Category: Nation & World

For a brief moment, some Venezuelans allowed themselves to celebrate.

When they learned Saturday that strongman Nicolás Maduro had been seized by U.S. Special Forces, many group chats filled with messages of joy and relief. Some people cried. One family in Caracas opened a bottle of champagne they had bought months earlier and saved for a special occasion. After more than a decade of living under Maduro, there were cautious hopes for a different future.

By Monday, however, those feelings had been replaced by more familiar ones: fear, dread, and uncertainty.

Venezuela’s government has moved quickly to suppress any public expression of support for Maduro’s ouster, launching a nationwide crackdown that has included the detention of journalists, the arrest of civilians, and the deployment of armed gangs across the capital.

“It feels like it did after the presidential elections in 2024,” said María, 55, who like others in this story spoke on the condition that they be identified by their first name, or on the condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals. “We won, but we also lost,” she said, referring to the country’s last elections, in which Maduro claimed victory despite tallies showing the opposition had prevailed.

The crackdown unfolded as Delcy Rodríguez, the country’s vice president, was sworn in as interim president Monday at the National Assembly. Senior military officials publicly pledged their loyalty to her — a signal that while the country had a new leader, the old power structure remained in place.

At least 14 journalists and media workers were detained Monday — including 11 working for international outlets, according to the National Press Workers Union. Most, the union said, were held for several hours and later released, but several reported that military counterintelligence officers searched their phones. Many of the detentions took place near the National Assembly as Rodríguez took the oath of office in a ceremony overseen by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, who heads the legislature.

Authorities also moved against ordinary citizens — empowered by a “state of external commotion” decree that ordered Venezuela’s national, state, and municipal police forces to immediately search for and arrest anyone “involved in promoting or supporting the armed attack by the United States of America.” The decree, which entered into force Saturday but was published in full Monday, also suspended the right to protest and authorized broad restrictions on movement and assembly.

In the western state of Mérida, two people in their 60s were arrested for shouting anti-government slogans and “celebrating the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” according to state police.

Across Caracas, pro-government paramilitary groups known as “colectivos” — a hallmark of the informal security state built by former president Hugo Chávez and inherited by Maduro after his death — set up checkpoints, including along the Cota Mil highway that runs north of the city. Residents described being pulled over, questioned and forced to hand over their phones. Some said the armed men scrolled through their messages and social media, looking for anything that could be construed as support for the U.S. raid.

“We’re texting each other routes to avoid,” said a Caracas resident. “You hear ‘don’t go there — they’re stopping cars with machine guns.’”

In the wake of Maduro’s capture, President Donald Trump has said repeatedly that the United States is “running” Venezuela, though it is unclear what influence Washington is exerting on authorities in Caracas.

Overseeing U.S. involvement in the country, Trump said, would fall to a small group of senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, — and himself. Venezuela, the president told NBC on Monday, was not in a position to hold elections.

“We have to fix the country first,” he said. “We have to nurse the country back to health.”

In a news conference Tuesday, Trump suggested that the Venezuelan government planned to shut down El Helicoide, a sprawling, spiral-shaped detention center in Caracas that has long been used to hold and torture dissidents, according to rights groups.

Foro Penal, a local human rights group, has said more than 860 political prisoners remain in state custody.

“Of course I have hope things could get better without Maduro,” a 30-year-old man in the capital told the Washington Post. “But from where I am, all I see is the same people who destroyed my country still in power. They’re still persecuting us. And we’re still afraid.”

In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, opposition leader María Corina Machado — who left Venezuela in December to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway — called the crackdown “really alarming” and urged the U.S. and the international community to monitor the situation. She described Rodríguez as “one of the main architects of torture, persecution [and] corruption.”

Late Monday, as weary families bedded down, gunshots rang out near the Miraflores presidential palace. On social media, residents shared videos from their window of armed men in the streets; some speculated that a coup was underway.

Hours later, the Communication and Information Ministry put out a statement saying police had fired warning shots after “drones flew over the area without authorization.”

“The entire country is completely calm,” the statement said.

Foreign travelers from seven additional countries are now required to pay up to $15,000 for a reimbursable bond when applying for a U.S. visitor visa, as the Trump administration continues to tighten entry requirements to the country.

As of Jan. 1, Bhutan, Botswana, the Central African Republic, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, and Turkmenistan are required to pay the assurances as part of a State Department pilot program launched in August. Thirteen countries are now affected by the program, most of them in Africa.

The bond deposits — which the department has said are aimed at deterring visitors from staying in the United States longer than they are allowed for business or tourism — range between $5,000 and $15,000, and do not guarantee that a visa will be issued. The payment will be refunded if visitors depart the U.S. within the time specified on their visas, according to the policy.

Applicants whose visas are approved can only enter the U.S. from three designated airports: Boston Logan International Airport, New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Washington Dulles International Airport, the State Department notice said. The program is not applicable to those on student visas.

Travelers from 42 countries that are part of the visa waiver program — who don’t need a visa to enter the U.S. — including much of Europe, Australia, Qatar, and Israel, are also exempt.

The administration has said the program is aimed at countries with high visa overstay rates, citing a Department of Homeland Security report to Congress. However, some of the countries newly added to the list have low overstay numbers. The department suspects that two of the 137 visitors from the Central African Republic (or about 2%) overstayed their nonimmigrant business and tourist visas in fiscal year 2024, while about 4% from Namibia are suspected of overstaying.

The pilot was launched in August with Malawi and Zambia. An estimated 234 visitors from Malawi (or 14%) overstayed their nonimmigrant visas in fiscal year 2023, as did 365 (11%) from Zambia. Four countries were added to the list in October.

For couples or families, the potential up-front cost of $10,000 or $15,000 per person could be prohibitive. At the time of its launch, the State Department predicted the year-long pilot program would cost travelers around $20 million, based on 2,000 potential travelers paying an average bond of $10,000.

The State Department had planned a six-month visa bond pilot in 2020, but did not implement it as global travel dwindled during the coronavirus pandemic.

Iran’s government ordered an investigation into clashes between protesters and riot police at a hospital in the country’s west as a video emerged online showing another hospital being hit with tear gas by security forces.

Video posted to social media on Tuesday purportedly showed the courtyard of Sina Hospital submerged in tear gas smoke. The footage cannot be verified by Bloomberg but the hospital is near the capital’s Grand Bazaar, where a fresh bout of protests and clashes with police erupted on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

Security forces fired tear gas at demonstrators in the sprawling market — where unrest began on Dec. 28 — who had shuttered their businesses and were staging a sit-in at the trading hub, the AP said, citing witnesses. Unverified social media footage also appeared to show police rushing crowds in the bazaar’s surrounding streets and in one of its main arteries.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said Monday that at least 29 people have been killed in provinces including Lorestan, Fars, and Kurdistan and more than 1,200 people arrested since a sharp currency decline triggered demonstrations in Tehran that later spread to other cities.

On Sunday, videos emerged on social media appearing to show security forces storming the Imam Khomeini Hospital in the western city of Ilam and firing tear gas inside. The footage fueled even more public anger at the authorities, prompting President Masoud Pezeshkian to order the investigation. Officials haven’t yet responded to the incident at the hospital in Tehran.

The protests have divided Iran’s leadership over how to respond. While Pezeshkian, a political moderate and a former heart surgeon, has described protesters’ demands as legitimate, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei has warned that “no leniency or tolerance” would be shown toward protesters and vowed swift trials, according to the official Mizan news agency.

“Rioters can no longer claim to have been misled,” Ejei said, accusing the U.S. and Israel of openly backing the unrest. “There is now no room for any concessions toward rioters and instigators of unrest.”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on most state matters, said Saturday that “rioters must be put in their place.”

The protests are the biggest to rock Iran since nationwide unrest in 2022 over the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody. But they don’t yet represent a threat to the Islamic Republic’s security, Eurasia Group analysts wrote in a report last week.

The unrest comes amid deteriorating living conditions in Iran, where high inflation, rising costs and a weak currency have fueled growing public dissatisfaction.

The government has announced measures to ease the frustration including a monthly cash subsidy of 10 million rials (roughly $7) for each member of every household. It also appointed a new central bank governor to stabilize the declining rial.

The subsidy is part of a broader “livelihood plan” that’s aimed at offsetting the rising cost of basic goods like cooking oil, milk, sugar, and meat, government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Monday.

Iran’s currency has dropped by around 45% on the black market in the past year. It trades at roughly 1.5 million against the dollar, according to bombast, a website that tracks the currency.

No place was hit harder than Cuba by the shock waves that Saturday morning’s U.S. military seizure of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro sent throughout Latin America and the world.

Within hours of the operation — long before the government in Havana acknowledged it — phone calls and texts across the island spread the news that dozens of elite Cuban security forces had been killed guarding Maduro.

But by the time it finally released a statement late Sunday saying that 32 of its military and security personnel were dead in Caracas, the Cuban government had bigger problems on its hands.

Both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear over the weekend that the collapse of Cuba’s communist government was not only a likely side benefit of Maduro’s ouster but a goal.

“I don’t think we need [to take] any action,” Trump said as he flew back to Washington from his extended Florida holiday break. Without Maduro and the oil supplies Venezuela provided, he said, “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall.”

Rubio went further, indicating that the United States might be willing to give it a push. “I’m not going to talk to you about what our future steps are going to be,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. But, he added, “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

Their words resonated with many in the Miami-centered exile community, where the struggle to free Cuba from communist rule has dominated politics for decades. On Saturday, South Florida Cuban exiles — some wearing red Trump hats and Cuban flags as capes — joined hundreds of revelers at spirited, impromptu celebrations from Little Havana to Doral, a city nicknamed “Doralezuela” because of its large population of Venezuelans. Cuban American leaders, most of them Republican, issued statements as Venezuela coverage dominated local TV stations.

Cuba is the “root” of problems with Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other leftist regimes in the region, said Dariel Fernandez, Miami-Dade County’s elected tax collector. “Now the time has come … for the Castro communist and socialist assassin regime to be held accountable as well, and for the Cuban people to finally be free.”

Absent direct U.S. intervention, however, Cuba experts here and on the island were less certain.

“If you’re asking if the Cuban government will just collapse on its own because the economic pain is bound to increase” without shipments of Venezuelan oil, “I’m very skeptical,” said Michael J. Bustamante, associate professor of history and director of the Cuban studies program at the University of Miami.

To keep the lights on and cars running, Cuba has long been dependent on Venezuelan oil supplies, for which it has exchanged security and medical personnel in a sympathetic contract with leftist allies in Caracas.

“I could very well be proven wrong, but Cuba has been here before” and survived, Bustamente said, referencing what is known in Cuba as the “special period” that began in 1991 with the abrupt cutoff of outside assistance after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Juan Gonzalez, who served as Western Hemisphere director on the Biden administration’s national security staff, said that “cutting off the oil deliveries is going to put a huge squeeze on the humanitarian situation” in Cuba, which is already suffering regular electricity blackouts and food scarcities. “But I don’t think the regime is going to cry uncle.”

Aside from an economic uptick during the Obama administration, when the resumption of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana led to increased tourism and slender openings for private ownership and outside investment, the Cuban economy has never really recovered from the Soviet fall.

The nation has been on a steady slide into economic chaos for years, owing to U.S. sanctions and what even many of its supporters see as mismanagement by a sclerotic Cuban Communist Party.

Some chose to see opportunity in the darkness following Maduro’s ouster. Carlos Alzugaray, a retired career Cuban diplomat reached by phone at his Havana home, said, “There is of course an increase of the threat, a very bad thing.”

But it was possible, he said, that Cuba’s allies in Russia and elsewhere would help, “and just maybe the government will … open up the economy and do what the economists have been telling them for a long time and they have refused to do.”

Venezuelan support under Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, in the early 2000s helped Cuba emerge from the special period and the weight of decades-long U.S. sanctions. Since then, Havana has weathered the death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, COVID, Trump’s dismantling during his first administration of the limited Obama opening and furious street protests in 2021.

But the emboldened second Trump administration presents an entirely new threat to Cuba’s leaders.

At various points over the years, Cuba’s own government economists have advised overhauling the economy and have been urged to do so by allies in China, Vietnam, and Russia.

Raúl Castro, who took over from his ailing brother, Fidel, in 2006, warned of needed reforms in a lengthy 2010 speech to the Cuban parliament. “We are playing with the life of the revolution,” he said. “We can either rectify the situation, or we will run out of time walking on the edge of the abyss, and we will sink.”

But his plans to expand the role of the private sector and reduce state ownership were seen as contradictory and insufficiently implemented, ultimately resolving few of Cuba’s systemic problems. Other pushes for change have run into similar roadblocks over the ruling party’s refusal to allow private businesses and farms to sell their goods directly for market prices, its rejection of currency reforms, heavy government investments in a failing tourism industry and the growing power of GAESA, the military-controlled conglomerate that runs vast swaths of the economy.

At their peak of about 100,000 barrels a day, Venezuelan oil shipments allowed Cuba to serve its own energy needs and sell refined petroleum products overseas for desperately needed cash. But as Venezuela dealt with sharp drops in output, due to U.S. sanctions and mismanagement, shipments dropped to about 30,000 barrels last year.

Those cuts, along with Cuba’s aging refineries, failing infrastructure and the occasional hurricane, led to at least five islandwide blackouts last year.

“They have to realize they can’t depend on foreign help anymore,” Alzugaray said. Russia and Mexico have supplied some oil, although Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is likely to come under increasing U.S. pressure to cut off aid to Havana. China, which holds major Cuban debt, has shown little interest in helping.

Reforms have been approved “on paper,” Alzugaray said. “The problem is they don’t do it. The essence is opening to market economics, allowing expansion of the private sector, and eliminating or selling socialist state enterprises that don’t produce. They have to do it, and they have to do it fast. They have lost too much time.”

Few Cuba watchers have much confidence that reforms will happen, at least under the party government of President Manuel Díaz-Canel and the current power structure.

“There are reformers inside the regime,” said Gonzalez, the Biden administration official, who had extensive dealings with the Cuban government. “They have a vision, but they don’t have the wherewithal and the influence to have it done.”

Even if they did, he said, “it won’t be enough” for Rubio, whose parents fled the island before Fidel Castro’s 1959 takeover, and Cuban American lawmakers and power brokers, he said. “They’re going to want big change.”

Opposition on the island is diffuse and leaderless since arrests following the 2021 street protests.

“People who aspire to be opposition leaders are either in Miami or in Madrid or in jail,” said William LeoGrande, a specialist in Latin American affairs at American University. A Venezuela-like removal of even a handful of individuals is unlikely to rattle the multilayered, entrenched party and military power centers to the point of collapse, he said.

As for Cubans themselves, Alzugaray said, “I wouldn’t think that people are so desperate that they will welcome an American intervention or a group of Miami Cubans taking over. What people want is the Cuban government to change,” he said, “but in Cuban terms, not imposed by the outside.”

More than 2 million documents regarding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein remain to be released, Justice Department officials told a federal judge Monday, offering the most precise estimate so far of the size of the file still under review.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in New York, officials said the department had released 12,285 documents, comprising about 125,575 pages, but that the vast majority of the Epstein files had not yet been released. Last month, Engelmayer issued an order allowing the department to release grand jury documents related to the 2021 trial and conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice, on sex-trafficking charges.

Justice Department officials had previously given even larger estimates of the number of documents still under review. The letter notes that the department has identified a large number of documents that are “copies of (or largely duplicative of) documents that had already been collected.”

The letter was signed by Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

A new law passed in November mandated that the entire trove of Epstein files be released by Dec. 19. Justice Department officials said late last month that they hope to release the rest of the documents by Jan. 20. Members of Congress who pushed the legislation say that the department has not released key documents they want to see.

“DOJ’s refusal to follow the law I passed in Congress and release the full files is an obstruction of justice,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), one of the new law’s main sponsors, said in a statement. “They also need to release the FBI witness interviews which name other men, so the public can know who was involved,” he said.

More than 400 lawyers and 100 specially trained document analysts “will dedicate all or a substantial portion of their workday” to getting documents ready for release, the officials told the judge.

The letter — a progress report of sorts — gives a glimpse into the daunting labor that lies ahead for federal officials.

Those reviewing the unreleased documents must determine whether each document falls under the law’s broad mandate, review the documents to redact information that could identify victims, and respond to requests from victims or their family members for additional redactions, according to the letter.

Officials offered similar explanations for a delay in releasing all unclassified Epstein documents last month, after the Justice Department failed to meet its deadline.

Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019 and died in federal custody later that year. His death was ruled a suicide. Judges and lawmakers say that over decades, he abused, trafficked, and molested scores of girls, many of whom have come forward in court and in other public forums.

Epstein’s friendships with prominent political, business, and cultural figures, including President Donald Trump, also continue to be under intense scrutiny.

Trump had a long-standing friendship with Epstein. He has said he knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, Fla., and that they had a falling out in the mid-2000s. Trump has attributed the end of their relationship to a quarrel over a real estate deal and to Epstein hiring employees away from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has said Epstein was ejected from the club “for being a creep” to female workers there.

Trump has not been accused of participating in Epstein’s criminal conduct.

Documents released last month confirmed that the FBI received a complaint about Epstein as far back as 1996. But Epstein did not appear to come under serious law enforcement scrutiny until about a decade later, when he was arrested in 2006.

At the time, Epstein reached an agreement with officials in Florida that enabled him to plead guilty in 2008 to two state charges of soliciting prostitution, including one involving a minor, while avoiding federal charges and serving just over a year behind bars — with ample work-release privileges.

PARIS — Ukraine’s allies said Tuesday they had agreed to provide the country with multilayered international defense guarantees as part of a proposal to end Russia’s nearly 4-year-old invasion of its neighbor.

At a key meeting in Paris, leaders from European countries and Canada, as well as U.S. representatives and top officials from the European Union and NATO, said they would provide Kyiv’s front-line forces with equipment and training and back them up with air, land and sea support to deter any future Russian attack.

The size of the supporting forces was not made public, and many of the plan’s details remain unclear.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the meeting made “excellent progress” but cautioned that “the hardest yards are still ahead,” noting that Russian attacks on Ukraine continue.

He said allies will participate in U.S.-led monitoring and verification of any ceasefire, support the long-term provision of armaments for Ukraine’s defense, and work toward binding commitments to support Ukraine in the case of any future attack by Russia.

There was no immediate comment from officials in Russia on Tuesday, which was the eve of Orthodox Christmas.

Moscow has revealed few details of its stance in the U.S.-led peace negotiations. Officials have reaffirmed Russia’s demands and have insisted there can be no ceasefire until a comprehensive settlement is agreed. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out any deployment of troops from NATO countries on Ukrainian soil.

Starmer added that there can only be peace if Russia compromises, and “Putin is not showing that he is ready for peace.”

In the event of a ceasefire, he said the U.K. and France “will establish military hubs across Ukraine and build protected facilities for weapons and military equipment to support Ukraine’s defensive needs.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said progress was made in the talks, although commitments need to be ratified by each country so that they can be put in place after any settlement.

“We determined what countries are ready to take leadership in the elements of security guarantees on the ground, in the air, and at sea, and in restoration,” Zelensky told a news conference in Paris. “We determined what forces are needed. We determined, how these forces will be operated and at what levels of command.”

He said details of how monitoring will work remain to be determined, as do the size and financing of the Ukrainian army.

U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said U.S. “strongly stands behind” security guarantees

French President Emmanuel Macron said the security statement endorsed by Ukraine’s allies is a “significant step” toward ending Russia’s invasion.

A joint statement said the allies also agreed to continue long-term military assistance and armament to Ukraine’s armed forces, which “will remain the first line of defense and deterrence” after any peace deal is signed.

The allies still must finalize “binding commitments” setting out what they will do to support Ukraine.

Prospects for progress at the meeting had been uncertain as the Trump administration’s focus is shifting to Venezuela, while U.S. suggestions of a Greenland takeover caused tension with Europe, and Moscow shows no signs of compromise.

The countries dubbed the “coalition of the willing have been exploring for months how to deter any future Russian aggression should it agree to stop fighting Ukraine.

Macron’s office said an unprecedented number of officials attended in person, with 35 participants including 27 heads of state and government. Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, met with Macron at the Elysee presidential palace for preparatory talks ahead of the gathering.

A series of meetings on the summit’s sidelines illustrated the intensity of the diplomatic effort and the complexity of its moving parts.

Zelensky met with Macron ahead of the summit. French, British, and Ukrainian military chiefs also met, with NATO’s top commander, U.S. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, participating in talks that France’s army chief said focused on implementing security guarantees. Army chiefs from other coalition nations joined by video.

Macron’s office said the U.S. delegation was initially set to be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but he changed his plans after the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.

Tension rises over Greenland comments

Trump on Sunday renewed his call for the U.S. to take control of Greenland, a strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island.

The leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the U.K. on Tuesday joined Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in defending Greenland’s sovereignty in the wake of Trump’s comments about the self-governing territory of the kingdom of Denmark.

But the continent also needs U.S. military might to back up Ukrainian security guarantees and ward off Russia’s territorial ambitions. That could require a delicate diplomatic balancing act in Paris.

Participants are seeking concrete outcomes on five key priorities once fighting ends: ways to monitor a ceasefire; support for Ukraine’s armed forces; deployment of a multinational force on land, at sea and in the air; commitments in case of more Russian aggression; and long-term defense cooperation with Ukraine.

But whether that’s still achievable Tuesday isn’t so clear now, after the U.S. military operation targeting Maduro in Venezuela.

Ukraine seeks firm guarantees from Washington of military and other support seen as crucial to securing similar commitments from other allies. Kyiv has been wary of any ceasefire that it fears could provide time for Russia to regroup and attack again.

Important details unfinalized

Zelensky said during the weekend that potential European troop deployments still face hurdles, important details have not been finalized, and “not everyone is ready” to commit forces.

He noted that many countries would need approval from lawmakers even if leaders agreed on military support for Ukraine. But he recognized that support could come in forms other than troops, such as “through weapons, technologies, and intelligence.”

Zelensky said deployments in Ukraine by Britain and France, Western Europe’s only nuclear-armed nations, would be “essential.”

“Speaking frankly as president, even the very existence of the coalition depends on whether certain countries are ready to step up their presence,” he said. “If they are not ready at all, then it is not really a ‘coalition of the willing.’”

In fighting Tuesday, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) carried out drone strikes on a military arsenal and an oil depot deep inside Russia, according to a security official who was not authorized to comment publicly and thus spoke on condition of anonymity.

The long-range drones hit the arsenal in Russia’s Kostroma region, triggering explosions that lasted for hours and forced the evacuation of nearby settlements, the official said. The site was described as a key logistics hub supplying ammunition in western and central Russia.

In a separate strike, SBU drones hit an oil depot in Russia’s Lipetsk region, causing a huge fire, the official said.