The Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, has urged Donald Trump to abandon his “illegal warmongering” and begin “serious talks” with his administration as mystery continued to surround a purported pre-Christmas CIA airstrike on the South American country.
Speaking during an hour-long TV interview, Maduro declined to confirm reports of the apparent US attack, which would be the first on Venezuelan soil since Trump began his five-month campaign of military pressure in August.
Maduro’s pre-recorded interview came after Trump said on Monday that the US had hit a docking facility that served Venezuelan drug-trafficking boats last month. US media reports have claimed the CIA was behind the drone strike.
If confirmed, the first strike on land would mark a new phase in a campaign that has involved the deployment of a huge US naval fleet, airstrikes on alleged drug traffickers and a “total blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers, the seizure of two vessels and the pursuit of a third.
Maduro urges Trump to abandon ‘illegal warmongering’
Maduro rejected US claims justifying Trump’s campaign that he is the head of a “narco-terrorist” crime organisation flooding the US with drugs. He said he believed Washington’s true objective was to seize control of Venezuelan resources including oil, gold and rare-earth metals.
“Since they can’t accuse me or accuse Venezuela of having weapons of mass destruction … since they can’t accuse us of having nuclear missiles … or chemical weapons … they have invented a claim that the US knows is as false as the claim about weapons of mass destruction that led them into a forever war,” Maduro said. “I believe that we need to set all this aside and start serious talks.”
Iran officials warn Trump of red line after his threat to ‘rescue’ protesters
Donald Trump has threatened to intervene in Iran if its government kills demonstrators, prompting warnings from senior Iranian officials that any American interference would cross a “red line”.
In a social media post on Friday, Trump said that if Iran were to shoot and kill protesters, the US would “come to their rescue”. He added: “We are locked and loaded, and ready to go”, without explaining what that might mean in practice.
US homeland security condemned for using Japanese artist’s work without consent
The US Department of Homeland Security is facing backlash once again, this time from a Japanese artist who has condemned the agency for using his work without permission to promote deportations.
In a post on X on New Year’s Eve, DHS posted a photo featuring a pristine and empty beach with palm trees and a vintage car. Written across the photo was “America after 100 million deportations”, along with a separate caption that said: “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”
What else happened today:
With astronauts set to fly around the moon for the first time in more than half a century when Artemis 2 makes its long-awaited ascent some time this spring, 2026 was already destined to become a standout year in space. It is also likely to be one of the most pivotal, with new leadership at Nasa in billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman, and the tycoon-led private space industry assuming more than a mere supporting role to help win for the US its race with China back to the lunar surface.
A new generation of young political leaders is gaining power in the US by using their personal experience with gun violence to push for reforms they say the US is ready for.
Israel’s foreign ministry has accused the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, of pouring “antisemitic gasoline on an open fire” after he reversed a recent order by the outgoing mayor, Eric Adams.
The FBI said on Friday that it thwarted an alleged plot to carry out a New Year’s Eve terrorist attack on a grocery store and restaurant in North Carolina in support of the Islamic State (IS).
Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok posted on Friday that lapses in safeguards had led it to generate “images depicting minors in minimal clothing” on social media platform X. The chatbot, a product of Musk’s company xAI, has been generating a wave of sexualized images throughout the week in response to user prompts.
A Kentucky woman is facing multiple criminal charges after she allegedly induced her own abortion using medication. Kentucky state police arrested the woman, Melinda S Spencer, 35, on charges of fetal homicide in the first degree, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence, according to a local Kentucky news outlet.
A federal magistrate judge has ruled that the man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican headquarters the night before the 6 January Capitol attack must remain in custody while awaiting trial.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 January 2026.
