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In the suburb of Doral, Florida, a city about 15 miles west of Miami, that is home to more Venezuelan immigrants than any other city in the US, affectionately known as “Doralzuela,” the celebrations over Maduro’s capture began in the predawn hours. “Justice is being served for all the Venezuelans who left our country,” Kirvin Suarez told Reuters outside the restaurant. Millions of Venezuelans have left the country in the more than a quarter-century the ruling Chavismo movement has been entrenched in power. Many arrived in the US and other countries in recent years, others left their homeland more than 20 years ago. Silence can say many things,” a driver from eastern Caracas told CNN, asking not to be identified for security reasons.

On Friday afternoon, in the midst of massive protests across Iran that were raging for days (and several hours before the Venezuela story broke), I went on The New York Times home page to check out the coverage. At the same time, I went on the BBC home page to check their coverage. I read numerous posts on social media accusing the left of ignoring anything that can make Iran look bad. Yet the minute men and women in Iran rise up in resistance against the oppressive theocracy that immiserates and subjugates them, they go coy. They go back to tweeting about TV.”It’s one thing, of course, for hypocritical activists to show their shameless side; it’s quite another for a media company like The New York Times to emulate them.

Jerusalem —Former Israeli hostage Romi Gonen said she endured repeated sexual assault, harassment and intimidation during her 471 days of Hamas captivity, speaking publicly for the first time about her experience and her fear of becoming a “sex slave” in Gaza. Gonen, now 25, was kidnapped at age 23 from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, and released as part of the January 2025 hostage deal. Gonen is not the first Israeli hostage to report sexual abuse in captivity. A short while after he was released in the October 2025 ceasefire deal, Braslavski told Channel 13’s “Hazinor” that he was subjected to “horrific” and humiliating sexual violence and abuse. “They stripped me of all my clothes, my underwear, everything,” he said, adding, “It is sexual violence, and its main purpose was to humiliate me.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a briefing in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. via Associated PressVolodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to issue a call to action to Donald Trump after the US captured Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro. But the US president has adopted a very different approach to Putin compared to Maduro since returning to office last year. Throughout the peace process, he has even suggested effectively rewarding Putin for his aggression with giving Russia more of Ukraine’s territory. During a press conference on the US overthrow of Maduro – an ally to Russia – Trump said: “I’m not thrilled with Putin. He’s killing too many people.”AdvertisementBut, pointing to the high death toll in Ukraine, Trump also alleged the US is “probably making money” by supporting Nato with weapons and ammunition.

“He lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. It is against this backdrop that the Trump administration launched a strike against Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday, January 3. Trump insists that Maduro is working with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to attack the U.S. with illegal narcotics. Although international law is clear that countries own the natural resources within their own territories, he claimed that Venezuela had “unilaterally seized, and sold American oil, American assets and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars…. The administration has failed to reach out to oil executives with a long-term plan, experts told the journalists.

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How the Swiss club fire tragedy unfoldedA fire that ripped through a nightclub in the Swiss Alps early New Year's day has killed at least 40 people. Swiss authorities said that champagne sparklers were the likely cause. CNN's Nic Robertson breaks down the sequence of events that led to this tragedy.

Consider the Moorburg coal power plant near Hamburg. It came online in 2015 with around 1,650 to 1,700 megawatts of dependable baseload power. Building new clean coal generation, including in areas like West Susitna, would give Alaska the baseload power needed to support homes, businesses and industry. To make Alaska’s energy future secure, coal must stand alongside LNG, providing resilient reliable baseload power for infrastructure, industrial operations, and long-term energy security. We need practical, reality-based solutions: clean coal for baseload, renewables as supplements, and a strong partnership between coal and Alaska LNG.

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Could US strikes on Venezuela spur other nations to launch military action? Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, weighs in on the global precedent set by U.S. strikes on Venezuela.

Lawmakers react to US strikes on Venezuela ABC News political contributor and former New York Republican congressman John Katko shares the reactions of lawmakers to Saturday’s U.S. strikes on Venezuela.

Now, it’s about getting American energy companies access to one of the world’s largest oil bounties. But getting foreign companies to flock back to Venezuela will be a massive challenge. “Oil companies always want oil, and Venezuela has a lot of it,” said José Ignacio Hernández, a law professor, consultant and public-debt expert at Aurora Macro Strategies. And the government has to restructure some $160 billion in debt and settle pending arbitration cases with foreign companies to convince them to come back. On Saturday, as questions were still emerging about how Venezuela’s government would function and America’s role in the country, Trump kept turning back to the country’s oil.

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