The Latest Breaking News from Caracas

Venezuela's Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said that Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were "kidnapped" during a U.S. military operation earlier this month, and that efforts to reopen diplomatic missions between Caracas and Washington are primarily aimed at ensuring their safety and return.

The tanker departed an eastern Venezuela port shortly after the Jan. 3 military operation in Caracas without authorization from port authorities or Petróleos de Venezuela, the state oil company, which said it was never paid for the half-million barrels of crude onboard.

From 1999 onwards, successive governments pursued a strategy linking foreign policy, state financing and the management of the country's main industry. The result was a network of bilateral alliances that channelled much of Venezuela's crude outside conventional buying and selling circuits.

Venezuela's advanced air defense systems bought from Russia were not connected to the radar when U.S. forces descended in Caracas to capture authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro, according to a new report.