Politics
US tells UN it will deprive Venezuela’s Maduro, drug cartel of resources
- US tells UN it will cut Maduro, drug cartel off from resources.
- Russia warns US actions could set precedent for Latin America.
- China urges US to “avoid further escalation of tensions”.
The United States told the United Nations on Tuesday it will impose and enforce sanctions “to the maximum extent” to deprive Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of resources as Russia warned other Latin American countries could be next.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has for months waged a campaign of deadly strikes against suspected drug trafficking boats off the Venezuelan coast and the Pacific coast of Latin America. He has threatened strikes on Venezuelan land.
“The single most serious threat to this hemisphere, our very own neighbourhood and the United States, is from transnational terrorist and criminal groups,” US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told the UN Security Council.
The US has ramped up its military presence in the region and Trump announced a blockade of all vessels subject to US sanctions.
So far this month, the US Coast Guard has intercepted two tankers in the Caribbean Sea, both fully loaded with Venezuelan crude. The Coast Guard is also pursuing a third empty vessel that was approaching the OPEC country’s shore.
“The reality of the situation is that sanctioned oil tankers operate as the primary economic lifeline for Maduro and his illegitimate regime. The sanctioned tankers also fund the narco-terrorist group Cartel de Los Soles,” Waltz said.
Washington designated Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, as a foreign terrorist organisation late last month for the group’s alleged role in importing illegal drugs into the US. It accuses Maduro of leading Cartel de los Soles. Venezuela’s government rejected what it called a “ridiculous” move to designate the “non-existent” group.
“This intervention which is unfolding can become a template for future acts of force against Latin American states,” Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council, citing a recent strategy document from Trump that said the US will reassert its dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Waltz spoke after Nebenzia and did not directly respond to his remark.
China urged the United States to “immediately halt relevant actions and avoid further escalation of tensions,” China’s Deputy UN Ambassador Sun Lei told the council.
Venezuela, backed by Russia and China, requested Tuesday’s meeting, the second held on the escalating tensions.
The Security Council first met in October, when the United States justified its actions as consistent with Article 51 of the founding UN Charter, which requires the Security Council to be immediately informed of any action states take in self-defence against armed attack.
“Let it be clear once and for all that there is no war in the Caribbean, there is no international armed conflict, nor is there a non-international one, which is why it is absurd for the US government to seek to justify its actions by applying the rules of war,” Venezuela’s UN Ambassador Samuel Moncada told the council.
“The threat is not Venezuela. The threat is the US government,” he said.
- Turkish gendarmerie locates wreckage south of Kesikkavak village.
- Jet loses contact after emergency landing request near Ankara.
- Five people onboard including senior Libyan military officials.
Turkiye’s interior minister said on Tuesday that authorities had located the wreckage of a plane carrying Libya’s chief of staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad, after it went missing shortly after departing Ankara.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X that Turkish gendarmerie teams had located the wreckage of a business jet that departed Ankara’s Esenboga airport for Tripoli.
The aircraft was found around two kilometres south of Kesikkavak village in the Haymana district, about 74 kilometres (45 miles) from Ankara, he added.
The prime minister of Libya’s internationally recognised government said that the Libyan army’s chief of staff, Al-Haddad, died in a plane crash, adding that four others were on the jet as well.
“This followed a tragic and painful incident while they were returning from an official trip from the Turkish city of Ankara. This grave loss is a great loss for the nation, for the military institution, and for all the people,” Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah said in a statement.
He said the commander of Libya’s ground forces, the director of its military manufacturing authority, an adviser to the chief of staff, and a photographer from the chief of staff’s office were also on the aircraft.
Earlier, Yerlikaya said that radio contact was lost with a jet carrying Libya’s army chief of staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad, shortly after takeoff from the Turkiye capital.
Yerlikaya wrote on X that the jet had taken off at 1710 GMT and radio contact was lost at 1752 GMT.
He said the flight had made a request for an emergency landing while over the Haymana district of Ankara, but that no contact was established after.
Four others were on the jet, he added, while flight tracking data showed other flights being diverted away from Ankara’s Esenboga Airport.
Turkiye’s defence ministry had announced the Libyan chief of staff’s visit earlier, saying he had met with Turkiye Defence Minister Yasar Guler and Turkiye counterpart Selcuk Bayraktaroglu, along with other Turkiye military commanders.
Cristiano Ronaldo, football’s first billionaire, and his fiancée Georgina Rodriguez have reportedly purchased luxury villas in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea project, according to British media.
According to the Daily Mail, the properties are located at Nujuma, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve developed by Red Sea Global, around 26 kilometres off Saudi Arabia’s mainland, and are accessible only by chartered boat or seaplane. Ronaldo and Rodriguez are among the first buyers of the ultra-luxury villas.
Each villa at the Ritz-Carlton Reserve Residences is priced from SAR15.5 million (approximately £3.1 million). The development features just 19 ultra-private residences, offering bespoke services amid pristine natural surroundings.
Speaking to Daily Mail, the Portuguese footballer said: “From the moment we first visited, Georgina and I felt a connection with the island and its natural beauty – it’s a place where we feel at peace.”
“Now we have a home here, we can enjoy quality time with family in complete privacy and serenity any time we like,” he added.
Earlier, a Bloomberg report revealed that Ronaldo earned over $550 million in salary between 2002 and 2023, in addition to a decade-long Nike endorsement deal worth nearly $18 million annually. His brand partnerships with Armani, Castrol, and other global companies have added more than $175 million to his fortune.
Ronaldo’s move to Saudi club Al-Nassr in 2023 made him the highest-paid footballer in history, with an annual salary of £177 million ($237.5 million), alongside bonuses and a reported 15% ownership stake in the club.
For comparison, Argentina and Inter Miami star Lionel Messi has earned more than $600 million in pre-tax salary during his career, according to financial estimates.
Ronaldo’s billionaire status places him among an elite group of athletes, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, LeBron James, Tiger Woods, and Roger Federer.
Despite his financial success, Ronaldo has indicated that he is not considering retirement anytime soon.
— With additional information from Reuters.
A new batch of files released on Tuesday by the US government in relation to the notorious late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein contains numerous references to Donald Trump, including documents detailing flights he took on his then close friend’s private jet.
The Justice Department swiftly issued a statement defending the 79-year-old Republican president.
“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the Justice Department said on X, without specifying which allegations were false.
“If they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponised against President Trump already,” the department said.
Epstein cultivated a wide circle of powerful friends, including Trump, and was alleged to have run an underage sex trafficking ring before his 2019 death in jail.
Trump, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, fought for months to prevent release of the vast trove of documents collected during years of investigations into the disgraced financier.
A rebellion inside Trump’s Republican Party forced him to sign off on a law mandating release of all the documents. The extraordinary move reflected intense political pressure to address what many Americans, including Trump’s own supporters, have long suspected to be a cover-up.
A first batch was made public last Friday amid fierce criticism that the Justice Department was deliberately slow-walking the release and excluding any references to Trump.
The latest slew of documents contains 8,000 files, including hundreds of videos or audio recordings. This includes surveillance footage from August 2019, the month Epstein was found dead in his jail cell — and declared to have committed suicide.
Private jet trips
Trump was friends for years with Epstein and the two of them were photographed together at parties.
The Republican has given different accounts of how he ended their relationship.
He has said they fell out when Epstein “stole” young women working in the spa at his Florida golf club. He also says he threw Epstein out of his Florida golf club for being “a creep.”
But despite Trump’s repeated claims that he was not close to Epstein, there is considerable evidence to the contrary.
The latest documents include a January 2020 note from New York federal prosecutors who were investigating Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxell, detailing Trump’s repeated travel on the financier’s private jet.
It says “records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump travelled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).”
Some of the references to Trump in the documents are impossible to verify and there are no indications of criminal behaviour.
One is in a handwritten letter attributed to Epstein and written from jail to Larry Nassar, the former US gymnastics doctor who was imprisoned over rampant abuse of female athletes.
The letter has Epstein purportedly complaining to Nassar that they were incarcerated while the “president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch.'”
On Monday, Trump again said he didn’t approve of the file dumps, saying innocent people would be tarnished.
“Everybody was friendly with this guy,” he told reporters.
Delays
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has blamed delays in releasing the files on the need to redact the identities of Epstein’s more than 1,000 victims from the hundreds of thousands of documents and photos in the government’s possession.
The co-sponsors of the bill requiring release of the files — Ro Khanna, a Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Republican — threatened over the weekend to bring contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Pam Bondi for failing to comply.
The tranche of materials released on Friday included photographs of former Democratic president Bill Clinton and other famous names, such as pop stars Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson, who were in Epstein’s social circle.
Clinton urged the Justice Department to release any materials in the files related to the former president, saying he had nothing to hide.
Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend, remains the only person convicted in connection with his crimes.
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