We are now getting a news line, via AP, that a Paris court found 10 people guilty of cyberbullying France’s first lady Brigitte Macron. The court convicted all defendants to sentences, ranging from a cyberbullying awareness training to 8-month suspended prison sentences. We will bring you more on this soon.
France and Spain (most vocally) were among the European countries who said Donald Trump had broken international rules after US troops carried out the deadly military operation on Saturday morning. Most EU statements followed a predictable line of leaders calling for de-escalation and saying they were following the situation closely, without directly commenting on the legality of the American attack. Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni was among the outliers in the bloc that publicly praised the military operation. She said the US’s actions were “legitimate”, despite previously stating that “external military action is not the way to end totalitarian regimes”. Meloni – who has a close relationship with Donald Trump – has said she had a phone call with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on Sunday (Machado has been saying for months that the opposition is ready to run the country). Both Meloni and Machado were said to have agreed that Maduro’s exit would foster the conditions for a peaceful and democratic “transition”. Meloni’s office said in a statement: The President of the Council of Ministers, Giorgia Meloni, had a telephone conversation today with Maria Corina Machado on the prospects for a peaceful and democratic transition in Venezuela. During the call, it was agreed that Maduro’s exit opens a new chapter of hope for the people of Venezuela, who will be able to once again enjoy the basic principles of democracy and the rule of law.
Abu Ali spent the first hours after the toppling of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad boxing up his merchandise. Old-regime bumper stickers, mugs with Assad’s face, T-shirts on which Russian and Syrian flags faded into each other – it all had to go. A year later, the weathered tourist shop on the boardwalk of the Syrian coastal city of Tartous has entirely new products. The shelves are lined with the new three-star Syrian flag, mother-of-pearl jewellery boxes engraved with revolutionary slogans, and pictures of rebel fighters killed during the country’s 14-year civil war. “Business is slow these days. Tourists and travellers used to come before but now it’s slowed down. We just need more security and things will improve,” said Ali, 48, the owner of the shop. Ali’s old customers – Russian soldiers from nearby military bases, American war influencers and Lebanese tourists – have disappeared. Only the faded Cyrillic on the storefront hints at the shop’s past hawking regime wares. A year after the fall of the 50-year-long Assad dynasty and its replacement by an Islamist-led government, Syrians are renegotiating the symbols and culture that once defined their country. Statues of Hafez al-Assad have been toppled and bulldozed and the portraits of his son Bashar that once plastered across every billboard, office and classroom now survive only as defaced remnants, if at all. The pace of change has been blistering. The sudden collapse of the Orwellian security apparatus that controlled all facets of life and the arrival of the new government has left Syria in a state of cultural flux. For Syria’s vineyards, some of the oldest in the world, the change has been bewildering. Shadi Jarjour, the owner of the Jarjour winery in the hills above Tartous, said the most immediate impact of the fall of the Assad regime was an end to ceaseless harassment from corrupt government officials. “You never knew what excuse they would come up with to mess with you, it was never comfortable,” he said. “Once, we didn’t have the right stamp on our papers and were threatened with three years in prison, but then the regime fell.” Jarjour, one of Syria’s few wineries, sits on a hilltop overlooking sloping hills dotted with olive trees. Groups of tourists and diplomats often come to the quaint brick building, which has wine tanks on the bottom floor and a bed and breakfast on the top floor. Business was growing prior to the fall of the Assad regime. Under Assad, alcohol was legal to produce and sell, and the seeds of a wine culture in Syria began to take root, Jarjour said, as consumers expanded their palettes past generic red wines. The family moved their winery to Tartous and started to produce in greater quantities, making up to 50,000 bottles a year. Jarjour and his family were anxious after the fall of the regime, wary of how Syria’s new rulers would view a winery. The core of Syria’s new government is made up of former members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist rebel group that led the rebel offensive that toppled the Assad regime. The government assured Jarjour that it did not want to interfere in his business and asked the winery to keep its doors open. But despite these private assurances, the government has seemingly not made up its mind when it comes to the treatment of alcohol in Syria. Jarjour can produce wine but due to a lack of a clear law concerning the sale of alcohol in the country he cannot sell it. “I haven’t sold anything since December 2024. If a law isn’t published in the next month or so, I will have almost two years of losses,” he said. Though no formal restrictions exist on the import of alcohol, Syrian border guards regularly search personal luggage for alcohol and pour it out if found. Bars have been raided and arbitrarily closed across the capital city, Damascus, under the justification that they do not have a licence to serve spirits, and there is no route to renew licences. After an outcry, most bars were reopened and continue to serve alcohol. One bar owner explained how he had to close his bar at the request of authorities, who told him to visit a government office in a few weeks. The official allowed him to reopen, only telling the owner that he had had to be taught a “little lesson” for staying open during the holy month of Ramadan, something that is not an offence under Syrian law. Nonetheless, a party scene still thrives in Damascus, with rooftop raves and house parties aplenty. At one techno party, an off-duty member of the General Security Service danced euphorically, exclaiming that he was having the best night of his life as he experienced his first rave. The residents of the cosmopolitan capital braced themselves when men with long beards and Kalashnikovs descended upon its streets last December, wary of how the Islamists might reshape the city’s character. But it may yet be Damascus that reshapes them. Syrians are still revelling in their newfound freedom, putting on plays about the brutality they suffered under the Assad regime and playing revolutionary songs that once could have earned them a spell in prison. But they are also learning how to interact with the new authorities, and the authorities are learning how to reign over a country, not a province. Some Syrians at first fell back on instincts learned from their five decades of autocracy, replacing portraits of Assad with images of Syria’s new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa. Syrian authorities quickly banned such hero worship, at least in such a brazen manner, and the pictures of Sharaa disappeared. It was an early glimpse of the quiet tug-of-war between Syrians and their new rulers as they feel out the boundaries of expression and texture of culture in the post-Assad era. Despite the uncertainty, Jarjour is still optimistic. He wants to expand the winery to widen its market within Syria, and then start exporting bottles one day, hoping for it to become a global brand that represents his country. “We are waiting to see what the new laws will be, and we hope it comes soon so we can get back to work,” he said.
Protests bubbled up in several US cities over the weekend as people demonstrated against the Trump administration’s unilateral military intervention in Venezuela – even as many in the diaspora publicly celebrated the forced removal of president Nicolás Maduro. Gatherings took place as crowds expressed opposition to a potential war with Venezuela and to declare illegal the US operation to snatch Maduro early on Saturday and bring him to the US to face drug-trafficking charges in court. Maduro is due to appear in federal court in New York at noon local time on Monday. Hundreds of people came out to protest in large cities coast to coast, including Chicago, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Seattle. “Whether it’s Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan, Panama, Libya, you name it. Whenever the United States attacks another country like this, it’s the peoples of those countries who suffer the most,” Andy Thayer of the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism said to a local ABC affiliate at a protest that drew several hundred. Others argued that Donald Trump did not have authority to launch such a strike on Venezuela, at least without approval from Congress. Senior Democrats on Sunday decried the US president’s bypassing his constitutional obligation to involve the congressional branch of government, as international leaders said the US had breached the United Nations charter. At a protest in Seattle organized by a group called Answer (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), crowds held signs with statements such as “No Blood for Oil” and “Stop Bombing Venezuela Now!” “We’re out here to show solidarity with a country whose sovereignty and self determination has been violated by our government using our tax dollars,” Taylor Young, an organizer with Answer, which staged protests in several other cities, too, told a Fox News affiliate. “So the very least we can do is come out in Seattle and across the country to say we won’t allow you to do this while we just stand by,” Young added. Republican lawmakers broadly continued to support Trump and praised his actions even as senior figures walked back the president’s assertions on Saturday that the US “will run” Venezuela during a transition to a new regime. Congressman Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, said Sunday morning on Fox News: “God bless this president of peace, Donald J Trump.” But protesters also spoke out against the deportations of Venezuelans living in the country. “We’re creating wars, we’re creating chaos and then simultaneously abducting our neighbors and sending them back to the very countries that we’re destabilizing,” Olivia DiNucci, an anti-war organizer with activist group Code Pink, told WHYY, a public radio station in Philadelphia. Despite bipartisan condemnation of Maduro as a dictator, some activists also called for his release. Protesters gathered outside the detention center in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, where the captured president is being held and chanted: “Free Maduro right now.”
The prospect of the United States seizing direct control of Venezuela appeared to recede on Sunday after the shocking ousting of president Nicolás Maduro – but US officials warned they might make a fresh military intervention if interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, did not accommodate their demands. Speaking to reporters late Sunday, Donald Trump also raised the possibility of military action in Colombia. In the aftermath of Maduro’s abduction on Saturday, Trump said the US would “run” the South American country of 30 million people. On Sunday, he warned the US might launch a second strike if remaining members of the administration do not cooperate with his efforts to get the country “fixed.” Rodríguez, 56, had on Saturday pledged fealty to Maduro and condemned his capture as an “atrocity”, but on Sunday called for a “balanced and respectful” relationship with the US. “We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on an agenda for cooperation that is aimed toward shared development,” Rodríguez said after holding her first cabinet meeting since Maduro’s ouster. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, spoke to Rodríguez, who told him “‘we’ll do whatever you need’”, Trump told reporters. “She, I think, was quite gracious, but she really doesn’t have a choice.” The New York Times reported that Trump officials several weeks ago identified the technocrat as a potential successor and business partner partly on the basis of her relationship with Wall Street and oil companies. In the capital, Caracas, senior government and military figures demanded the return of Maduro but pledged support for Rodríguez as a stand-in leader and called for a return to normality. “I call on the people of Venezuela to resume their activities of all kinds, economic, work and education, in the coming days,” Vladimir Padrino López, the defence minister, said in a televised address. Maduro’s son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, said his father’s supporters are more resolved than ever to support the ousted president, according to an audio shared on social media. “They will not see us weak,” Maduro Guerra said. “The president, Nicolás Maduro, will return … we will take to the streets, we will convene the people, we will unite.” In comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump raised the possibility of further US interventions in Latin America, and suggested Colombia and Mexico could also face military action if they do not reduce the flow of illicit drugs to the United States. “Operation Colombia sounds good to me,” Trump said. He also said that Cuba, a close ally of Venezuela, “looks like it’s ready to fall” on its own without US military action. Earlier on Sunday, Trump said the US may intervene in other countries as well. “We do need Greenland, absolutely.” Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted a social media picture of Greenland painted in the colours of the US flag, and the word “soon”, prompting a protest from Greenland’s prime minister. In a round of TV interviews Rubio downplayed the possibility of invasion or occupation of Venezuela, but confirmed that the US was keeping a 15,000-strong force in the Caribbean. “There’s not a war. I mean, we are at war against drug trafficking organisations, not a war against Venezuela. We don’t have US forces on the ground,” he told NBC. Troops were in Caracas for two hours in a “law enforcement function” that did not require congressional approval, he said. “This was not an invasion. This was not an extended military operation.” The US will keep a “quarantine” around Venezuela to block the entry and exit of oil tankers under American sanctions to sustain “leverage” over Maduro’s successor, said Rubio. “We are going to make our assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly.” He said the Cuban government – Venezuela’s main ally – was a “huge problem” and in a “lot of trouble” but declined to elaborate. The Cuban government confirmed on Sunday that the US operation in Venezuela killed 32 Cuban military and police officers were who were there at the request of the government in Caracas. The governments of Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay said in a joint statement that US actions “constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and endanger the civilian population”. Keir Starmer said Britain was not involved in the attack but refused to condemn it. All EU countries except Hungary issued a statement calling for restraint by “all actors” and respect for the will of the Venezuelan people in order to “restore democracy”. In Caracas some shops and cafes reopened in a semblance of normality while authorities counted the cost of Saturday’s raid. Large queues formed outside stores in Venezuela’s capital as anxious residents stocked up on basic supplies, apprehensive about what the future might bring and the possibility – suggested by Trump – that there could be a “second wave” of attacks. “It’s the same everywhere, there are queues in the supermarkets, there are queues in the bakeries, queues at the pharmacy,” said one 71-year-old pensioner who was one of 20 people lined up outside a small family grocery market in north-east Caracas on Sunday morning. “There’s so much uncertainty because people don’t know what might happen in the coming days and nobody wants to see another situation like the early hours of Saturday or to be caught with their pants down and an empty fridge,” added the man, who asked not to be named. Outside one of Venezuela’s largest supermarket chains in Petare, on the east side of Caracas, a young couple waited in a 100-person-long line outside a supermarket in order to stock up on milk, butter and flour. So many people had flocked there that supermarket workers were letting in shoppers in groups. “[I feel] angry,” said the 23-year-old woman, who gave only her first name, Sauriany. “They don’t have the right to meddle like this in another country and to do whatever they like,” she said of the US raid. In neighbouring Colombia there was deep unease too, with its president, Gustavo Petro, ordering 30,000 troops to its eastern border with Venezuela in case there was violence or a sudden influx of refugees. On Sunday, Trump said Colombia was “very sick” and run by a “sick man”. He accused Petro of producing and selling cocaine to the US, adding: “He’s not going to be doing it very long.” Asked directly whether the US would pursue a military operation against the country, Trump answered, “It sounds good to me.” Petro on Sunday rebuffed the accusations saying in a post online: “Stop slandering me, Mr. Trump.” “That’s not how you threaten a Latin American president who emerged from the armed struggle and then from the people of Colombia’s fight for Peace,” he said. Petro has previously said his government has been seizing cocaine at unprecedented rates and last month he invited Trump to visit and see government efforts to destroy drug-producing labs. Over the weekend, US authorities unsealed a four-count indictment that charges Maduro with narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. It also charges Flores, their son and two Venezuelan officials and an alleged leader of Tren de Aragua, a gang the Trump administration has designed a terrorist organisation. Maduro is due to appear in a Manhattan federal court on Monday for arraignment. The White House shared footage of the deposed dictator handcuffed and doing a “perp walk” to Drug Enforcement Administration offices in New York before being taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal facility in Brooklyn. The prosecution will deepen the humiliation felt by Maduro loyalists and complicate the balancing act faced by his successor. Rodríguez, who served as vice-president and oil minister until her boss’s removal, must juggle Washington’s demands for oil and security guarantees with a regime that retains vestiges of the socialism and anti-imperialism of its late founder, Hugo Chávez. The Trump administration’s apparent satisfaction with regime tweak, rather than regime change, has dismayed those Venezuelans who hoped Maduro’s downfall would usher in democracy. Trump was dismissive about the opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel peace prize winner who mobilised Edmundo González’s winning presidential campaign last year, and said she lacked “support” in Venezuela. Millions of Venezuelans revere Machado but she is loathed by the military hierarchy that props up the regime. Rubio said the US wanted a transition to democracy but ruled out elections in the short term and said those in charge of Venezuela’s military and police apparatus needed to decide in which direction they go. “We hope they will chose a different direction than the one Nicolás Maduro picked. Ultimately we hope this leads to a holistic transition.” In Caracas joggers and cyclists reappeared on streets but residents expressed nervousness and uncertainty about the future.
When the 1967 Abortion Act cleared parliament, marking one of the most significant steps forward for women’s rights in history, Diane Munday was among the campaigners raising a glass of champagne on the terrace of the House of Commons. “I’m only drinking a half a glass,” she told her colleagues at the time, “because the job is only half done.” And, she was right. “Fifty years later, women were still going to prison,” says Munday, who co-founded the British Pregnancy Advice Service. She was also a leading member of the Abortion Law Reform Association during the 1960s and 1970s and is a patron of Humanists UK. The 94-year-old campaigner still spends most of her days at work in her home office, where evidence of her passion is clear: from the bookshelf stacked with titles about abortion, to the notes tacked above her desk, to the filing cabinet stuffed with decades of history. Various green swing files contain press cuttings, or copies of private members’ bills printed on acetate. One, labelled “crank letters”, is full of handwritten notes calling her a “murderer” and “moral leper” living a “life of whoremongery.” Despite the opposition she has encountered, Munday is undeterred. Ahead of a landmark vote in parliament early this summer, she was among the voices calling for change. In what has been hailed as the most significant advance for reproductive rights since 1967, parliament passed an amendment put forward by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi to the crime and policing bill, which sought to end the criminal investigation and prosecution of women who terminate their pregnancies. This followed a series of high-profile prosecutions in which women were hauled before the courts for ending pregnancies outside the strict legal framework. Munday’s passion is personal as well as political. In 1961, when she was already a mother to three young boys, she had an abortion. “I’d known a young woman who died, she lived near us in London, she was a dressmaker,” she said. “Like me, she was married with three young children. She had a pregnancy she found intolerable, she went to the back streets and she died. “We raised £90, I went to Harley Street and I was alive. And the unfairness, the injustice of that, is I think what drove me all those years. I’ve never forgotten her.” In the 1960s, Munday threw herself into building public support for the abortion bill, in the knowledge that this was needed for it to clear parliament. She had started by lobbying politicians directly but said the prime minister of the day, Harold Wilson, had described abortion as “a petty middle-class reform”. “Go away and prove to me the country wants it, and then come back again,” Wilson told her. And so she addressed meetings of the Women’s Institute, Rotary and the Townswomen’s Guild, asking them to pass motions in favour of law reform. “I went and they all wore gloves and hats and were very respectable,” she said. “And I stood up and I said ‘I have had an abortion’ and one after another at the tea interval they came up to me and said things like ‘I had an abortion. You’re the only person except my husband that knows, it was during the depression’ or ‘my husband was out of work’. This became the pattern wherever I went. “Even my mother admitted that a very close relative had had an abortion and my mother had looked after her afterwards. Wherever I went ‘I had an abortion, I had an abortion, I’ve never told anybody’. “And it became obvious that this was common, that it was a thing that women did, but didn’t talk about. The word wasn’t written or spoken in those days, and that drove me on, because I kept remembering the woman I’d known.” Despite the vote in June, Munday is not ready to drink a full glass of champagne because she wants abortion to be fully decriminalised. She said: “Parliamentarians need to get rid of the restrictions – the two doctors [who must sign off an abortion] – make it readily available.” Munday follows the news on abortion through internet alerts set up for the term and she is worried “a great deal” by the situation in the US. In 2022, the country’s supreme court overturned the historic Roe v Wade ruling, which in 1973 had guaranteed women the constitutional right to an abortion. “I always saw America as being a sort of ‘modern society’ and it’s going backwards, and that worries me hugely,” she added. “American women have got to get up and fight for what they want.” Nigel Farage has called for a reduction in the abortion time limit and Munday said the Reform UK leader “could be the next prime minister the way things are going”. However, she hopes that the younger makeup of parliament may counter any attempts to curtail reproductive rights: “I don’t think they’d see abortion rights restricted, because they would have grown up with it legal.” She also welcomed the news in October that emergency contraception would become more readily available. “That is a big step forward,” she said. “The morning-after pill, free of charge from any pharmacist, that’s a huge advance.” When she raised that half glass of champagne on the terrace of parliament, Munday said “no way” would she have expected, that 60 years later, abortion would still not be fully decriminalised. There are members of parliament who want to bring in a new, modern abortion act, relevant to the 21st century. Munday said this would be “amazing” but she was “not very optimistic” that it would happen in her lifetime. “That was what I always aimed at from the early 1960s,” she added. “That has been the thing I thought should be available.”
Good morning. Over the weekend, the US attacked Venezuela with a series of airstrikes and captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, Cilia Flores, seizing them from their bedrooms and flying them to New York on Saturday evening. Donald Trump announced that the US would “run” Venezuela for an unspecified period. Perhaps most striking was how explicit Trump was about the reasoning behind the military action. He said the aim was for US companies to take control of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure for their own benefit. “We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it,” Trump said. The US president also told reporters that Venezuela’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, would remain in power only so long as she “does what we want”. He threatened a second, larger wave of military strikes if the country’s leaders refused to comply. Venezuelan officials have vowed defiance. At least 40 people, including civilians and soldiers, were reportedly killed in Saturday’s attack. How did we get here, and what happens next for Venezuela? Today, I speak to the Guardian’s Latin America correspondent, Tom Phillips. That’s after the headlines. Five big stories Venezuela | The prospect of the United States seizing direct control of Venezuela appeared to recede on Sunday after the shocking seizure of President Nicolás Maduro – but US officials said Washington was keeping a 15,000-strong force in the Caribbean and might make a fresh military intervention if Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, did not accommodate their demands. EU | Keir Starmer has said closer ties with the EU single market are preferable to a customs union in his clearest sign yet that the UK government is seeking to further deepen links with Brussels. Weather | Transport delays, treacherous driving conditions and school closures will greet many people as they return to work and study after the Christmas break, with winter weather warnings in place across the UK. Crans-Montana fire | Investigators have identified the last 16 people who died in the New Year’s Eve bar fire at the Swiss mountain resort of Crans-Montana, police said on Sunday. Germany | German leftwing militants protesting over the climate crisis and AI have claimed responsibility for an arson attack that cut power to tens of thousands of households in Berlin. In depth: ‘The images look like Baghdad in 2003’ The relationship between the US and Venezuela began to deteriorate in the late 1990s, following the election of the now deceased socialist firebrand Hugo Chávez. According to Tom Phillips, an early, US-backed attempt to remove Chávez in a 2002 coup deepened suspicion and hostility on both sides. But after Chávez died of cancer in 2013, relations worsened significantly with the election of Nicolás Maduro as president. “He then led the country rapidly into economic meltdown, a mass migration crisis, and in an increasingly authoritarian direction,” Tom says, pointing in particular to the controversial 2018 election result. In 2019, shortly after Maduro was sworn in for a second term, the Trump administration launched what it called a “maximum pressure” campaign, combining sweeping sanctions with repeated military threats and an early effort to topple him. There had been signs of a thaw at the start of Trump’s second term. The US sent a special envoy, Richard Grenell, to Caracas for talks, deportation flights continued until very recently, and oil production involving the US company Chevron carried on. But tensions escalated sharply in the months running-up to this attack. Trump had sought a blockade of Venezuelan oil, expanded sanctions against the Maduro government, and staged more than two dozen strikes on vessels the US alleges were involved in trafficking drugs, killing more than 110 people. “Everyone is flabbergasted that this has happened,” Tom says. “There have been months of threats and significant military hardware deployed to the region. But most observers, and probably Maduro himself, thought this was a bluff or a negotiating tactic to force him from power or trigger a military coup. “Instead, it’s come to this, in such a spectacular fashion. The images from Saturday look like Baghdad in 2003.” *** Drill baby drill In 2020, a US federal court indicted Maduro on narco-terrorism and other charges, accusing him of running a scheme to ship tonnes of cocaine to the US through what prosecutors described as the Cartel de los Soles. Maduro has always denied the allegations. The superseding indictment unsealed last weekend, immediately after his capture, closely mirrors those 2020 charges. After Maduro and his wife arrived in New York, the Trump administration released images of his arrival into custody, known as a “perp walk.” The move was widely seen as an effort to further discredit him as Venezuela’s leader. Trump’s team has sought to frame the operation as a war on drug trafficking. But how credible is that explanation? “Maduro is widely believed to have stolen the 2024 election, but serious analysts don’t see convincing evidence that he is a narco-terrorist or that he is deliberately flooding the US with drugs,” Tom says. The audacious military operation comes just weeks after the Nobel peace prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. But instead of backing Machado, or the popular opposition figure Edmundo González, Trump sidelined them, declaring that the US would temporarily take control of Venezuela while American companies moved in to run its oil infrastructure. “The word democracy is hardly mentioned at all,” Tom says. “The Trump administration has made it very clear that this is about drugs, it’s about migration, and they’ve said this openly, it is about their desire to further exploit and profit from Venezuelan oil. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on earth.” *** The United States of Venezuela In characteristically Trumpian fashion, the US president announced that the US would now “run” Venezuela, without explaining how, or on what legal basis, such an arrangement would work. When I spoke to Tom, he was travelling to the Colombian border with Venezuela. He said that while about 15,000 US troops are deployed across the wider region, none are now stationed inside Venezuela. “It’s mind-boggling,” Tom said. “Trump declares ‘we are going to run Venezuela now’, but it’s completely unclear how he plans to do that, especially given his supposed aversion to putting boots on the ground. How do you govern a country of nearly 30 million people with vast territory, including a huge Amazon region?” Venezuela, it’s worth noting, is roughly twice the size of Iraq. When Trump was pushed at his press conference about past failures in US nation-building, he brushed them aside, saying: “That’s where we had different presidents. With me, that’s not true,” he said. “With me, we’ve had a perfect track record of winning.” But analysts are less convinced. “Even if you were prepared to put those 15,000 troops on the ground in Venezuela, most people don’t think that would be sufficient to occupy and control such a complex territory,” Tom said. The prospect of the United States seizing direct control of Venezuela appeared to recede on Sunday, but US officials said Washington was keeping 15,00 troops in the Caribbean and might make a fresh military intervention if Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, did not accommodate their demands. Trump’s military action and declarationshave drawn mixed reactions across Latin America. “There have been messages of support, Chile’s incoming far-right president has backed the move,” Tom said. “But more moderate leaders, including Brazil’s President Lula and Chile’s outgoing president Gabriel Boric, have condemned it. There has also been real concern among diplomats in the region about the US simply going into and taking its leader, irrespective of his democratic credentials.” Globally, the response has followed a similar pattern. The operation has been condemned by Russia, China and Iran, and much of the global south, while Europe’s reaction has been muted. UK prime minister Keir Starmer declined to criticise the action, while stressing that Britain played no role in it. In the US, the action was welcomed by Republicans, but widely condemned by Democrats. The former US vice-president, Kamala Harris, described it as “unlawful and unwise”, actions that “do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable”. *** Succession The country’s supreme court has declared the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, to be the interim leader. And “it seems from the press conference that Trump is prepared to do business with her even though she was one of Maduro’s closest allies,” Tom said. What remains unclear is in what capacity. Will Washington effectively govern Venezuela through Maduro’s former deputy? Or will another senior figure, perhaps from the military, emerge, leading to a pro-US interim regime? Amid the confusion, Tom says one thing is clear. “There’s no sign that the US is prepared to help Machado and González return from exile,” he said. “Trump was very dismissive of Machado in the press conference, which poured cold water on the Venezuelan opposition. They had hoped that once Maduro was gone they would be helped to take power.” Analysis from the New York Times suggests the US may be pursuing a form of “guardianship”, dictating Venezuela’s political and economic direction through an interim government, backed by the threat of renewed military action. “Trump said that was the first wave of attacks and that there might be a second wave of bigger attacks ‘if we don’t get what we want,’” Tom said. Whether that threat alone is enough remains uncertain. Rodríguez, in televised address, had initially refused to comply. But she struck a more conciliatory tone in her most recent public statement on Sunday, offering “to collaborate” with the Trump administration, in what could be a major shift in relations between the governments. “Perhaps he’s prepared to call it a day with the images of Maduro in a blindfold and handcuffs projecting a narrative that he has affected some kind of political change,” Tom added, “but in reality it may remain close to the status quo with just a new Chavista leader calling the shots.” Trump’s press conference fell on the anniversary of the US capture of Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega, who was flown into American custody after being accused of drug trafficking. But it was clear in that press conference that Trump is not interested in just invoking history, he is set on making it. And his actions will deepen fears that his talk of using military force to seize the Panama canal, take control of Greenland, or even make Canada the 51st state, can no longer be laughed off. What else we’ve been reading Brigitte Bardot, who died over the Christmas period, may have wowed both on film and many a magazine cover, but Esther Addley explores the more complex legacy of an icon who wrote of Muslims: “one day they’ll slaughter us, and we’ll have deserved it”. Toby Moses, head of newsletters Suzanne Wrack interviews the Guardian’s footballer of the year, Jess Carter, who last summer called out the racist social media abuse she was being bombarded with on her way to winning Euro 2025 with England. Martin Belam, newsletters team Alexis Petridis interviews “Britain’s biggest rockstar” – Yungblud – and finds Dominic Harrison unbothered by the lack of critical acclaim and on the verge of even greater stardom. Toby A deep dive for Atavist by Alexandra Marvar into the life story of Lummie Jenkins, a longtime sheriff in Alabama’s law enforcement, remembered as a god or a monster, depending on who you ask. Martin The news can be bleak, to say the least, so enjoy this gallery of some the best shots from the World Darts Championship, won by Luke Littler at Ally Pally this weekend. Toby Sport Football | Liverpool and Manchester City both succumbed to late, late equalisers against west London opposition – with Fulham and Chelsea respectively nabbing a point through injury time goals. Enzo Fernandez, pictured above, scored in the 94th minute to dent City’s title ambitions. Manchester United drew 1-1 at Leeds as Matheus Cunha equalised shortly after Brenden Aaronson had put the hosts ahead in the second half. Darts | Luke Littler secured his second world title victory on Saturday night, with an audience of 2.5m tuning into watch the teenager blow away Gian van Veen 7-1 in the final. NFL | Dee Alford’s red-zone interception stopped a potential go-ahead drive by New Orleans, and the Atlanta Falcons beat the Saints 19-17 on Sunday to give the NFC South title to the Carolina Panthers. The front pages “Trump warns of ‘big price to pay’ if Caracas fails to toe line,” is the splash on the Guardian. “PM faces revolt by Labour’s Maduro apologists,” says the Mail. “Trump sets sights on Greenland,” is the lead story at the Telegraph, while the Metro quips of Maduro: “Welcome to New York...and have a nice stay.” “Trump issues warning to Venezuela’s new leader,” says the Times, as the FT opts for: “Trump piles fresh pressure on Venezuela.” “Starmer plots course for a softer Brexit - as leadership rival circle,” writes the i paper, while the Express has “Fears Starmer is plotting a ‘full-blown Brexit betrayal.’” Meanwhile the Sun runs with: “AJ’s pledge to families of ‘brothers,’” and the Mirror: “Jesy’s twins agony.” Today in Focus Trump ousts Venezuela’s President The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, was captured, flown to the US and is facing trial in New York. What does it mean for the country – and the world? Julian Borger, the Guardian’s senior international correspondent, explains to Annie Kelly why it could be the beginning of the end for our rules-based international order. Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad For many visitors, Ōkunoshima’s hundreds of semi-tame rabbits are a delight – but it’s the people who care for them that stay with you. As retiree Koji Yamamoto puts it, watching grey rabbits nibble pellets he’s left out, “There isn’t much natural vegetation, so I thought it would be a good idea to come regularly and feed them, especially during the winter when there aren’t many tourists.” Volunteers like him quietly keep the island’s fragile ecosystem going. The island’s dark past as a site for the production of chemical weapons – so secret it was not included in contemporaneous maps of Japan – has now turned into an Instagram-friendly present and a reminder of how humans and animals can forge gentle, unexpected partnerships. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
It’s just passed 1.45am in Caracas and 12.45am in New York and we’re about to shut this blog and continue our live coverage on another file here. We also have a full report on the US’s audacious capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, as well as an analysis by our diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour. Below is a recap of the latest – thanks for reading. Donald Trump said after the military operation early on Saturday that the US would “run” Venezuela and warned on Sunday that the US might launch a second strike if the government’s remaining members did not cooperate with his efforts to get the country “fixed”. Venezuelan vice-president and Maduro ally Delcy Rodríguez has been appointed acting president and offered “to collaborate” with the Trump administration in what could be a major shift in relations between the governments. In a conciliatory message on Instagram on Sunday she said she hoped to build “respectful relations” with Trump. “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence,” Rodríguez said. Trump had earlier warned that if Rodríguez didn’t fall in line, “she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro”. In other key developments: Rodríguez announced a commission to seek the release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro is in a New York detention centre awaiting a court appearance on Monday on drug charges. Top officials in Maduro’s government called the seizure of Maduro and his wife a kidnapping. “Let no one fall for the enemy’s provocations,” interior minister Diosdado Cabello said. Trump’s administration described Maduro’s capture as a law-enforcement mission to force him to face US criminal charges filed in 2020, including narco-terrorism conspiracy. Maduro has denied criminal involvement. Maduro’s son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra, reportedly said his father’s supporters were more resolved than ever to support Maduro and the ousted president would return. “We will take to the streets, we will convene the people.” Trump suggested Colombia and Mexico could also face military action if they did not reduce the flow of illicit drugs to the US, saying: “Operation Colombia sounds good to me.” Images of the 63-year-old Maduro blindfolded and handcuffed stunned Venezuelans. The operation was Washington’s most controversial intervention in Latin America since the invasion of Panama 37 years ago. Venezuelan defence minister Gen Vladimir Padrino said on state television the US attack killed soldiers, civilians and a “large part” of Maduro’s security detail “in cold blood”. Venezuela’s armed forces had been activated to guarantee sovereignty, he said. The Cuban government said 32 of its citizens were killed during the raid. The governments of Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay said in a joint statement the US actions “constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and endanger the civilian population”. All EU countries except Hungary issued a statement calling for restraint by “all actors” and respect for the will of the Venezuelan people in order to “restore democracy”. UK prime minister Keir Starmer said Britain was not involved in the attack but refused to condemn it. British cabinet minister Darren Jones – a close ally of Starmer – called for a peaceful transition of power in Venezuela to be reached “quickly”. Trump suggested the US would not push for immediate elections to install a new government but rather would work with remaining members of the Maduro administration to clamp down on drug trafficking and overhaul its oil industry. He said US oil companies needed “total access” to the country’s vast reserves. Hundreds of Chavismo supporters gathered in Caracus on Sunday to demand the release of Maduro and Flores. With news agencies