Venezuela has released a “large number” of high-profile political prisoners, including several foreigners, in an apparent concession to the United States less than a week after its forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The releases on Thursday were the first since Maduro’s former deputy Delcy Rodriguez took office as interim leader, with the backing of US President Donald Trump, who says he is content to let her govern as long as she gives Washington access to the country’s oil.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
Former Venezuelan opposition candidate Enrique Marquez – who opposed Maduro in the contested 2024 presidential election – was among those released on Thursday.
“It’s all over now,” Marquez said in a video filmed by a local journalist of him and his wife, accompanied by another released opposition member, Biagio Pilieri.
Delcy Rodriguez’s brother, parliament speaker Jorge Rodriguez, said “a large number of Venezuelan and foreign nationals” were being immediately freed for the sake of “peaceful coexistence”.
He did not say which prisoners would be released, nor how many or from where.
Venezuelan rights NGO Foro Penal estimates more than 800 political prisoners are in the country’s jails.
Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado hailed the releases, saying in an audio message on social media: “Injustice will not last forever and … truth, although it be wounded, ends up finding its way.”
Renowned Spanish-Venezuelan activist Rocio San Miguel was among five Spanish citizens freed, according to Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
San Miguel has been imprisoned since February 2024 over a purported plot to assassinate Maduro, which she denied.
The White House credited Trump with securing the prisoners’ freedom.
“This is one example of how the president is using maximum leverage to do right by the American and Venezuelan people,” Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement.
Maduro was seized in a special forces raid in early January, with air strikes and operations that killed 100 people, according to Caracas. US forces took Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to New York to face trial on drug charges.
Trump has said the US would “run” the Caribbean country for a transitional period and tap into its oil reserves for years.
Trump announced a plan earlier this week for the US to sell between 30 million and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, with Caracas then using the money to buy US-made products. Trump is scheduled to meet oil executives on Friday.
Trump broadened his threat to drug traffickers in a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday night, saying he would target cartels in land strikes.
The US military has already destroyed at least 31 vessels in maritime attacks in the Eastern Pacific and the Caribbean, killing at least 107 people, in attacks that legal experts have said flout international law and could amount to war crimes.
Trump also said he would meet Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Machado in Washington next week.
“I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Trump said last week that Machado does not have the respect or support within Venezuela to lead the country, and he told Fox News on Thursday that the South American country was not in a position to hold new elections.
“We have to rebuild the country. They couldn’t have an election,” he said.
“They wouldn’t even know how to have an election right now.”
Machado has offered to share her Nobel Prize with Trump, who has said he deserved the award.
US President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3 has emboldened him to proceed with the annexation of Greenland, a Danish-owned, self-governed territory, spelling the effective end of NATO and furthering Russia’s war aims in Ukraine, experts tell Al Jazeera.
The day after Maduro’s kidnap by US forces, Trump made Europe fretful – a sport of which he never seems to tire – when he told The Atlantic, “We do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defence.”
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “It has been the formal position of the US government since the beginning of this administration … that Greenland should be part of the United States.”
“The move on Venezuela illustrates the Trump administration’s determination to dominate the Western Hemisphere – of which Greenland geographically is a part,” said Anna Wieslander, Northern Europe director for the Atlantic Council, a think tank.
“Since the successful intervention in Venezuela immediately was followed with threats of using force against Greenland, among others in the hemisphere, it has in the short run, made it more likely,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Unfortunately, I think the American president should be taken seriously when he says he wants Greenland,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Denmark’s public broadcaster on January 4.
But she predicted it would spell death for the NATO alliance.
“If the United States decides to attack another NATO country, then everything would stop – that includes NATO and therefore post-World War II security,” Frederiksen said.
Wieslander agreed.
“Should the darkest hour come and the United States uses military force to annex Greenland, the essence of Article 5 and collective defence within NATO would lose its meaning,” she said.
Article 5 is NATO’s mutual defence clause, committing allies to come to each other’s aid.
‘NATO would be a shadow of itself’
“You could argue that if you marry what’s happening in Ukraine to a possible invasion of Greenland, one could make the argument that it could be a deadly one-two combination that would basically ruin the alliance,” said Chicago University history professor John Mearsheimer. “NATO would be a shadow of itself. It would effectively be wrecked.”
Yet when Europe’s leaders met White House officials in Paris to design security guarantees for Ukraine, they said nothing in public about Venezuela or Greenland.
“The priority is Ukraine, European defence and European security, and keeping the Americans in,” international affairs professor Konstantinos Filis at the American College of Greece told Al Jazeera.
But Europeans see the writing on the wall, and are merely buying time, believed Keir Giles, Eurasia expert for Chatham House, a think tank.
“The pandering to Trump has been an element of our strategy over the last year, leaving observers hoping, but not entirely trusting, that another element of the strategy is preparing urgently for the final rupture with the United States,” Giles said.
The moral hazard for Europe
Giles told Al Jazeera that Europe’s best option was to place a military deterrent on Greenland now, believing that putting allied troops in the Baltic States and Poland after 2017 deterred a Russian attack there.
“The principle for deterring the United States from military miscalculation should be precisely the same as the one, which was available, but not applied for deterring Putin from invading Ukraine in February 2022,” he said.
A US armed invasion of Greenland would be doubly bad for Europe by playing into Putin’s hands in Ukraine, Giles said.
“The idea that larger powers can have a free hand in what they regard as their own back yard is very much to Russia’s taste,” he said. Invading Greenland, he believed, would amount to “potentially handing Moscow the greatest gift to the Trump administration has yet offered”.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a symposium this week that the loss of common NATO values weakened the world order.
“It’s about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers,” Steinmeier said.
Seeing these possibilities, European officials have been discussing military options.
[Al Jazeera]
When Trump mentioned his Greenlandic aspirations last year, France sent a nuclear submarine off Canada’s shores to put him on notice that the islands of St Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland are French sovereign territories.
This week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, “We want to take action, but we want to do so together with our European partners,” and was due to discuss plans with Germany and Poland.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told journalists, ”Since Denmark belongs to NATO, Greenland will in principle also be defended by NATO.”
Will there be a military intervention?
Experts were divided on what method Trump would use to acquire Greenland.
Marco Rubio told journalists on Wednesday that he would meet the Danish government next week in the coming days, but refused to take military options against Greenland off the table.
“If the president identifies a threat to the national security of the United States, every president retains the option to address it through military means … we always preferred to settle it in different ways, that included in Venezuela,” he said.
Mearsheimer believed Trump’s track record of attacking Iran last June, Nigeria in December and Venezuela now elevated the chances.
“If you look at Trump’s pattern of behaviour, how willing he is to use military force when you can do it on the cheap and get away with it … the fact that … it could be portrayed as another pinprick operation, tells you there’s a really good chance that he could take Greenland,” he told political scientist Glenn Diesen.
Others disagreed. “Trump may want to strengthen the autonomy movement within Greenland and get them to ask for US help,” said Filis.
The leader of Greenland’s main opposition party on Thursday said Copenhagen should get out of the way and allow Greenland to come to an arrangement directly with the US.
“We encourage our current [Greenlandic] government actually to have a dialogue with the US government without Denmark,” said Pele Broberg, the leader of Naleraq. “Because Denmark is antagonising both Greenland and the US with their mediation.” Naleraq won 25 percent of the national vote last year, doubling its previous showing.
Giles agreed that “coercion, pressure, blackmail, direct or indirect subversive activities or extortion,” would be Trump’s opening moves.
Trump is considering bribing Greenlanders with a per capita sum between $10,000 and $100,000 to join the US, Reuters reported on Friday.
Why does Trump want it?
At the end of the day, though, Trump’s policy still amounts to pushing Europe out of what he sees as his hemisphere. Why?
Trump, Rubio and Stephens all cited security, but Denmark gave the US full permission to establish military bases, bring in equipment and personnel, fly aircraft and sail ships in and out of Greenland in a 1953 treaty. The US operates a radar station in Pituffik, providing early warning of ballistic missiles flying over the North Pole from Russia.
A year ago, Trump told reporters that the US should absorb Greenland and resume control of Panama, because “we need them for economic security”.
“It’s to do with new sea routes as the Arctic opens up, and of course, security,” said Filis. “The Arctic Circle is going to be an area of competition among the great powers.”
Arctic sea ice has been melting, allowing the volume of commercial shipping across the North Pole to increase ninefold over the past decade, according to Putin. That leaves open the possibility that military shipping could also increase, especially with Russia and China holding more joint exercises at sea.
Panama, too, is a vital sea passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Lauri Markkanen had 33 points and seven rebounds and the Utah Jazz snapped a five-game losing streak with a 116-114 victory over the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA.
Keyonte George had 19 points and seven assists for the home side on Thursday.
Cooper Flagg led the Mavericks with 26 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists, while Klay Thompson scored 23 points.
Dallas moved ahead 107-100 with 4:39 remaining, but Utah answered with a 16-4 run to move ahead 116-111 with 29 seconds left.
Markkanen finished 14 of 26 from the field with seven rebounds and four assists for Utah, who have won their first two meetings against Dallas this season.
The Mavericks committed 20 turnovers and lost for the fifth time in their last seven games.
Meanwhile, Pascal Siakam scored 18 of his 30 points in the first half and hit the winning shot as the Indiana Pacers snapped a 13-game losing streak in a 114-112 triumph against the host Charlotte Hornets.
Collin Sexton’s potential tying shot was off the mark in the final second as the Hornets lost in the final seconds for the second night in a row. Siakam scored on a go-ahead drive with 11.5 seconds left. He made 12 of 23 shots with three 3-pointers and also grabbed 14 rebounds. TJ McConnell racked up 23 points off the Pacers’ bench, Aaron Nesmith supplied 16 points and Jay Huff added 10 points.
LaMelo Ball had a game-high 33 points, aided by seven 3-point baskets, in his first game coming off the bench since his rookie season (2020-21). Miles Bridges posted 19 points, Kon Knueppel had 18 points and Sexton finished with 11 points.
In Minnesota, Julius Randle scored 28 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and dished eight assists to help the home side hold on to beat Cleveland.
Jaden McDaniels finished with 26 points on 11-for-14 shooting for Minnesota, which won its fourth game in a row. Anthony Edwards scored 25 points on 10-for-20 shooting, and Rudy Gobert recorded a double-double with 11 points and 13 rebounds.
Donovan Mitchell scored 30 points on 10-for-20 shooting to lead Cleveland, which lost for the second time in its past three games. He added eight assists. Sam Merrill scored 22 points off the bench, and Jarrett Allen notched a double-double with 11 points and 10 boards.
Edwards became the third-youngest player in NBA history to reach 10,000 career points at 24 years and 156 days. He was beaten to the mark by just LeBron James (23 years, 59 days) and Kevin Durant (24 years, 33 days). Edwards is one of seven players who have hit 10,000 points before age 25, with Kobe Bryant, Luka Doncic, Tracy McGrady and Carmelo Anthony also in that group.
Protests across Iran are growing as thousands of people voice anger at the dire state of the country’s economy. Ahead of more planned protests, monitors say there is a near total internet blackout. Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi filed this update from Tehran.
Millions of people in Sudan are in urgent need of humanitarian help, aid organisations have warned, as the war in the east African state marked its 1,000th day.
Fierce fighting and global funding cuts have pushed more than 33 million people towards starvation in what has become one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, nongovernmental organisations said on Friday as the grim anniversary passed.
Warning that Sudan’s hunger crisis is reaching unprecedented levels, the groups called on global governments to raise efforts to end the war between the country’s military rulers and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023.
Both sides have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the RSF has been implicated in atrocities in Darfur that the United Nations says may amount to genocide.
The paramilitary group’s recent resurgence in the vast states of Darfur and Kordofan has forced the displacement of millions more people.
A new UN assessment in North Darfur shows more than half of young children are malnourished – one of the highest rates ever recorded worldwide, said Islamic Relief in a statement.
“More than 45% of people across Sudan – over 21 million people – are suffering acute food shortages and a recent Islamic Relief assessment in Gedaref and Darfur found 83% of families don’t have enough food,” the statement reads.
Separately, a coalition of 13 aid agencies called on the British government, as the UN Security Council penholder, to push for increased funding for the humanitarian response and to drive action to end the fighting.
In a statement, they warned that the world’s largest food crisis has left more than 21 million people facing acute food shortages, noting that millions of displaced people have been forced into unsafe, overcrowded settlements, rife with hunger and disease outbreaks, and gender-based violence.
“The conflict has driven the collapse of livelihoods and services, with an estimated 70 to 80 percent of hospitals and health facilities affected and non-operational, leaving roughly 65 percent of the population without access to healthcare,” the statement said.
“This war cannot be allowed to go on any longer. For 1,000 days we’ve seen our country ripped apart and civilians attacked, starved and forced from their land,” said Elsadig Elnour, Islamic Relief’s senior programme manager in Sudan.
Brutal choices
Yet with the Trump administration in the United States having led huge cuts in humanitarian funding, aid for Sudan is forced to compete with other conflict-plagued locations such as Gaza, Ukraine and Myanmar for an ever smaller pot.
The UN said last month, as it launched its 2026 appeal for aid funding, that it faced “brutal choices”. Due to a plunge in donor funding, it said it was being forced to ask for just $23bn, about half the amount it needs, despite humanitarian needs globally being at an all-time high.
“Sharp cuts in foreign assistance have further weakened humanitarian operations, stripping funding from essential programmes, meaning people won’t have enough to eat and feed their families, have access to basic healthcare, clean water and sanitation, or a safe place to live, with a heightened risk of gender-based violence,” the statement issued by the 13 aid agencies warns.
An avalanche of rubbish buried workers at a waste segregation facility in a central Philippine city, killing one person, injuring seven and leaving at least 27 others missing, police have said.
Rescuers retrieved eight people alive and were searching for the missing still trapped after a huge mound of rubbish and debris collapsed on them in Binaliw, Cebu city, police said on Friday.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
Those affected included workers at the landfill, but it was unclear if non-workers were among the victims.
One of those rescued, a female landfill worker, died while being brought to a hospital, regional police director Roderick Maranan told The Associated Press news agency, adding the rest survived with injuries.
Search and rescue efforts were continuing for the 27 missing, Maranan said, citing an initial police report.
Cebu city Mayor Nestor Archival said Friday that at least 12 people have been rescued and 38 others remain missing. The reason for the different numbers of missing and rescued given by the police and Archival was not immediately clear.
“All response teams remain fully engaged in search and retrieval efforts to locate the remaining missing persons with strict adherence to safety protocols,” Archival said in a statement posted on Facebook.
At the landfill site, dozens of rescuers scrambled overnight in search of people trapped.
“The city government assures the public and the families of those affected that all necessary measures are being taken to ensure safety, transparency, accountability and compassionate assistance as operations continue,” Archival said.
Authorities and officials at the waste management facility, which has 110 employees, were to hold an emergency meeting on Friday, Archival said.
An aerial view of the landfill collapse [Jacqueline Hernandez/AP Photo]
Aerial photos released by police showed what appeared to be multiple structures crushed under the weight of the rubbish.
Jason Morata, a city assistant public information officer, said the buildings had housed “company offices, HR, admin, maintenance staff” for a private firm that ran the site.
“It must be four storeys high,” Morata said of the rubbish mountain.
He added that information was emerging at a trickle, as there was “no signal” at the dump site.
The landfill “processes 1,000 tons of municipal solid waste daily”, according to the website of operator Prime Integrated Waste Solutions.
“We don’t know what caused the collapse. It wasn’t raining at all,” said Marge Parcotello, a civilian staff member of the police department in Consolacion, a town that shares a common boundary with the dump site.
“Many of the victims are from Consolacion,” the AFP news agency quoted her as saying.
More than 200 people were killed in July 2000 when an avalanche of rubbish consumed a Manila shanty town populated by several thousand scavengers.
