the NORAD modernization project was funded that very significantly.

Q: Back to Golden Dome. Are there any updates from the Canadian point of view?

A: So we look at it as Continental Shield. Golden Dome is the U.S. brand on it. From our point of view, it’s great air missile defense and what we will put on the table to defend the continent with. And so I think there are ongoing negotiations between our governments with respect to what the specific investments will be. We’ve got a good head start, though, with our NORAD [modernization], and I think there’s more to come.

Q: Let’s switch topics for a minute. Has Canada experienced drone incursions over critical facilities like the U.S. and Europe have?

A: Not to the same extent. I’m obviously very attuned to what is going on in Europe and what has been going on in the States, and I talked about it with my commander quite a bit. We’re taking counter-UAS very seriously. As we onboard exquisite things like the F-35, we need to have a better system. We’ve purchased a system called the Leonardo Falcon Shield system. That’s the same one that the RAF uses, and we can place it at two of our wings right now, and I’m rolling it at all my wings as the deliveries roll in. And it’s an RF [radio frequency] sensing, RF interception capability. It’s not kinetic as of yet, but that can be added pretty easily. And I think we need to be thinking about this as a baseline capability. Every one of our air bases to be able to deny airspace for hobbyists and state actors who may wish to fly drones over top.

Falcon Shield – Operationally proven drone mitigation system

Q: Why do you think that Canada hasn’t experienced drone incursions to the extent that the U.S. and Europe are experiencing them?

A: I honestly don’t have an opinion on that. We do have drone issues. We do detect drones once in a while, but I have not had massive incursions in any of my NORAD bases as of yet. That doesn’t mean it’s not coming, though. And I think we can’t be naive about this. The U.S. talks about Golden Dome, and [NORAD/NORTHCOM commander] Gen. [Gregory] Guillot, in front of Congress, has talked about the three domes, with the last, the smallest dome, being counter-UAS domes around the U.S. infrastructure. We see it the same way, in the sense that I need limited air defence around my key infrastructure to protect the assets that I wish to protect.

Q: You talked about your counter-UAS equipment having radio frequency detection and intercept capabilities. What’s Canada’s policy on kinetic counter-drone systems?

A: I think there’s other optionality, right? And I think this becomes a policy and a legal discussion. What are the boundaries for our authorities? And if we need more authorities, we have to go back to the government to get them. We do have some exemptions from [Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada] that manages our spectrum. It’s like the FCC in the States, so we’ve got a bunch of dispensations from them to conduct the interceptions we need for defense installations, which is good news. But I do think there’s probably more to come. I do think kinetic, directed energy, drone-on-drone type [of defenses] would be very useful. I think it’ll depend on what the legal framework we’re allowed to use to protect our facilities.

Q: What are the limitations on your counter-UAS actions?

A: It’s an emerging space now in terms of we’re just getting the installs done, and we’re scratching at the authorities, and having the analysis is fine, but right now, in terms of what we’re going to be able to do, I can do some things. I’m not going to get into the details on that – but I can do some things to deny access to my airspace right now. I do think there’s going to have to be a discussion about the aggregation of additional authorities.

Q: Can you tell me more about the domestic counter-UAS strategy to help mitigate the threats, particularly posed by smaller, lower-end drones?

A: Well, one of the keys is domain awareness to begin with, like understand the problem you’re facing and then pair your defensive design against that. And that really is the basis of integrated air and missile defense. But zoom down into the sub-tactical, force protection lens around each of our bases, and we’re going through that process right now to get that laid down. The good news is I’ve got some systems installed. We’re learning with them, and we’re pushing the policy space to make sure we’re having the right authorities.

Q: Have you had to use any of these defensive systems against drones yet?

A: Not yet.

Q: What space-based capabilities are needed for the mission that you don’t have right now?

A: The one that’s in development is the space-based air moving target indicator. The U.S. is going quite heavily on that. I’m really interested in what that could bring. It would be a nice layer on top of the Over the Horizon radar picture. 

The key question is, how small a thing can it see? That’s the overriding discussion we have now. And you know, could it ever supplant a thing like an airborne early warning aircraft? I think at the current time, no. Maybe 15 or 20 years from now, very much potentially. We’ll see. I think we still need AWACS-like aircraft. So that third basket of policy authorities was received in 2024, they [provided] a bunch of money to us to go and conduct an options analysis, and we are in the middle of that right now, looking at airborne early warning aircraft that would be contributive to the NORAD mission set.

Q: What kind of airborne early warning aircraft are you considering in your review? 

A: There are really three options. You could say four with an E-2D as well. But I think that may not fit for the purpose of the Arctic mission set. We are looking at the Boeing advanced E-7 Wedgetail. We’re looking at the Phoenix [L3Harris airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft]. And we’re looking at the GlobalEye, or variants that Saab has built. Two of them, L3Harris and the Saab offering, are both based on a Canadian biz jet. They’re based on the Global 6500 aircraft that Bombardier produces.

GlobalEye walk-around tour with Saab

Q: When will you make a decision?

A: That’s a good question for my government. We owe them the results of our options analysis. We’re near the end of options analysis (OA). The way that Canada appropriates money is by buying years, almost like your mortgage. It’s very boring, but that’s how you get money apportioned to you. And I believe it was sort of in the early 2030s. I’ll be honest, I have a need almost immediately for it. To think about the state of the E-3  fleet around the world, both in NATO and the U.S., there’s a need.

Q: Has the need for look-down radar capability pushed your airborne early warning aircraft program forward?

A: Because of the austerity of the radar landscape in Canada, I do need a movable, high-power radar in which to be able to cue my fighters and to take electronic custody of anything that was coming close to the approaches to North America, so I have a need for it, absolutely.

Q: So that’s what’s driving your options for the airborne early warning aircraft?

A: I feel quite strongly that we need that. We advocated to the government that we needed it. We made a good case. There are obviously lots of questions, but they bought our analysis, and they obviously provided us with policy coverage and funding to get after that.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Four observations on the Trump administration’s flagrant lawbreaking in abducting Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, from Caracas and bringing him to New York to “stand trial” on “narco-terrorism” and firearms charges:

1. It is a sign of quite how much of a rogue state the US has become that Washington isn’t even trying to come up with a plausible reason for kidnapping the Venezuelan president.

In invading Afghanistan, the US said it had to “smoke out” al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from his mountain lair after the 9/11 attacks. In invading Iraq, the US said it was going to destroy Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened Europe. In bombing Libya, the US claimed it was preventing Muammar Gaddafi’s troops from going on a Viagra-fuelled campaign of rape.

Each of these justifications was a transparent falsehood. The Taliban had offered to hand over bin Laden for trial. There were no WMD in Iraq. And the Viagra story was a work of unadulterated fiction.

But earlier US administrations at least had to pretend their actions were driven by humanitarian considerations and the need to maintain international order.

The charges against Maduro are so patently ridiculous you need to be a Trump fanboy, an old-school imperialist or deeply misinformed to buy any of them. No serious monitoring organisation thinks Venezuela is a major trafficker of drugs into the US, or that Maduro is personally responsible for drug-trafficking. Meanwhile, the firearm charges are so preposterous it’s difficult to understand what they even mean.

2. Unlike his predecessors, President Trump has been honest about what the US really wants: control of oil. This is an old-fashioned, colonial resource grab. So why are the media even pretending that there is some kind of “law enforcement” process going on in New York? A head of state has been abducted – that’s the story. Nothing else.

Instead we’re being subjected to ridiculous debates about whether Maduro is “a bad man”, or whether he mismanaged the Venezuelan economy. Sky News used an interview with Britain’s former Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to harangue him, demanding he condemn Maduro. Why? Precisely to deflect viewers’ attention from the actual story: that in invading Venezuela, the US committed what the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War judged to be the supreme international crime of aggression against another state. Where have you seen any establishment media outlet highlight this point in its coverage?

If Sky and other media are so worried about “bad men” running countries – so concerned that they think international law can be flouted – why are they not haranguing Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper over Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity? Doesn’t that make him a very “bad man”, far worse than anything Maduro is accused of? Why are they not demanding that Starmer and Cooper condemn him before they are allowed to talk about the Middle East?

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the western media did not weigh the justifications for Moscow’s invasion, or offer context, as they are now doing over the lawless attack on Venezuela. They responded with shock and outrage. They were not calm, judicious and analytical. They were indignant. They warned of “Russian expansionism”. They warned of Putin’s “megalomania”. They warned of the threat to international law. They emphasised the right of Ukraine to resist Russia. In many cases, they led the politicians in demanding a stronger response. None of that is visible in the coverage of Maduro’s abduction, or Trump’s lawbreaking.

3. The left is often censured for being slow to denounce non-western powers like China or Russia, or being too wary of military action against them. This is to misunderstand the left’s position. It opposes a unipolar world precisely because that inevitably leads to the kind of destabilising gangsterism just demonstrated by Trump’s attack on Venezuela. It creates a feudal system of one lord, many serfs – but on the global stage.

That is exactly what we see happening now as Trump and Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, mouth off about which country – Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Mexico – is going to be attacked next. It is exactly why every European leader, from Keir Starmer to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, sucks up to Trump, however monstrous his latest act. It is exactly why the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, speaks so limply about the general importance of “the rule of law” rather than articulating a clear denunciation of the crimes the US has just committed.

Hard as it is for westerners to acknowledge, we don’t need a stronger West, we need a weaker one.

But harder still, westerners need to understand that the very concept of “the West” is an illusion. For decades, Europe has been simply hanging on to the coat-tails of a US military behemoth, in the hope that it would protect us. But in a world of diminishing resources, the US is showing quite how ready it is to turn on anyone, including its supposed allies, for a bigger share of global wealth. Just ask Greenland and Denmark.

European states’ true interests lie, not in prostrating themselves before a global overlord, but in a multipolar world, where coalitions of interests need to be forged, where compromises must be reached, not diktats imposed. That requires a foreign policy of transparency and compassion, not conceit and arrogance. Without such a change, in an era of burgeoning nuclear tripwires and growing climate chaos, we are all finished.

4. Washington’s goal is to make Venezuela once again a haven for private US capital. If the new acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, refuses, then Trump has made it clear Venezuela will be kept as an economic basket-case, through continuing sanctions and a US naval blockade, until someone else can be installed who will do US bidding.

Venezuela’s crime – one for which it has been punished for decades – is trying to offer a different economic and social model to America’s rampant, planet-destroying, neoliberal capitalism. The deepest fear of the West’s political and media class is that western publics, subjected to permanent austerity as billionaires grow ever richer off the back of ordinary people’s immiseration, may rise up if they see a different system that looks after its citizens rather than its wealth elite.

Venezuela, with its huge oil reserves, could be precisely such a model – had it not been long strangled by US-imposed sanctions. A quarter of a century ago, Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, launched a socialist-style “Bolivarian revolution” of popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption. It reduced extreme poverty by more than 70 per cent, halved unemployment, quadrupled the number of people receiving a state pension and schooled the population to reach literacy rates of 100 per cent. Venezuela became the most equal society in Latin America – one reason why millions still turn out to defend Maduro.

Chavez did so by taking the country’s natural resources – its oil and metal ores – out of the hands of a tiny domestic elite that had ruined the country by extracting the national wealth and mostly hoarding or investing it abroad, often in the US. He nationalised major industries, from oil and steel to electricity. Those are the very industries that Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader feted by the West, wants returned to the parasitic families, like her own, that once ran them privately.

Seeing the way Venezuela has been treated for the past two decades or more should make it clear why European leaders – obedient at all costs to Washington and the corporate elites that rule the West – are so reluctant to even consider nationalising their own public industries, however popular such policies are with electorates.

Britain’s Keir Starmer, who only won the Labour leadership election by promising to nationalise major utilities, ditched his pledge the moment he was elected. None of the traditional main UK parties is offering to renationalise water, rail, energy and mail services, even though surveys regularly show at least three-quarters of the British public support such a move.

The fact is that a unipolar world leaves all of us prey to a rapacious, destructive, US corporate capitalism, which, bit by bit, is destroying our world. The issue isn’t whether Maduro was a good or bad leader of Venezuela – the matter the western establishment media wants us concentrating on. It is how do we put the US back in the box before it is too late for humanity.

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

Source: Jonathan Cook Substack

Al Jazeera witnessed injured civilians arriving at an Aleppo hospital as intense artillery fire streaked across the sky and ricocheted off buildings. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Syrian army have been engaged in increasingly intense fighting after integration talks broke down.

The comments come as the Kremlin slammed a plan for France and the UK to send peacekeepers to Ukraine after a ceasefire.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said an agreement on a security guarantee from Washington is now “essentially ready” to be finalised by US President Donald Trump, following days of negotiations in Paris.

In a post on X on Thursday, Zelenskyy said the document – a cornerstone of any settlement to end the war, which would guarantee Washington and other Western allies would support Ukraine if Russia invaded again – was almost complete.

“The bilateral document on security guarantees for Ukraine ‍is now essentially ⁠ready for finalisation at the highest level with the president,” he said.

He said the talks in Paris, involving teams from the US and Europe, had addressed “complex issues” from the framework under discussion to end the nearly four-year war, with the Ukrainian delegation presenting possible solutions for these.

“We understand that the American side will engage with Russia, and we expect feedback on whether the aggressor is genuinely willing to end the war,” he said.

Washington, which on Tuesday endorsed the idea of providing security guarantees for Ukraine for the first time, is expected to present any agreement it reaches with Kyiv to Moscow, in its attempt to broker an end to the conflict.

Kyiv says legally-binding assurances that its allies would come to its defence are essential to deter Moscow from future aggression if a ceasefire is reached.

But specific details on the guarantees and how Ukraine’s allies would respond have not been made public.

Zelenskyy said earlier this week that he was yet to receive an “unequivocal” answer about what they would do if Russia did attack again.

Russia slams peacekeeper plan

Zelenskyy’s comments came as Russia rejected a plan that emerged from the Paris talks for European peacekeepers to be deployed to Ukraine as “militaristic”, warning they would be treated as “legitimate military targets”.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed a declaration of intent with Zelenskyy in Paris, setting out the framework for troops from their countries to be deployed to Ukraine after a ceasefire was reached with Russia.

But in Russia’s first comments in response to the plan, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova denounced the proposal as “dangerous” and “destructive”, dampening hopes the plan could prove a step in bringing the war to an end.

“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Zakharova said in a statement.

“All such units and facilities will be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian Armed Forces,” she said, repeating a threat previously made by Putin.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that it would not accept any NATO members sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.

Russia attacks energy infrastructure

In his social media post, Zelenskyy also called for more pressure on Russia from Ukraine’s supporters, after further Russian missile attacks on energy infrastructure, which, he said, “clearly don’t indicate that Moscow is reconsidering its priorities”.

“In this context, it is necessary that pressure on Russia continues to increase at the same intensity as the work of our negotiating teams.”

The attacks left Ukrainian authorities scrambling to restore heating and water to hundreds of thousands of households in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions.

“This is truly a national level emergency,” Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipropetrovsk’s capital Dnipro, said on Telegram.

He announced power was “gradually returning to the hospitals” after the blackouts forced them to run on generators. The city authorities also extended school holidays for children.

About 600,000 households in the region remained cut off from power in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian energy company DTEK said.