welcomes

MEGHAN Trainor has announced she welcomed her third child via surrogate and shared the youngster’s adorable name and gender.

The singer shared the news in an Instagram post on Tuesday.

It included a slideshow of photos of Meghan, her husband, Daryl Sabara, and their two sons bonding with their new baby sister.

One captured the Grammy Award winner in tears as she had her first skin-to-skin contact with her newborn baby girl, moments after the youngster’s arrival.

Meghan revealed in her caption that her daughter, named Mikey Moon Trainor, was born on January 18th with the help of a “superwoman surrogate.”

“Our baby girl Mikey Moon Trainor has finally made it to the world thanks to our incredible, superwoman surrogate,” the Mother singer’s caption began.

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“We are forever grateful to all the doctors, nurses, teams who made this dream possible. We had endless conversations with our doctors in this journey and this was the safest way for us to be able to continue growing our family.

“We are over the moon in love with this precious girl. Riley and Barry have been so excited, they even got to choose her middle name. We are going to enjoy our family time now, love you all,” she concluded.

Mikey joins Meghan and Daryl’s boys, Riley and Barry.

Fans reacted with surprise and congratulatory messages in the comments for the growing family.

“WHATTTT!!!!! OMG MY HEART THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!! Congratulations!!!! So happy for you and your family!!!” one person wrote.

“Somehow I had no idea you were having a daughter via surrogacy,” another shocked user said.

“Oh my god I’m so happy for you all,” remarked a third.

“Not Meghan just surprising us all with another baby,” laughed a fourth.

“WHAT!!!! Congratulations omg!!! You finally have your baby girl I’m gonna cryyyy,” added a fifth.

Meghan – who recently underwent a dramatic weight loss – just revealed late last year that she’s heading on the road for her The Get In Girl Tour.

The tour kicks off on June 12th in Michigan and wraps on August 15th in Los Angeles.

Meghan appears to have much to focus on away from the recent toxic mom group drama ignited by her pal Ashley Tisdale.

Ashley claimed in a blog post that her close circle of mom friends, which includes Meghan, Hilary Duff, and Mandy Moore, repeatedly made her feel “left out” from their get-togethers.

A source exclusively revealed to The U.S. Sun that the ladies’ separation from the High School Musical star “wasn’t an overnight thing” and that she’d been “slowly slipping away” from them for years.

They also claimed that Ashley’s controversial political comments contributed to the feud as she made others feel “uncomfortable with her by association.”

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has travelled to Washington, DC, to meet with United States President Donald Trump at the White House, following the abduction of her political adversary, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Thursday’s meeting was the first time the two leaders encountered one another face-to-face.

But the visit was an unusually subdued one for Trump, who normally welcomes foreign leaders to the Oval Office for a news conference with reporters.

This time, however, Trump kept his meeting with Machado private, away from clicking camera shutters and shouted questions from reporters.

Trump has backed Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as interim leader of the South American country, despite Machado’s claims that the opposition has a mandate to govern.

Rodriguez’s inaugural state of the union address as president coincided with Machado’s arrival at the White House, a fact that could have contributed to the low-key nature of the meeting.

“We are used to seeing the president ushering in the cameras, making comments, talking away,” Al Jazeera correspondent Mike Hanna reported as evening fell in the capital.

“But on this particular occasion, [the meeting] was held behind closed doors. In fact, we haven’t even had a formal readout from the White House of that meeting with Machado.”

Still, Machado struck an upbeat tone as she exited the White House and strolled onto Pennsylvania Avenue, where she was thronged by reporters and supporters seeking selfies.

She and Trump spent only a few hours together in the White House, as they discussed Venezuela’s future over lunch.

Machado confirmed to the media that she followed through with her plans to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize, an honour the US president has long coveted for himself.

“I presented the president of the United States the medal, the Nobel Peace Prize,” Machado told reporters.

As she offered Trump the prize, Machado said she recounted a historical anecdote, about an interaction between Simon Bolivar – the Venezuelan military officer who helped liberate much of South America from colonial rule – and the Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero in the US.

“I told him this. Listen to this. Two hundred years ago, General Lafayette gave Simon Bolivar a medal with George Washington’s face,” Machado said. “Bolivar since then kept that medal for the rest of his life.”

The Nobel Committee, however, has clarified that the prize is non-transferable and cannot be shared.

Machado was announced as the recipient of the prize in October, in recognition of her efforts to advance Venezuelan democracy.

“I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause,” Machado wrote on October 10. She secretly left Venezuela, where she had been living in hiding, in December to travel to Norway and collect the medal.

‘Willing to serve’

Machado remains a popular figure within Venezuela’s opposition movement, which has faced oppression and violence under Maduro’s presidency.

Human rights organisations have accused Maduro of systematically suppressing dissent and arresting opposition leaders.

As of January 11, the human rights group Foro Penal estimated there were 804 political prisoners in Venezuela, though some estimates put their population in the thousands.

Machado was formerly a member of Venezuela’s National Assembly, but Maduro’s government had her removed for allegedly conspiring against the presidency.

She was considered a leading candidate for the 2024 presidential race, and during the October 2023 opposition primary, she earned more than 92 percent support.

But in January 2024, she was again disqualified from holding office, and former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez ultimately ran on behalf of the opposition coalition.

After polls closed in July 2024, the government did not publish the usual breakdown of the voting tallies, leading to widespread outcry over a lack of transparency. The opposition obtained voting tallies that appeared to show Gonzalez winning in a landslide, further fuelling the outrage.

But Maduro’s government backed his claim to a third six-year term as president.

After the US military abducted Maduro from Venezuela on January 3, it transported him to the US to face charges of narcotics trafficking.

Machado has since appeared on US television to advance the Venezuelan opposition’s claim that it has a “mandate” to take over the presidency after Maduro’s removal.

“We have a president-elect who is Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, and we are ready and willing to serve our people as we have been mandated,” she told CBS News on January 7.

Dismissing Machado?

But Trump has thrown his support behind Rodriguez, whom he has described as cooperative.

“ She’s somebody that we’ve worked with very well,” Trump said at a news conference on Thursday. “I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”

The US president has previously said that the US will “run” Venezuela. Last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also told reporters that the Venezuelan government’s “decisions are going to continue to be dictated by the United States of America”.

Still, Rodriguez has denounced the January 3 attack on Venezuela as a violation of international law, and in Thursday’s state of the union speech, she continued to express continued allegiance to “Chavismo”, the political movement Maduro followed.

She has also criticised US threats to her country’s sovereignty.

“We know the US is a lethal nuclear power. We have seen their record in history of humanity. We know and we are not afraid to face them diplomatically through political dialogue as appropriate and resolve once and for all this historical contradiction,” Rodriguez said on Thursday.

“Brothers and sisters, deputies, regardless of political affiliation, it doesn’t matter. We have to go together as Venezuelans to defend our sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and also defend our dignity and our honour.”

She nevertheless indicated she planned to revisit Venezuela’s hydrocarbon law to allow for greater foreign investment.

Renata Segura, the director of the Latin America and Caribbean programme at the nonprofit International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that Rodriguez and her government have consistently maintained that Maduro remains the rightful leader of Venezuela.

“We should not forget that Rodriguez and many other members of the government in Caracas have been very adamant about the fact that the intervention against Maduro was illegitimate. They’ve actually demanded that he be liberated,” Segura said.

“So they haven’t done a 180-degree shift in the tone of their declarations. But it’s not like they have a lot of manoeuvring room. So they are really trying to appease Trump at this moment.”

Still, Trump has long dismissed Machado’s prospects as a replacement for Maduro or Rodriguez, saying on January 3 that she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country”.

Segura believes the Trump administration’s choice to reject Machado as the leader of Venezuela is understandable, in the name of stability.

But, she added, Machado is the clear leader of the opposition, and her coalition therefore needs to be part of the country’s government moving forward.

“It would be very illegitimate if we just had a conversation between the regime of Chavismo, now without Maduro, and the Trump administration, without those people that really represent the Venezuelan people’s feelings,” Segura said.

GORDON Ramsay has officially welcomed Adam Peaty into the family fold with a sweet comment following the swimmer’s marriage to his daughter, Holly.

The influencer, 27, and Olympian, 31, headed on a lavish Maldives honeymoon after they tied the knot at Bath Abbey on December 27.

Over the weekend, dad of one Adam shared a snippet of his wedding speech in which he seemingly took a jab at his estranged parents, with whom he is locked in a family feud.

In a sad turn of events, dad of one Adam banned his mum Caroline from his special day while he told his father he could attend but watch from the back of the church – an invite he then understandably declined.

Tensions between the families were heightened when F Word chef Gordon made reference to the bad blood when he delivered a fiery father-od-the-bride speech – which Holly backed in a message following the ceremony.

Now Gordon has firmly welcomed Adam into the Ramsay clan.

MUM’S PAIN

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BREAKING COVER

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He commented on his recent Instagram post where he could be heard reading his wedding speech and penned: “Beautiful words @adamramsaypeaty.

“True Love @hollyramsaypeaty congratulations.”

He then signed off his comment with: “Love you both so much Dad.”

The sweet declaration at the end of the comment was seemingly a way for Gordon to welcome Adam into the fold.

Since the ceremony, swimmer Adam has revealed his name change – tweaking his surname to Ramsay Peaty – in what appeared to be another snub.

GORDON’S ROLE

At last month’s ceremony, Gordon made a striking speech and told the couple how his wife Tana “will be a good mum to them both”.

Gordon gushed at how beautiful Holly looked and told Adam he was a “lucky man”, adding: “Look at Tana and that’s what you have to look forward to.”

And in a sly dig at Adam’s absent parents he told Holly: “Shame you don’t have the same.”

In a chat with British Vogue, content creator Holly spoke about a photo showing her and Adam at the ceremony and appeared to reinforce her support for his words.

She said: “Listening to dad’s speech, looking around the room and feeling overwhelmed with the love and the happiness on our guests’ faces.”

Yet it was then reported how Adam’s mum Caroline was “outraged and hurt” by Gordon’s “cruel” digs at her family.

A source close to the Peaty family told the Daily Mail at the time: “Caroline can’t believe Gordon brought their family troubles up his speech. It is outrageous and very hurtful.

“By him saying Tana will be a good mum to them both makes Caroline sound like a bad mum. It was a cruel dig at her.

“She has always done her best for all her children. She is a very good mum.”

Adam’s feud with mum Caroline, 60, exploded In November after she was not invited to Holly’s hen do.  

And he appeared to refuse to back down from the family drama as he dished out a cryptic statement on social media to mark the New Year.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry has welcomed a request from Yemen’s Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) for a forum in Riyadh to resolve a deadly factional rift in the country’s south that has stoked armed conflict there and triggered tensions between Gulf Arab nations.

In a statement on Saturday, the Saudi foreign ministry called on southern factions to participate in the forum in the Saudi capital to “formulate a comprehensive vision for fair solutions to the southern cause”.

Earlier on Saturday, PLC Chairman Rashad al-Alimi appealed to the different groups and figures in southern Yemen to come together for a meeting in Riyadh, according to Saba News Agency.

Saba quoted al-Alimi as underlining the “justness and centrality of the southern cause” and “rejected any unilateral or exclusionary solutions” to resolve the ongoing conflict.

Deadly tensions have erupted in recent days, after the separatist group Southern Transitional Council (STC) launched a major offensive in Yemen’s Hadramout and al-Mahra provinces, which make up nearly half of Yemen’s territory.

Oil-producing Hadramout borders Saudi Arabia, and many prominent Saudis trace their origins to the province, lending it cultural and historical significance for the kingdom. Its capture by the STC last month was regarded by the Saudis as a threat.

The STC is part of the anti-Houthi coalition in Yemen’s south. But it is said to harbour plans to carve out its own nation in southern Yemen, causing conflict with its partner, the internationally recognised Yemeni government led by the PLC.

The Saudis have accused its coalition partner, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), of arming the STC, whose military operation is now threatening to split Yemen into three, while also posing problems to Riyadh’s own national security.

The UAE has denied those allegations, insisting that it supports Saudi Arabia’s security.

In a statement on Saturday, the UAE expressed its “deep concern” over the ongoing escalation and called on the Yemenis “to prioritise wisdom and exercise restraint to ensure security and stability in the country”.

The Saudi-backed coalition was formed in 2015 in an attempt to dislodge the Iran-backed Houthi rebels from Yemen’s north.

But after a brutal, decade-long civil war, the Houthis remain in place while the Saudi and Emirati-backed factions attack each other in the south.

On Friday, air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition killed 20 people, according to the STC.

Late on Friday, the UAE announced the return of all Emirati armed forces personnel from Yemen, signalling a possible detente with Saudi Arabia.

The UAE’s defence ministry said that the withdrawal of its forces from Yemen is in accordance with its decision “to conclude the remaining missions of counter-terrorism units”.

“The process has been conducted in a manner that ensured the safety of all personnel and carried out in coordination with all relevant partners,” the ministry said in a statement published on the Emirates News Agency website.

Amid the UAE’s announcement of a withdrawal, the STC unilaterally declared that it aims to hold a referendum on independence from the north in two years.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, former Yemeni diplomat and parliament member Ali Ahmed al-Amrani, however, dismissed the idea of secession as a solution to the Yemeni crisis, saying it “does not reflect a national consensus”.

Meanwhile, Hisham Al-Omeisy, a political and conflict analyst focusing on Yemen with the European Institute of Peace, warned that if not resolved, the latest violence in the south could mark the start of a dangerous new phase in the war, with rival forces seeking to reshape control on the ground.

“We’re going to be basically seeing a bloody conflict, at least in the coming few days, to draw a new map in the south,” he added.

“This is prolonged fighting,” Al-Omeisy told Al Jazeera, describing a situation in which “warring factions are trying to gain territory and secure the upper hand.

“This is a proxy war within a proxy war,” he said, adding that the consequences could extend far beyond Yemen’s borders.

New Year’s Eve celebrations are unfolding across the world as countries move into 2026 one time zone at a time.

The first major cities to mark the new year welcomed midnight with fireworks over their waterfronts, and large crowds gathered at public viewing points.

As the night continues, countries across the Americas will close out the global transition with events stretching from Rio de Janeiro’s beaches to Times Square in New York City and beyond.

This gallery shows how people are marking the start of 2026 around the world.

Dec. 31 (UPI) — Australia rang in 2026 with fireworks, solidarity, words of encouragement and heavily armed police officers on New Year’s Eve in the wake of the Bondi Beach shooting.

“Peace” and “unity” were projected onto the Sydney Harbor Bridge, and fireworks exploded to celebrate the new year. The bridge was lit by a white light to symbolize peace, and a menorah was projected onto the bridge pylons as a show of solidarity.

At 11 p.m. AEDT, the festivities paused for a minute of silence for victims of the attack.

New South Wales Police said there were more than 2,500 police officers patrolling the streets of Sydney on Wednesday evening.

The heightened security is in response to the Dec. 14 attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Two gunmen shot and killed 14 people. One of the gunmen was also killed. There were 42 people injured in the attack.

Chris Minns, premier of NSW, noted that some might find the heavy police presence with guns “confronting.”

“But I make no apology for that,” Minns said. “We want people to be safe in our community.”

Before the event, the New York Times reported Sydney Mayor Clover Moore said, “I invite people at home and around the harbor to join with us by shining their phone torch in solidarity to show the Jewish community that we stand with them, and that we reject violence, fear and antisemitism.”

Joe and Lucy, British tourists, told the BBC that the boost of police presence reassured them. They were in Melbourne when the shooting happened.

“We had our worries about coming for New Year’s Eve,” Joe told the BBC. “But we were reading more recently in the news … how more police were going to be here, it would be a bit safer.”