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The United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, where President Donald Trump has been threatening military action for the last several months.

The news outlets Reuters and Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the US Coast Guard led an operation to commandeer the vessel, but no details have been released about its name and location. Trump confirmed the news shortly after.

“We’ve just seized a tanker off the coast of Venezuela — large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump said during an event at the White House. “And other things are happening. So you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”

The Trump administration has ramped up threats against Venezuela, deploying considerable military forces to the Caribbean region. That includes the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, and its strike group to the southern Caribbean.

Under Trump, the US has also carried out a campaign of lethal strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, with the Trump administration identifying Venezuela as the origin point for some of the vessels. At least 22 boats have been attacked, and an estimated 87 people have been killed.

Trump has repeated threatened to continue the bombing campaign by pursuing strikes on land as well.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said that the US is seeking to topple his government.

He has responded with his own military build-up along Venezuela’s coast and indicated his country’s armed forces would resist a military attack from the US.

Oil exports are a key source of revenue for the South American country, which exported more than 900,000 barrels per day last month. Oil futures rose following the seizure.

Al Jazeera correspondent Mike Hanna noted that information about the tanker seizure remains scarce.

“There aren’t many details about the seizure of this tanker, apart from the president’s confirmation,” said Hanna.

But, Hanna added, the seizure is likely to escalate an already volatile situation in the Caribbean.

“This does mark a massive escalation in terms of US action against Venezuela. It has been reported that President Trump has been pondering for weeks now what kind of action to take in Venezuela and has been very clear that he is contemplating regime change,” he said.

But the US has taken action to seize high-value materials linked to Venezuela in the past. In February 2024, under then-President Joe Biden, the US seized a cargo plane Iran allegedly sold to Venezuela, claiming it violated sanctions on Tehran.

Then, a year later, the Trump administration seized a Dassault Falcon 2000EX jet linked to a state-run oil company in Venezuela, also claiming sanctions violations, this time against restrictions on the South American country.

The Maduro government denounced that seizure as “brazen theft”.

Trump also recently declared Venezuelan airspace closed to travel, prompting foreign airlines to pause their flights to the country.

Trump’s rivalry with Maduro stretches back to the Republican leader’s first term in office, when he imposed a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Venezuela.

The latest spike in tensions, however, has been met with domestic and international condemnation.

Just this month, two United Nations experts issued a joint statement expressing “deep concern about mounting pressure from the United States on Venezuela”.

Polls in the US also show disapproval over the escalating tensions. A November poll from The Economist and YouGov found that only 17 percent of US adults support using military force to overthrow the Venezuelan government, with 45 percent opposed.

And on Wednesday, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday found that 48 percent of respondents expressed opposition to the administration’s targeting of alleged drug vessels, widely considered illegal under international law.

Scientists have uncovered the oldest-known evidence of deliberate fire-making by prehistoric humans in Suffolk, Britain – revealing it happened some 350,000 years earlier than experts previously believed.

The site, a former clay pit near the village of Barnham, contains a hearth made by Neanderthals about 415,000 years ago.

Until now, the earliest known evidence of humans making fire dated to around 50,000 years ago at a site in northern France, also linked to Neanderthals.

Researchers identified the remains of a repeatedly used campfire, including heated clay, flint tools shattered by intense heat and two pieces of iron pyrite – a mineral that sparks when struck against flint to ignite tinder.

“We think humans brought pyrite to the site with the intention of making fire. And this has huge implications, pushing back the earliest fire-making,” said archaeologist Nick Ashton, curator of Palaeolithic Collections at the British Museum in London.

While there are even older signs of humans using naturally occurring wildfires in Africa, this is the earliest proof that people knew how to start their own fires.

Fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution. Controlled flames allowed ancient hunter-gatherers to live in colder environments, cook food, and protect themselves from predators. Cooking also helped our ancestors get more energy from meat, roots and tubers, fuelling the growth of larger brains and enabling communities to support more people.

Scientists say fire likely transformed social life as well. It brought people together at night to share warmth, food and conversation, possibly encouraging storytelling, language and cultural beliefs.

“The campfire becomes a social hub,” British Museum archaeologist and study co-author Rob Davis said. “We’re a species who have used fire to really shape the world around us – and now we know this is something Neanderthals were doing far earlier than we thought, just like us.”

The evidence at Barnham suggests repeated fire use at temperatures above 700 degrees Celsius (1,292 degrees Fahrenheit), pointing to deliberate fire-starting rather than reliance on natural flames. The team spent four years testing the materials to confirm the hearth’s age and human origin.

The United States Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, marking the last rate cut of the year.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.50-3.75 percent as US job growth has appeared to stall.

“Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up through September. More recent indicators are consistent with these developments. Inflation has moved up since earlier in the year and remains somewhat elevated,” the central bank said in a statement.

The cut was widely expected, with an 89 percent probability of a rate cut, according to the CME FedWatch, a tracker that monitors the likelihood of monetary policy decisions.

The decision came as the central bank faced gaps in many sets of government data used to assess the state of the US economy. During the record-long 43-day government shutdown, key agencies, including the Department of Labor, were unable to gather information needed for their reports.

Among them were import and export prices, the producer price index report, as well state employment and unemployment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday said that it would not release numbers from October because the agency did not have enough resources to collect information.

The last top-line data that the central bank had to make its interest rate decision was from September. At the time, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4 percent, and the core inflation rose to 2.8 percent.

“The labour market has continued to cool gradually… a touch more gradually than we thought,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said at a news conference after the rate cut decision.

A new government report on Wednesday showed US labour costs increased 0.8 percent in the third quarter, slightly less than expected.

The central bank might be more cautious about interest rate cuts in the next year as economic data shows a cooling labour market.

“There is considerable uncertainty around the labour market, but some of the weights should begin to lift early next year,” Ryan Sweet, managing director, US Macro Forecasting and Analysis at Oxford Economics, said in a report published ahead of the central bank’s decision.

“The challenge facing the Fed next year is the potential jobless expansion, when GDP increases but employment gains are modest, at best. This leaves the economy vulnerable to shocks because the labour market is the main firewall against a recession.”

Political turmoil

While the Fed has maintained its independence from partisan interference, there has been increased pressure from US President Donald Trump to cut rates further, and he has often used hostile rhetoric towards the Fed chair to do it. The first rate cut in Trump’s second term as president came only in September.

The White House has also installed loyalist Stephen Miran to the Fed board, where he is on leave from his job as an economic adviser in the White House. Miran has dissented against the 25 basis point rate cut that was undertaken at each of the two meetings he has attended in favour of larger half-percentage-point cuts.

On Wednesday, Miran, again, voted for a more aggressive cut of half a percentage point while governors Austan D Goolsbee and Jeffrey R Schmid voted not to make a rate cut at all. The other governors all voted for a 25 basis point cut.

“Still-elevated inflation and a backlog of economic data complicate the picture for the Fed looking into next year — with President Trump’s aggressive push for lower short-term rates potentially complicating the objective of bringing down longer-term borrowing costs,” Daniel Hornung, policy fellow at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, said in remarks provided to Al Jazeera.

Fed Chair Powell’s term is up in mid-May 2026. Trump, in an interview published on Tuesday in news outlet Politico, said support for immediately cutting interest rates would be a requirement for anyone he chose to lead the Federal Reserve.

Wednesday’s decision was underscored by an upcoming Supreme Court decision that would either allow Trump to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook or not after she was accused of mortgage fraud. When asked about the looming decision, Powell said, “We are not legal commentators.”

Iceland will not take part in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the country’s public broadcaster has said, joining four other countries boycotting the event over Israel’s inclusion.

Broadcaster RUV said on Wednesday that the Nordic nation would not participate in the 2026 competition, after organiser the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) greenlit Israel’s involvement last week, dismissing calls from some countries to hold a vote on whether to exclude the country.

“It is clear from the public debate in this country and the reaction to the EBU’s decision last week that there will be neither joy nor peace regarding RUV’s participation,” the broadcaster’s director general Stefan Eiriksson said in a statement.

Iceland, along with Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands, had threatened to boycott next year’s edition of the glitzy music contest, due to be held in Vienna in May, if Israel took part, citing its genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza – as well as allegations that it unfairly intervened in the most recent competition to the benefit of its entrant.

The issue was initially supposed to be resolved with a vote in November.

But on Thursday, the EBU said there would be no vote on Israel’s participation, and that it would instead introduce new rules “to reinforce trust and protect [the] neutrality” of the contest that would discourage governments from influencing the outcome.

That prompted Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain to swiftly announce they would boycott the competition, with Irish broadcaster RTE citing “the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and humanitarian crisis”, and Slovenia’s national broadcaster saying it was “on behalf of the 20,000 children who died” in Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinian people in the territory.

By contrast, Germany – a vocal supporter of Israel in Europe – had said it would boycott the event if Israel were barred.