With Nicolás Maduro out, experts say Nobel laureate María Corina Machado and Edmundo González could lead Venezuela’s transition, though major hurdles remain.
We have already had a few bites for who is in line for Premier League traitor and both are for the same player. Erol Suleyman and Gareth Davis have emailed and said:
Shall we just put this one to bed early in two words? Sol. Campbell.
A reminder that we also have a 12.30pm kick-off in the Premier League. That’ll be Aston Villa hosting Nottingham Forest and Sarah Rendell has live coverage.
Here’s Rangers boss Danny Röhlspeaking ahead of kick-off. This is his first league Old Firm derby.
Overnight Friday, the US carried out airstrikes across Venezuela, with explosions rocking the capital, Caracas, before dawn. Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump announced that US forces had captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and had flown them out of the country.
The stunning attack and unprecedented capture of a sitting president follow months of an intense US pressure campaign against Venezuela. Since September, the US navy has amassed a huge fleet off the Venezuelan coast and carried out airstrikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and seized Venezuelan oil tankers. At least 110 people have been killed in the strikes on boats, which human rights groups say could amount to war crimes.
Venezuelan officials have accused the US of trying to gain access to the country’s oil reserves, the largest in the world.
The bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of Maduro is a serious and dramatic escalation of the US campaign. The future of Venezuela’s ruling regime remains uncertain.
Guardian writers and readers share the simple tricks they use to bring a bit of joy into their lives
During the pandemic, my husband found some wood on our street and used it to build a tiny, squirrel-sized picnic table. We attached it to the side of our fence with a handful of peanuts on top. Few sights are guaranteed to lift my day more than watching a “dining in” Nutkin parking its rump on the tiny wooden seat, occasionally glancing towards the house as if he’s waiting for you to bring the drinks. If you don’t have as much time on your hands as my husband did during lockdown, you can buy one on Etsy.
TEL AVIV - Former IDF spokesman Alon Penzel is embarking on a Canada-wide speaking tour in coming weeks. He exhales deeply when asked why: he felt he had to, given the level of Oct. 7 denialism, minimalization and ignorance two years into the Gaza war. Read More
The US president, Donald Trump, has said Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been captured and flown out of the country after a “large scale” pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region. Here is what we know so far:
Donald Trump has claimed the US has “captured” Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them out of the South American country after a pre-dawn assault on Caracas and the surrounding region. The US president said a press conference will be held in Florida at 11am local time (4pm GMT).
Venezuela’s government accused the US of launching a series of attacks against civilian and military targets in the South American country, after explosions rocked its capital, Caracas, before dawn on Saturday.
In a statement, Venezuela’s government urged citizens to rise up against the assault and said Washington risked plunging Latin America into chaos with “an extremely serious” act of “military aggression”. “The entire country must mobilise to defeat this imperialist aggression,” it added.
Explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas in the early hours of Saturday. In its statement, Venezuela’s government confirmed that the city had come under attack, as well as three other states: Miranda, La Guaira and Aragua.
Venezuela has accused the US of trying to “seize control” of the country’s resources, in particular its oil and minerals. Venezuela has called on the international community to denounce what it called a flagrant violation of international law that puts millions of lives at risk.
In the early hours of Saturday, the president of neighbouring Colombia, Gustavo Petro, called for an immediate emergency session of the UN security council, saying on social media that Venezuela had come under attack.
Colombia has mobilised its armed forces in the aftermath of US strikes on neighbouring Venezuela. President Gustavo Petro said Colombia was concerned about refugees fleeing in the aftermath of the attacks.
Petro posted on X that his government had held a national security meeting in which it was decided that forces should be sent to the border amid a potential “massive influx” of people leaving Venezuela.
An immigrant pharmacist whose Canadian citizenship was revoked in November 2024, a decade after officials first suspected she hadn't met the requirements, has seen that decision set aside and revocation proceedings permanently stayed by a Federal Court judge who criticized officials for waiting so long to act on the allegations of "false representation, fraud, or knowingly concealing material circumstances." Read More
The state has created the first registry in the US to track repeat domestic violence offenders
Let’s say you’re going on a first date and you want to make sure the person you’re meeting up with isn’t a registered sex offender. If you live in the US, you can find this out very quickly: there’s a centralized website provided by the US Department of Justice that lets you search a name or location in seconds.
New York City's newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, rang in the New Year and his term at city hall by saying in his inauguration speech that his administration will "draw this city closer together" and "replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism." But "rugged individualism" is the characteristic trait of Americans, especially New Yorkers. It's this nature of individualism that makes the United States the most innovative country in the world. Read More
The inferior national newspaper has seen fit to bid farewell to the old year by printing another op-ed bemoaning the uninhabitable state of the prime minister’s traditional primary residence at 24 Sussex Dr. I wonder if this is going to become an actual political cause in 2026 — whether our sudden Trump-era panic about state capacity and national self-reliance is going to be pressed into the service of rebuilding or rehabilitating 24 Sussex. Read More
From Britain’s medieval buildings to western pop and contemporary art, these creations showcase our interwoven stories
We are repeatedly sold a painfully two-dimensional picture of the motivations of those seeking shelter in Britain. According to this picture, migrants are eager to experience the benefits of our society, but they are also out to undermine it, because they come from cultures whose values are dramatically different from our own. Think of the ongoing “grooming gangs” scandal: an undeniably appalling series of events, institutional failures and victim-blaming that has been transformed into a narrative that suggests any “alien” is likely to be a sexual predator, since their predatory behaviour is a direct consequence of their religious and cultural background.
So often, all we are allowed to know about asylum seekers is that they are asking – with irritating persistence – for a place in our social fabric, as if they have no world of their own, no cultural hinterland, no really recognisable human values aside from mysterious and dangerous belief systems. This explains why there is now a feverish pressure to instantly reveal the ethnicity of any suspect in a major crime of unprovoked violence – as with the Cambridgeshire train attack (where, confusingly, it transpired that the hero of the day was a man of north African background), or the tabloid habit of illustrating stories about migrants with images of young men, usually of Middle Eastern appearance.
The photographer’s painted bottles and hoops enhanced a carefree afternoon on a Burmese beach
As a tuk-tuk driver, Moe Wai feels that he has honed both his observational and people skills. Wai lives and works in Myin Ka Par, a village in Myanmar, and became interested in mobile photography several years ago. In this instance, he used his phone to capture this gaggle of local children as they were returning home from school.
“They were playing on a sandbank with their own plastic bottles,” Wai recalls. He’d been collating props for some time; bottles and hoops he had painted in a variety of colours, including neon pink. “The children were happy to let me replace theirs with my own colourful ones for the purpose of this photo.” He later applied some minor edits using the Lightroom app.
The US may be making positive noises, but exhausted Ukrainians remain wary after nearly four years of war
“I would give anything in the world if, in this address, I could say that peace will also come in just a few minutes,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message to the Ukrainian people released just before midnight on New Year’s Eve. “Unfortunately, I cannot say that yet.”
Zelenskyy said a peace agreement was “90% ready”, but added something that subverted Donald Trump’s constant claims that a deal is just around the corner. “Those 10% contain, in fact, everything,” he said.
Prof Shitij Kapur says there are too many graduates and degree is now just a ‘visa’ to enter professional world
The UK now has a “surfeit” of graduates and students must accept that a university degree is no longer a “passport to social mobility”, a leading vice-chancellor has argued.
Prof Shitij Kapur, the head of King’s College London, said the days when universities could promise that their graduates were certain to get good jobs are over, in an era where nearly half the population enters higher education.
The presenter on a Strictly apology, her high-wire triumph, and flashing her knickers at David Cameron
Born in Cumbria, Helen Skelton, 42, began her broadcasting career at BBC Radio Cumbria and Newsround. From 2008 to 2013, she was a Blue Peter presenter. Her other credits include reporting on the London 2012 Olympics and presenting Countryfile and BBC Morning Live; she also voices Annie in Fireman Sam. In 2023, she published her autobiography, In My Stride. A new series of her show Lost and Found in the Lakes starts on 5 January on BBC One. She lives in Cumbria and has three children with her former husband, Richie Myler.
What is your greatest fear?
Getting to the end and thinking that I haven’t laughed enough.
Palmer and Delap are among five academy players who learnt their trade at City, as links between the clubs grow
Chelsea’s visit to Manchester City on Sunday will be a homecoming for members of the travelling party. Five Chelsea players were nurtured at the academy that sits a few hundred yards from the Etihad Stadium, on the other side of a bridge.
The London club’s recent recruitment has been heavily influenced by City’s teaching of players and coaches. Tosin Adarabioyo, Cole Palmer, Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens and Roméo Lavia were members of City’s youth ranks, most working there under Enzo Maresca. If one thread was unpicked this week when Maresca dramatically departed Chelsea, the link remains strong because Sunday’s caretaker, Calum McFarlane, was formerly the under-18s assistant manager at City.
With Trump’s health care cuts, I traveled to Ohio, Mississippi and Alabama — and encountered devastated families bracing for even more difficult challenges.
In a call with The New York Times, President Trump called the U.S. operation in Venezuela “brilliant" but did not address whether he had consulted Congress.
Connexion
