Category Archives: Venezuela

Trump says he authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela as Maduro decries the move as ‘coups d’etat’

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Move marks escalation in Maduro pressure campaign as president says US mulling strikes on Venezuelan territory

Donald Trump said on Wednesday he had authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in his administration’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government.

Trump further suggested he was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory, a dramatic step that would go beyond a series of recent lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean, which Democrats and United Nations experts have forcefully condemned as unlawful.

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Trump says six were killed in US strike on another boat allegedly carrying drugs near Venezuela

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UN has condemned US strikes on small boats it believes to be trafficking drugs as extrajudicial executions

Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people aboard.

“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social social media platform. “No U.S. Forces were harmed.”

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In Venezuela’s ‘darkest hours’, will peace prize boost opposition or backfire?

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María Corina Machado’s Nobel award puts focus on country but analysts doubt it will produce democratic change

In March 2019 as a nationwide blackout plunged Venezuela into darkness, hundreds of citizens huddled on a basketball court in the city of Maracaibo to hear their leader promise to guide them out of the gloom.

“We are, quite literally, living through our darkest hour. But these are also the brightest of times,” María Corina Machado told supporters as they used mobile phones to illuminate the night.

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Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado wins Nobel peace prize

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Opponent of Maduro regime receives award and praise for keeping ‘flame of democracy burning’

The Venezuelan opposition politician María Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize for her dogged struggle to rescue the South American country from its fate as “a brutal, authoritarian state”.

Machado, 58, a conservative often described as Venezuela’s Iron Lady, has spent the last year living in hiding after her political movement was widely believed to have beaten the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in the July 2024 presidential election.

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Senate Republicans vote against check on Trump using deadly force against cartels

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First vote in Congress on military campaign that White House says has hit four vessels and killed at least 21 people

Senate Republicans voted down legislation Wednesday that would have put a check on Donald Trump’s ability to use deadly military force against drug cartels after Democrats tried to counter the administration’s extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers to destroy vessels in the Caribbean.

The vote fell mostly along party lines, 48-51, with two Republicans, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, voting in favor and the Democrat John Fetterman voting against.

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US struck another boat illegally carrying drugs off Venezuela coast, Trump says

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President said US would turn attention to drug trafficking happening on land during speech at navy ceremony

US forces on Saturday evening struck another vessel illegally carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, Donald Trump said on Sunday to thousands of sailors at a ceremony celebrating the US navy’s 250th anniversary. He added that the US would also start looking at drug trafficking happening on land.

Trump made the comment during a speech at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, next to the Harry S Truman aircraft carrier. It was not immediately clear if he was referencing a strike announced on Friday by defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

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US supreme court allows Trump to strip temporary status from Venezuelans

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Justices’ order puts on hold lower-court ruing that found officials had wrongly ended temporary protected status

The US supreme court on Friday allowed Donald Trump’s administration to strip legal protections from more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants.

The justices issued an emergency order, which will last as long as the court case continues, putting on hold a lower-court ruling by US district judge Edward Chen in San Francisco that found the president’s administration had wrongly ended temporary protected status (TPS) for the Venezuelans. The three liberal justices dissented.

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Hegseth says four killed in US strike on alleged drug boat off Venezuelan coast

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Pentagon chief says strike – fourth by US military in recent weeks – targeted boat with ‘substantial amounts’ of drugs

The United States carried out a strike against an alleged drug-trafficking boat on Friday that killed four people, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said, a day after the Trump administration told Congress it was entering a new “non-international armed conflict” with cartels.

The strike, which Hegseth said he directed on Donald Trump’s orders, appears to be at least the fourth in recent weeks. Hegseth gave few details about the boat or the evidence that it was carrying narcotics, other than saying the US had confirmed it was carrying drugs.

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Stephen Miller takes leading role in strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats

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Exclusive: Miller’s homeland security council has played a key part in coordinating operations, sources say

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has played a leading role in directing US strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug boats, according to three people familiar with the situation. At times, his role has superseded that of Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.

The strikes on the Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying narcotics, which the administration has claimed were necessary because interdiction did not work, have been orchestrated through the homeland security council (HSC), which Miller leads as the homeland security adviser.

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US revokes visa for Colombian president Gustavo Petro after ‘reckless’ actions in New York

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At a pro-Palestine protest, Petro urged US soldiers to ‘disobey Trump’s order’ and ‘not point their rifles at humanity’

The US state department said on Friday it would revoke the visa of Colombian leftist president Gustavo Petro for his “incendiary actions” during a pro-Palestinian street protest in New York.

“Earlier today, Colombian president @petrogustavo stood on a NYC street and urged US soldiers to disobey orders and incite violence,” the state department said on X.

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Colombia’s Petro urges ‘criminal process’ against Trump for Venezuelan strikes

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At UN, Gustavo Petro says ‘poor young people’ died in US strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats off Caribbean coast

Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro addressed the UN general assembly Tuesday to call for a “criminal process” to be opened against counterpart Donald Trump for US strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean.

Petro said unarmed “poor young people” died in the strikes that Washington said were part of a US anti-drug operation off the coast of Venezuela, whose president Washington accuses of running a cartel.

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Trump again asks supreme court to end protections for Venezuelans in US

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Justice department urges court to overturn ruling that Kristi Noem lacked authority to end TPS program

The Trump administration asked the US supreme court on Friday to intervene for the second time in a case involving its bid to end deportation protections the former president, Joe Biden, granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States.

The justice department filed an emergency application asking the justices to lift a federal judge’s ruling that the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, lacked the authority to end the protections for Venezuelans under the temporary protected status, or TPS, program.

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Judges rule against Trump administration on deporting Guatemalan children and Venezuelans

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Double defeat protects Venezuelans with temporary protected status and Guatemalan minors

The Trump administration has been handed a double defeat by judges in immigration cases, barring the executive branch from deporting a group of Guatemalan children and from slashing protections for many Venezuelans in the US.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the administration to refrain from deporting Guatemalan unaccompanied immigrant children with active immigration cases while a legal challenge plays out.

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Venezuela starts days of military and ‘electronic warfare’ drills after US strikes on alleged drug boats

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Armed forces say ‘special naval militia’ involved in Caribbean deployment as defence minister cites ‘threatening, vulgar voice’ of Washington

Venezuela says it has begun three days of military exercises on its Caribbean island of La Orchila as tensions soar amid US military activity in the region.

Forces deployed for what Washington called an anti-drug operation have blown up at least two Venezuelan boats and a combined 14 people allegedly transporting drugs across the Caribbean this month – a move slammed by UN experts as “extrajudicial execution”.

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Venezuela says 11 killed in US boat strike were not gang members amid reports vessel was returning to shore

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Interior minister says ‘murder has been committed’ while US Congress demands justification for attack

None of the 11 people killed in a US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean last week were members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, Venezuela’s interior minister has said, while US media reported the attack came after the vessel had turned around and was heading back to shore.

The administration of Donald Trump has said the boat was transporting illegal narcotics, but has provided little further information about the incident, even amid demands from members of the US Congress for a justification for the action.

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Boris Johnson was paid £240,000 after Maduro meeting, invoice shows

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Johnson’s office sent invoice to hedge fund manager, which was paid, weeks after meeting Venezuelan leader last year

From a private jet somewhere over the Caribbean Sea in February last year, Boris Johnson called his old political adversary David Cameron, then the foreign secretary, to notify him of a visit.

Johnson had taken a day out from a family holiday in the Dominican Republic for an unlikely meeting with the leftwing president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, a man whom Johnson, when in office, had likened to a “dictator of an evil regime”.

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Republican condemns Vance for ‘despicable’ comments on Venezuelan boat strike

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Rand Paul decries ‘thoughtless’ comment after vice-president defends strike against alleged drug traffickers

The Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers.

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Judge blocks ending of legal protections for 1m Venezuelans and Haitians in US

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Homeland security had tried to end temporary protected status granted by the Biden administration

A federal judge on Friday ruled against the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States.

The ruling by US district judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means that 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire on 10 September have status to stay and work in the United States.

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Trump sends 10 stealth fighter planes to Puerto Rico amid war on Caribbean drug cartels

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Move comes after accusing Venezuela of buzzing US warship and a deadly US missile strike in Caribbean Sea

Donald Trump is sending 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to bolster US military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean region, it was reported on Friday.

If follows a deadly US missile strike on Tuesday on a boat in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration insisted was carrying 11 Venezuelan drug traffickers, and comments by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Wednesday that such attacks “will happen again”.

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Top Obama-era Latin American expert warns of ‘disastrous’ US intervention in Venezuela

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US military buildup and attack on alleged narco boat spark fears of protracted guerrilla war in South America

The White House’s former top Latin America official has said he fears the US could stumble into a protracted guerrilla war in Venezuela after Donald Trump ordered a military strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, killing 11 alleged drug traffickers.

Tuesday’s controversial strike off the Venezuelan coast – which was reportedly carried out by an attack helicopter or Reaper drone – came after the US president ordered a major naval deployment to the region, ostensibly to combat South American drug traffickers.

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