Foreign
Venezuelan opposition leader, Machado, says she presented Trump with her Nobel peace prize medal
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The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has said she “presented” her gold Nobel peace prize medal to Donald Trump after meeting him in the White House, nearly a fortnight after he ordered the abduction of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
Machado, who received the award last year for her struggle against Maduro’s “brutal, authoritarian state”, told reporters she had done so “in recognition [of] his unique commitment [to] our freedom”. It was not immediately clear whether Trump had accepted the gift.
Earlier in the day, the Nobel organisers posted on X: “A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel peace prize laureate cannot.”
Machado, whose movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in Venezuela’s 2024 election, was unexpectedly sidelined by Trump after US special forces troops captured her political rival in the early hours of 3 January.
Opposition supporters hoped Trump would recognise the 58-year-old conservative politician as Venezuela’s new leader after Maduro’s downfall but instead he gave the nod to the dictator’s second-in-command, the vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, who was subsequently sworn in as acting president.
On Thursday, in an apparent attempt to win back Trump’s favour, Machado told reporters she had “presented” her Norwegian medal to the US president during a private meeting.
Earlier this week, the organisers of the Nobel peace prize announced the award could not be “shared or transferred” after Machado told Fox News she wished to “share” it with Trump.
“The decision is final and stands for all time,” they said.
Even so, Machado went ahead with her symbolic gesture – a move analysts saw as an attempt to salvage her movement’s waning hopes of taking power now that Maduro was out of the picture and behind bars in New York.
Speaking to reporters, Machado compared handing her medal to Trump to how, in 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette sent a gold medal featuring an image of George Washington to the South American independence hero Simón Bolívar. Machado called Lafayette’s gift “a sign of the brotherhood between the people of the US and the people of Venezuela in their fight for freedom against tyranny”.
Trump’s decision not to back Machado after removing Maduro was reportedly the consequence of curdling relations between her and members of Trump’s team, as well as concerns her movement would be unable to control the security situation in Venezuela.
The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday: “The president’s assessment was based on realities on the ground. It was a realistic assessment based on what the president was reading and hearing from his national security team. At this moment in time his opinion on that matter has not changed.”
Machado is not the first Nobel laureate to divest themselves of the award.
After winning the 1954 Nobel prize in literature, Ernest Hemingway entrusted his medal to the Catholic Church in Cuba – where it was briefly stolen from a sanctuary in 1986 before Raúl Castro ordered its return.
In 2022, the Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctioned his medal to raise money for Ukrainian child refugees. Leon Lederman, who won the 1988 Nobel prize for physics, sold his after it had spent 20 years “sitting on a shelf somewhere”.
But the Venezuelan politician appears to be the first person to give away her medal for such explicitly political reasons.
Just hours after Trump announced Maduro’s rendition, he threw a bucket of ice cold water on opposition hopes that its leaders would immediately fill his shoes, calling Machado “a very nice woman [who] … doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country” to take power.
Trump had kinder words for Maduro’s vice-president, Rodríguez, declaring: “She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
Trump subsequently sought to lower expectations that a fresh election could be held in the near future. “We have to fix the country first. You can’t have an election. There’s no way the people could even vote,” he told NBC News two days after Maduro was captured.
Speaking before Thursday’s high-stakes meeting, Leavitt told reporters Trump was looking forward to “a good and positive discussion” with Machado, who she called “a remarkable and brave voice for many of the people of Venezuela”. Trump hoped to discuss “the realities on the ground” in Venezuela.
Leavitt said Rodríguez and other key members of her “interim administration” were in constant communication with their US counterparts and were being “extremely cooperative”.
“They have thus far met all the demands and the requests of the United States and of the president,” she said, pointing to the release of five US citizens from Venezuelan jails this week.
Leavitt said Trump was committed to “hopefully” seeing fresh elections in Venezuela “one day”. “But I don’t have an updated timetable for you today,” she added.
Rodríguez indicated she was keen to reboot US-Venezuela ties on Thursday, during the annual state of the union address in Caracas, which she delivered on Maduro’s behalf.
Addressing an audience including Maduro’s son and three sisters, Rodríguez called Trump’s invasion “the greatest ever stain on US-Venezuela relations” and said Washington had “crossed a red line” by invading the South American country, killing Venezuelans and “kidnapping” the president.
However, Rodríguez said she was prepared to travel to Washington to engage in a “diplomatic battle” with the US.
“Venezuela has the right to relations with China, with Russia, with Cuba, with Iran … and with the United States too,” she told lawmakers and military chiefs who had gathered in the national assembly.
“If it one days falls to me, as acting president, to go to Washington, I’ll do it standing tall, not crawling,” Rodríguez added despite Trump’s recent claim to be “running” Venezuela.
[The Guardian UK]
Foreign
UK finally pardons Ruth Ellis, 70 years after execution
The United Kingdom authorities have approved a posthumous amnesty for Ruth Ellis, more than 70 years after she was hanged for homicide.
The deceased had been convicted of murder after a trial and executed on 13 July 1955 for shooting and killing David Blakely on 10 April 1955.
The conditional pardon was granted by King Charles III, following a recommendation by Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy.
The government said the decision reflects the extraordinary circumstances of the case, including evidence of domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behavior.
The pardon recognizes that the outcome could be different under modern law and understanding. No reprieve was granted, and no appeal was lodged at the time of the verdict.
Ruth, a nightclub hostess and mother of two young children, shot Blakely outside The Magdala pub in Hampstead, London. The two were involved in an affair.
Ruth reportedly had an abortion, which was illegal in the UK then, and was physically abused by Blakely, causing a miscarriage. Her grandchildren filed for the amnesty.
“The shadow of Ruth’s execution has fallen across two generations,” said Laura Enston, a granddaughter. “We have carried shame that was never ours to bear.”
Deputy Prime Minister Lammy noted that though what happened seventy years ago cannot be changed, the government acknowledges that it was “an exceptional case.”
Foreign
Trump orders new round of strikes after calling Iranian leaders ‘scum’
U.S. forces on Wednesday attacked Iran for a second consecutive day, officials said, hours after President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran “over” and predicted that additional U.S. military action “probably” would occur.
American forces carried out the strikes at the direction of the president “to further degrade [Iran’s] ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” according to a statement from U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the region. The waterway has been a source of friction both militarily and economically in recent weeks, as Iranian forces have been accused of attacking commercial vessels and the United States has responded.
Trump, writing on social media, characterized the renewed assault as “retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran.”
“If it happens again, it will get much worse!” the president warned in his Truth Social post, which was accompanied by an image of a billowing fire.
Speaking in Turkey earlier Wednesday, Trump said that “I think” a tenuous ceasefire agreement reached between U.S. and Iranian officials in June was “over.” However, he later qualified his remarks, saying that any military action would end “very quickly” and that he didn’t think the U.S. military would return to full-scale war.
Trump’s remarks, at a meeting of NATO leaders here in Ankara, followed a separate U.S. assault on Iranian territory — involving more than 80 strikes — ordered in response to attacks on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump said the U.S. hit Iran “very hard last night” and would “probably hit them hard again tonight.”
The president also suggested that the U.S. could reimpose a naval blockade on Iran and that Washington was “not attacking at the highest level,” repeating previous threats to strike infrastructure such as bridges, desalinization facilities and electricity plants. U.S. officials declined to detail what might be planned but said in a social media post later in the day that more than 20 U.S. warships remain in the Middle East.
Oil prices had eased but quickly spiked on Wednesday. Brent crude futures rose more than 5 percent to over $78 per barrel on fears that a renewed war would further disrupt energy supplies.
But Trump offered an evolving account of his plans in multiple appearances over the course of the day, by nightfall suggesting that any additional fighting was likely to remain contained.
“I don’t think it’s going to start again,” he said at a news conference before returning to the United States. “I think it’s going to go very quickly. They hit a couple of ships, and so we hit them much harder. … We use their language. We speak their language.”
The president spoke after Iran launched heavy retaliation overnight, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps saying it had targeted 85 U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait on Wednesday, according to the semiofficial media outlet Fars.
“They’re scum. They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people, and they’re vicious, violent people,” Trump said in his comments earlier Wednesday. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them. They’re liars … there’s something wrong with them. They’re cuckoo. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”
Trump said that talks with Iran could continue but that he was deeply skeptical they would be productive.
“They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time. They’re a bunch of lying guys,” Trump said. “They’re bad people, and frankly, I don’t want to waste my time with them. Now, I’ll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don’t see it.”
Later in the day, Trump declared that he was Iran’s top target for assassination.Ask The Post AIDive deeper
“I’m their number-one target. It’s out all over the place,” he said. “Because they’re scum. That’s the way they act, and that’s the way they’ve done it for 47 years.”
Adding to speculation about Iranian threats to his life, Trump also abruptly announced Wednesday that he would not be departing Turkey on the new Qatari luxury 747 that he debuted as Air Force One last week. Instead, he said he would depart on one of the older, smaller 747s that have been in service since 1990, jumping back on the fancier plane in Britain.
The Qatari jet — whose $400 million overhaul was accelerated by the U.S. Air Force when it took possession of the plane last year — is unlikely to have the same self-defense capabilities as the older, highly modified plane. That could pose a problem when flying out of Turkey, which shares a border with Iran.
Trump framed the move as a chance for U.S. service members based in Britain to explore the new jet. But asked Wednesday whether he had changed his plans because of security concerns, he didn’t answer directly.
The president’s tone about Tehran was a marked change from his assessment of Iranian leaders just weeks ago, when he praised their interest in making a deal shortly after they agreed to the ceasefire.
Asked why he was now dismissing them as scum, Trump said that “I got to know ’em.”
The secretary general of the International Maritime Organization, Arsenio Dominguez, in a statement Wednesday urged shipowners to avoid exposing their crews to danger by crossing the Strait of Hormuz “as long as the safety and security of crews cannot be assured.”
The U.S. and Iran reached a preliminary peace deal last month to reopen the strait to shipping traffic while continuing to discuss the thornier nuclear issue and possible lifting of U.S. sanctions against Tehran. The strait is a crucial shipping choke point through which 20 percent of global oil products normally flow.
But the tentative agreement appeared to collapse less than halfway through the 60 days that negotiators had allotted to reach a more durable accord. Trump previously expressed hope that the negotiations would lead to strict controls on Iran’s nuclear program.
The renewed hostilities were a setback for the president, who cited his concern about becoming a new Herbert Hoover as a major reason for seeking peace when he announced the initial deal last month. Hoover was president at the start of the Great Depression in 1929.
Iranian leaders, too, had seemed to be interested in peace. The country has been focused on days of mourning and funeral rites for its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike during the first hours of the war.
But negotiations have stalled. Talks began with days of delays before Vice President JD Vance flew to Switzerland to kick them off. And the two sides traded barbs, and sporadic strikes, from the get-go. Trump expressed frustration on Wednesday that Iran’s public representation of what was being discussed differed from his understanding.
“We make a deal. Everyone’s agreed. No nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside, joke to the press, they say we never even talked about it,” Trump said.
Iran’s leaders in recent days have appeared emboldened, with several senior officials appearing in public for the first time since the start of the war as part of the mourning rituals for Khamenei.
The possible resumption of war sparked some concern in Congress, which has sought to restrict Trump’s ability to keep fighting.
In June, the House and Senate passed a resolution to block Trump from resuming military action in a bipartisan effort to rein in the Iran war. The White House has argued that the measure does not have the force of law, setting up a clash with congressional Democrats who sponsored the legislation.
Foreign
Iran retaliates, fires missiles, drones at US bases after fresh attacks
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday claimed that they launched missile and drone attacks on United States military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait, in what they described as retaliation for fresh US strikes on Iran.
This development further escalated tensions in the Gulf, coming hours after Washington carried out a new wave of military attacks on Iranian targets following alleged attacks on commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
According to reports, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it carried out a joint operation against “US military facilities, including Bahrain’s Fifth Naval District at Bandar Salman and Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.”
The Guards also claimed that they shot down a US MQ-9 drone during the operation, although the claim had not been independently verified.
Air raid sirens reportedly sounded in Bahrain and Kuwait as the attacks unfolded.
The Kuwaiti army said its air defence systems were confronting “hostile” missile and drone attacks, while authorities in Bahrain also confirmed the activation of air defence measures.
The latest strikes followed a fresh US military operation against Iran and Washington’s decision to revoke a licence that had allowed Tehran to sell oil.
The US said its action was in response to attacks on three commercial tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important oil shipping routes.
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said more than 60 boats belonging to the Revolutionary Guards were among the targets hit during its operation.
Recall that CENTCOM is one of the unified combatant commands of the United States Armed Forces. Established in January 1983, it is responsible for directing and overseeing U.S. military operations and diplomatic partnerships across a vast, strategic area of the globe.
According to Investing, CENTCOM said in a statement, “The unwarranted aggression by Iranian forces is a clear and dangerous violation of the ceasefire and undermines freedom of navigation.”
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