Tag: no-latest

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump on Monday delivered a new warning to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the U.S. Coast Guard steps up efforts to interdict oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea as part of the Republican administration’s escalating pressure campaign on the government in Caracas.

Trump was surrounded by his top national security aides, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after a meeting at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. He suggested that he remains ready to further escalate his four-month pressure campaign on the Maduro government, which began with the stated purpose of stemming the flow of illegal drugs from the South American nation but has developed into something more amorphous.

“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump said of Maduro.

Trump levied his latest threat as the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday continued for a second day to chase a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration describes as part of a “dark fleet” Venezuela is using to evade U.S. sanctions. The tanker, according to the White House, is flying under a false flag and is under a U.S. judicial seizure order.

“It’s moving along and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.

It is the third tanker pursued by the Coast Guard, which on Saturday seized a Panama-flagged vessel called Centuries that U.S. officials said was part of the Venezuelan shadow fleet.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry started evacuating the families of diplomats from Venezuela, according to a European intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

The official told the Associated Press the evacuations include women and children and began on Friday, adding that Russian Foreign Ministry officials are assessing the situation in Venezuela in “very grim tones.” The ministry said in an X posting that it was not evacuating the embassy but did not address queries about whether it was evacuating the families of diplomats.

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil on Monday said he spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who he said expressed Russia’s support for Venezuela against Trump’s declared blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.

“We reviewed the aggressions and flagrant violations of international law that have been committed in the Caribbean: attacks against vessels and extrajudicial executions, and the unlawful acts of piracy carried out by the United States government,” Gil said in a statement.

A new “Golden Fleet”

Trump also announced on Monday a bold plan for the Navy to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”

“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump claimed during the announcement at Mar-a-Lago.

The ship, according to Trump, will be longer and larger than the World War II-era Iowa-class battleships and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are still being developed by the Navy.

Just a month ago, the Navy scrapped its plans to build a new, small warship, citing growing delays and cost overruns, deciding instead to go with a modified version of a Coast Guard cutter that was being produced until recently. The sea service has also failed to build its other newly designed ships, like the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and Columbia-class submarines, on time and on budget.

Historically, the term battleship has referred to a very specific type of ship — a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive guns designed to bombard other ships or targets ashore. This type of ship was at the height of its prominence during World War II, and the largest of the U.S. battleships, the Iowa-class, were roughly 60,000 tons.

After World War II, the battleship’s role in modern fleets diminished rapidly in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The U.S. Navy did modernize four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s by adding cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, along with modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.

Trump has long held strong opinions on specific aspects of the Navy’s fleet, sometimes with a view toward keeping older technology instead of modernizing.

During his first term, he unsuccessfully called for a return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers instead of the more modern electromagnetic system.

He has also complained to Phelan about the look of the Navy’s destroyers and decried Navy ships being covered in rust.

Phelan told senators at his confirmation hearing that Trump “has texted me numerous times very late at night, sometimes after one (o’clock) in the morning” about “rusty ships or ships in a yard, asking me what am I doing about it.”

On a visit to a shipyard that was working on the now-canceled Constellation-class frigate in 2020, Trump said he personally changed the design of the ship.

“I looked at it, I said, ‘That’s a terrible-looking ship, let’s make it beautiful,’” Trump said at the time.

He said Monday he will have a direct role in designing this new warship as well.

“The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.

NEW YORK — Florida’s Catholic bishops appealed to President Donald Trump on Monday to pause immigration enforcement activities during the Christmas holidays. The White House, in response, said it would be business as usual.

The appeal was issued by Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, and signed by seven other members of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“The border has been secured. The initial work of identifying and removing dangerous criminals has been accomplished to a great degree,” Wenski wrote. “At this point, the maximum enforcement approach of treating irregular immigrants en masse means that now many of these arrest operations inevitably sweep up numbers of people who are not criminals but just here to work.”

“A climate of fear and anxiety is infecting not only the irregular migrant but also family members and neighbors who are legally in the country,” Wenski added.

“Since these effects are part of enforcement operations, we request that the government pause apprehension and roundup activities during the Christmas season. Such a pause would show a decent regard for the humanity of these families.”

Responding via email, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson did not mention the holiday season in her two-sentence reply.

“President Trump was elected based on his promise to the American people to deport criminal illegal aliens. And he’s keeping that promise,” Jackson wrote.

Wenski has established a reputation as an outspoken advocate of humane treatment for migrants. In September, for example, he joined other Catholic leaders on a panel at Georgetown University decrying the Trump administration’s hard-line policies for tearing apart families, inciting fear, and upending church life.

Wenski highlighted the contributions of immigrants to the country’s economy.

“If you ask people in agriculture, you ask in the service industry, you ask people in healthcare, you ask the people in the construction field, and they’ll tell you that some of their best workers are immigrants,” said Wenski. “Enforcement is always going to be part of any immigration policy, but we have to rationalize it and humanize it.”

Wenski joined the “Knights on Bikes” ministry, an initiative led by the Knights of Columbus that draws attention to the spiritual needs of people held at immigration detention centers, including the one in the Florida Everglades dubbed Alligator Alcatraz. He recalled praying a rosary with the bikers in the scorching heat outside its walls. Days later, he got permission to celebrate Mass inside the facility.

“The fact that we invite these detainees to pray, even in this very dehumanizing situation, is a way of emphasizing and invoking their dignity,” he said.

NEW YORK — A judge on Monday scolded Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell for including confidential victim names in court papers seeking to set aside her 2021 sex trafficking conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said exhibits included with Maxwell’s habeas petition — which she filed on her own, without a lawyer — will be kept under seal and out of public view “until they have been reviewed and appropriately redacted to protect the identities of victims.”

Any future papers Maxwell files must be submitted under seal, the judge wrote.

He said he “reminds Maxwell, in strong terms, that she is prohibited from including in any public filings any information identifying victim(s) who were not publicly identified by name during her trial.”

A message seeking comment was left with Maxwell’s lawyer, David Markus.

Maxwell filed the petition last Wednesday, two days before the Justice Department started releasing investigative records pertaining to her and Epstein in accordance with the recently enacted Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Maxwell contends that information that would have resulted in her exoneration was withheld and that false testimony was presented to the jury. She said the cumulative effect of the constitutional violations resulted in a “complete miscarriage of justice.”

Engelmayer said Maxwell has until Feb. 17, 2026, to notify him whether she plans to include any information from the so-called Epstein files in her petition and must file an amended version by March 31, 2026.

A slow, heavily redacted release of files

Protecting victim identifies has been a key sticking point in the Justice Department’s ongoing release.

The department has said it plans to release records on a rolling basis by the end of the year, blaming the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring victims’ names and other identifying information. So far, the department hasn’t given any notice when new records arrive.

That approach angered some accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the transparency act. Records that were released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records, and other documents, were either already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked necessary context.

The Senate’s top Democrat on Monday urged colleagues to take legal action over the incremental and heavily redacted release.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted last month that required disclosure of records by last Friday.

“Instead of transparency, the Trump administration released a tiny fraction of the files and blacked out massive portions of what little they provided,” Schumer (D., N.Y.) said in a statement. “This is a blatant cover-up.”

In lieu of Republican support, Schumer’s resolution is largely symbolic. The Senate is off until Jan. 5, more than two weeks after the deadline. Even then, it’ll likely face an uphill battle for passage. But it allows Democrats to continue a pressure campaign for disclosure that Republicans had hoped to put behind them.

There were few revelations in the tens of thousands of pages of records that have been released so far. Some of the most eagerly awaited records, such as FBI victim interviews and internal memos shedding light on charging decisions, weren’t there.

Nor were there any mentions of some powerful figures who’ve been in Epstein’s orbit, like Britain’s former Prince Andrew.

Some files removed, then restored

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s decision to release just a fraction of the files by the deadline as necessary to protect survivors of sexual abuse by the disgraced financier.

Blanche pledged that the Trump administration would meet its obligation required by law. But he stressed that the department was obligated to act with caution as it goes about making public thousands of documents that can include sensitive information. And he said legal precedent had long established that obligations to protect the privacy of victims permit authorities to go beyond deadlines to ensure they are protected.

Blanche, the Justice Department’s second in command, also defended its decision to remove several files related to the case from its public webpage, including a photograph showing Trump, less than a day after they were posted.

The missing files, which were available Friday but no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one showed a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump alongside Epstein, Melania Trump, and Maxwell.

Blanche said the documents were removed because of a concern that they might also show victims of Epstein. Blanche said the Trump photo and the other documents would be reposted once redactions, if necessary, were made to protect survivors.

The Trump photograph was returned to the public webpage without alterations Sunday after it was determined that a concern by some government workers that victims may have been depicted in the picture proved unfounded, the Justice Department said.

“We are not redacting information around President Trump, around any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein, and that narrative, which is not based on fact at all, is completely false,” Blanche told NBC’s Meet the Press.

Blanche said Trump, a Republican, has labeled the Epstein matter “a hoax” because “there’s this narrative out there that the Department of Justice is hiding and protecting information about him, which is completely false.”

“The Epstein files existed for years and years and years and you did not hear a peep out of a single Democrat for the past four years and yet … lo and behold, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Senator Schumer suddenly cares about the Epstein files,” Blanche said. “That’s the hoax.”

A transgender employee of the National Security Agency is suing the Trump administration and trying to block enforcement of a presidential executive order and other policies the employee says violate federal civil rights law.

Sarah O’Neill, an NSA data scientist who is transgender, disputes the legality of President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order that required the federal government, in all operations and printed materials, to recognize only two “immutable” sexes: male and female.

The lawsuit filed Monday says Trump’s order “declares that it is the policy of the United States government to deny Ms. O’Neill’s very existence.”

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The order, which reflected Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric, spurred policies that O’Neill is challenging, as well.

Since Trump initial executive action, O’Neill asserts the NSA has canceled its policy recognizing her transgender identity and “right to a workplace free of unlawful harassment,” while “prohibiting her from identifying her pronouns as female in written communications” and “barring her from using the women’s restroom at work.”

O’Neill contends those policies and the orders behind them create a hostile work environment and violate Section VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Section VII’s prohibition on discrimination based on sex applied to gender identity.

“We agree that homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex,” the court’s majority opinion stated. “But, as we’ve seen, discrimination based on homosexuality or transgender status necessarily entails discrimination based on sex; the first cannot happen without the second.”

O’Neill’s complaint argues, “The Executive Order rejects the existence of gender identity altogether, let alone the possibility that someone’s gender identity can differ from their sex, which it characterizes as ‘gender ideology.’”

In addition to restoring her workplace rights and protections, O’Neill is seeking financial damages.

Trump’s order was among a flurry of executive actions he took hours after taking office. He has continued using executive action aggressively in his second presidency, prompting many legal challenges that are still working their way through the federal judiciary.

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MELBOURNE, Australia — A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach conducted firearms training in an area of New South Wales state outside of Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.

The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.

Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.

The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.

The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.

Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder, and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.

The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs, and two homemade Islamic State group flags wrapped in blankets.

Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.

The largest IED was found after the gun battle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.

Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors, and one count of committing a terrorist act.

The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.

The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.

The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.

Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.

Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father as they express “their political and religious views and appear to summarize their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”

The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to Islamic State,” police said.

Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.

“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.

An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.

Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.

The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals on Monday.

GREENBELT, Md. — A federal judge on Monday questioned whether government officials could be trusted to follow orders barring them from taking Kilmar Abrego Garcia into immigration custody or deporting him.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis noted that Abrego Garcia was already deported without legal authority once and said she was “growing beyond impatient” with government misrepresentations in her court. “Why should I give the respondents the benefit of the doubt?” she asked, referring to the government attorneys.

Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation and imprisonment in El Salvador in March has galvanized both sides of the immigration debate. The Trump administration initially fought efforts to bring him back to the U.S. but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. He returned to the U.S. in June, only to face an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

Xinis ordered Abrego Garcia released from immigration custody on Dec. 11 after determining that the government had no viable plan for deporting him. She followed that with a temporary restraining order the next day barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement from immediately taking him back into custody. The Monday hearing was to determine if the temporary restraining order should be dissolved.

The hearing was a glimpse into the complexity of immigration proceedings as Xinis tried to get information on the status of Abrego Garcia’s case. “I am trying to get to the bottom of whether there are going to be any removal proceedings,” she said as she questioned the government’s lawyer. “You haven’t told me what you’re going to do next.”

Xinis said she would leave the restraining order in place for now while she considers the issue.

“This is an extremely irregular and extraordinary situation,” Xinis told attorneys.

Abrego Garcia, his wife, and legal team were welcomed to the federal court building in Maryland by a boisterous reception that included a choir, bullhorn, and drum as scores of supporters cheered. Inside the courtroom Abrego Garcia sat with at least half a dozen defense team members while a lone government attorney sat across from them.

Before his release, Abrego Garcia had been in immigration detention since August. In that time, the government has said it planned to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and, most recently, Liberia. However, officials have made no effort to deport him to the one country he has agreed to go to — Costa Rica. Xinis has even accused the government of misleading her by falsely claiming that Costa Rica was unwilling to take him.

The government’s “persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” she wrote.

In court on Monday, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys reiterated that he is prepared to go to Costa Rica “today.”

Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, finding he faced danger there from a gang that had targeted his family. Although he is back in the U.S. now, Department of Homeland Security officials have said he cannot stay and have vowed to deport him to a third country.

In addition to the Maryland case, Abrego Garcia is fighting the human smuggling charges in Tennessee. His attorneys in that case on Friday asked the judge for sanctions after Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino made disparaging comments about their client on national news. The judge previously ordered Justice Department and Homeland Security officials to cease making comments that could prejudice Abrego Garcia’s right to a fair trial.

TEL AVIV, Israel — The spread of famine has been averted in the Gaza Strip, but the situation remains critical with the entire Palestinian territory still facing starvation, the world’s leading authority on food crises said Friday.

The new report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, comes months after the group said famine was occurring in Gaza City and likely to spread across the territory without a ceasefire and an end to humanitarian aid restrictions.

There were “notable improvements” in food security and nutrition following an October ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and no famine has been detected, the report said. Still, the IPC warned that the situation remains “highly fragile” and the entire Gaza Strip is in danger of starvation with nearly 2,000 people facing catastrophic levels of hunger through April.

In the worst-case scenario, including renewed conflict and a halt of aid, the whole Gaza Strip is at risk of famine. Needs remain immense, and sustained, expanded, and unhindered aid is required, the IPC said.

The Israeli military agency in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, known as COGAT, said Friday that it strongly rejected the findings.

The agency adheres to the ceasefire and allows the agreed amount of aid to reach the strip, COGAT said, noting the aid quantities “significantly exceed the nutritional requirements of the population” in Gaza according to accepted international methodologies, including the United Nations.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Friday that it also rejects the findings, saying the IPC’s report doesn’t reflect reality in Gaza and more than the required amount of aid was reaching the territory. The ministry said the IPC ignores the vast volume of aid entering Gaza, because the group relies primarily on data related to U.N. trucks, which account for only 20% of all aid trucks.

The IPC said that the report totals include commercial and U.N. trucks and its information is based on U.N. and COGAT data.

Israel’s government has rejected the IPC’s past findings, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the previous report an “outright lie.”

Ceasefire offsets famine

The report’s findings come as the shaky U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas reaches a pivotal point as Phase 1 nears completion, with the remains of one hostage still in Gaza. The more challenging second phase has yet to be implemented and both sides have accused the other of violating the truce.

The IPC in August confirmed the grim milestone of famine for the first time in the Middle East and warned it could spread south to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis. More than 500,000 people in Gaza, about a quarter of its population, faced catastrophic levels of hunger, with many at risk of dying from malnutrition-related causes, the August report said.

Friday’s report said that the spread of famine had been offset by a significant reduction in conflict, a proposed peace plan, and improved access for humanitarian and commercial food deliveries.

There is more food on the ground and people now have two meals daily, up from one meal each day in July. That situation “is clearly a reversal of what had been one of the most dire situations where we were during the summer,” Antoine Renard, the World Food Program’s director for the Palestinian territories, told U.N. reporters in a video briefing from Gaza City Thursday.

Food access has “significantly improved,” he said, warning that the greatest challenge now is adequate shelter for Palestinians, many of whom are soaked and living in water-logged tents. Aid groups say nearly 1.3 million Palestinians need emergency shelter as winter sets in.

Aid is still not enough

Displacement is one of the key drivers behind the food insecurity, with more than 70% of Gaza’s population living in makeshift shelters and relying on assistance. Other factors such as poor hygiene and sanitation as well as restricted access to food are also exacerbating the hunger crisis, the IPC said.

While humanitarian access has improved compared with previous analysis periods, that access fluctuates daily and is limited and uneven across the Gaza Strip, the IPC said.

To prevent further loss of life, expanded humanitarian assistance including food, fuel, shelter, and healthcare is urgently needed, according to the group’s experts, who warned that over the next 12 months, more than 100,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition and require treatment.

Figures recently released by Israel’s military suggest that it hasn’t met the ceasefire stipulation of allowing 600 trucks of aid into Gaza each day, though Israel disputes that finding. American officials with the U.S.-led center coordinating aid shipments into Gaza also say deliveries have reached the agreed upon levels.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the U.N. and its partners are preparing 1.5 million hot meals every day and delivering food packages throughout Gaza but that “needs are growing faster than aid can get in.”

Aid groups say despite an increase of assistance, aid still isn’t reaching everyone in need after suffering two years of war.

“This is not a debate about truck numbers or calories on paper. It’s about whether people can actually access food, clean water, shelter, and healthcare safely and consistently. Right now, they cannot,” said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

People must be able to rebuild their homes, grow food, and recover, and the conditions for that are still being denied, she said.

Even with more products in the markets, Palestinians say they can’t afford it. “There is food and meat, but no one has money,” said Hany al-Shamali, who was displaced from Gaza City.

“How can we live?”