Venezuela Condemns US Moves Targeting the Country

Venezuela Condemns US Moves Targeting the Country Venezuela Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro condemned US President Donald Trump’s decision to authorize CIA covert operations and potential land strikes in Venezuela, denouncing it as a severe violation of international law and an attempt at regime change, MercoPress reported. Maduro’s administration said this week that it would file a complaint with the United Nations Security Council and the Secretary-General, calling for accountability and urgent measures to avoid military escalation in the region. Trump confirmed Wednesday that his administration secretly cleared the CIA to carry out covert and potentially deadly operations on Venezuelan territory, escalating a campaign against Maduro and his alleged role in smuggling drugs to the US. The US recently deployed about 10,000 troops, eight warships, a nuclear-power submarine, and fighter jets to the Caribbean. Over the past month, the US military has carried out at least five strikes targeting boats off the Venezuelan coast, arguing they are smuggling drugs, Politico noted. The operations have killed 27 people so far, including six during the latest strike on Tuesday. United Nations officials said the raids amount to “extrajudicial executions.” Trump told reporters that his administration has “almost totally stopped” drug trafficking by sea and is now considering strikes on Venezuelan territory. “We are certainly looking at land now because we have the sea very well under control,” Trump said. Maduro ordered military exercises and said he was mobilizing the military, police, and civilian militia to defend the oil-rich country. While the US emphasized that the recent strikes were carried out in international waters, the new clearance by the White House would allow the CIA to conduct lethal operations in Venezuela as well as a range of other activities throughout the Caribbean. While it remains unclear whether the CIA is planning attacks on Venezuela, the spy agency has previously conducted numerous operations in South America, a legacy that prompted Maduro to say “No to CIA-orchestrated coups d’état” while appealing for peace on TV on Wednesday. US officials have privately acknowledged that the ultimate goal of the campaign is to remove Maduro from power, the New York Times reported. The Trump administration does not recognize him as a legitimate president because of an election last year it deems fraudulent. At the same time, the US has accused him of leading the Cartel de los Soles – an accusation that he has denied. The US has also offered a $50 million bounty for Maduro, the BBC wrote. Meanwhile, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize last week, has been calling for greater US support to fight what she considers a “war” on her country by Maduro, and has praised Trump’s efforts to counter the Venezuelan leader, she told CNN.

Peru: Violent Anti-Crime Protests Leave One Dead

Violent Anti-Crime Protests in Peru Leave One Dead as Government Fails to Quell Unrest Peru One person died and more than 100 were injured Wednesday after protesters clashed with police at anti-crime demonstrations in the Peruvian capital of Lima, as weeks of unrest continued despite the ouster of the president over corruption and security failures, France 24 reported. During a protest organized on Wednesday by Gen Z groups, transport workers, and civil society organizations, some demonstrators tried to tear down metal barriers protecting Congress, while others threw stones and lit fireworks. Riot police responded with tear gas, Reuters noted. One death, of a 32-year-old male, was reported: According to prosecutors, he was shot to death but they did not identify the shooter. Newly appointed interim President Jose Jeri said the killing would be “objectively” investigated. Jeri blamed the violence on “delinquents who infiltrated a peaceful demonstration to sow chaos.” In an effort to de-escalate the unrest, Jeri vowed to “declare war” on organized crime and make it his top priority. The government’s perceived failure to deal with a worsening crime crisis has been drawing thousands of people to youth-led protests in Lima and other cities in recent weeks. Following demonstrations by bus companies, merchants, and students against extortion by criminal gangs, and attacks on those who refuse to pay protection money, lawmakers voted last week to impeach President Dina Boluarte, blamed by critics for the crisis. Extortion and contract killings have become daily events in the South American country. Gangs like Los Pulpos and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, active across Latin America, have escalated their kidnapping and ransom operations in the country. The impeachment, however, failed to quell the unrest. Jeri, meanwhile, will remain in office until next year’s elections. However, he already faced serious scandals, including corruption allegations and a now-suspended investigation for sexual assault. He has denied any wrongdoing and said he would cooperate with investigators. Still, analysts believe he won’t last long running the country. He is the country’s seventh president since 2016. Three of those are in prison.

Venezuela And Cuba Are Collapsing

Opinion: Venezuela is collapsing — and don’t look now, but so is Cuba By Daniel Allott, 1 days ago Rolling blackouts. A worthless currency. A once-mighty industry on life support. Doctors, engineers and students leaving in droves in search of a future. That all sounds like Venezuela, but I’m talking about Cuba. As Venezuela’s crisis deepens, another — quieter but just as dangerous — is unfolding just 90 miles from Florida. The drama may be smaller, but the danger is real. If Venezuela is wobbling, Cuba is starting to fall. On Sept. 10, Cuba’s entire electrical grid failed, plunging nearly 10 million people into darkness. It was the island’s fourth nationwide blackout in less than a year. Even before that, much of the country was losing power for half the day. Officials blamed machinery; Cubans blamed the system. The country’s energy network has become a patchwork of corroded plants and emergency repairs. Over the past 14 months, it has suffered a dozen nationwide outages. Years of neglect and the burning of high-sulfur crude have crippled its power stations. As U.S. sanctions tighten on Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s ability to keep its ally supplied with oil has withered. Fuel shipments from Venezuela — Havana’s economic lifeline for two decades — now fluctuate wildly, sometimes dropping below 10,000 barrels a day before rebounding. Russia and Mexico have stepped in with emergency cargoes, but neither offers stability. Without steady deliveries, plants sputter and nights become suffocating. In some towns, residents cook by candlelight, charge phones at work, and sleep on rooftops to escape the heat. The currency collapse has ground down daily life. Even average state salaries amount to less than $20 a monthat the informal exchange rate, far below the cost of living. Gasoline is scarce and ruinously expensive. In rural areas, bicycles and horse carts have replaced cars. Tourism, once the island’s economic engine, has fallen by more than half over the last decade. Even middle-class Havana now endures rolling blackouts, empty shelves, and rising petty crime. The peso trades near 400 to the dollar on the street, its weakest rate on record. Prices for staples climb relentlessly, and stores selling imported goods increasingly demand hard currency that most Cubans cannot earn. The result is a two-tiered economy that mirrors Venezuela’s descent into dollarization, where access to dollars — not work, skill or effort — determines who eats well and who doesn’t. Cuba’s signature crop has fared no better. This year’s sugar harvest is expected to fall below 200,000 tons, the lowest since the 1800s. In the 1980s, sugar harvests topped 8 million. Today, Cuba is importing raw sugar, a stunning reversal for a former agricultural superpower. The collapse gutted exports, weakened the peso and idled thousands of rural workers. The losses aren’t just economic. Over the last four years, roughly two million Cubans — nearly 20 percent of the island’s population — have fled. Hospitals lack doctors, universities lack professors, and small businesses lack skilled workers. Families are scattered, classrooms empty, innovation stalled. What appears to be a pressure valve for the regime is really a slow bleed of the nation’s lifeblood. The parallels with Venezuela are unmistakable. Both regimes chose political control over prosperity. Both leaned on external lifelines — oil, credit, remittances — that are now fraying. Both crush dissent when policy fails. Venezuela’s decay hollowed out a once-rich state. Cuba has the same script, only with a much larger arc and without the oil money. The Havana-Caracas partnership has always been more than transactional. For a quarter century, the two governments have portrayed themselves as revolutionary brothers defying U.S. power. The bond dates back to Hugo Chávez’s rise in 1999 and his admiration for Fidel Castro’s revolution four decades earlier. Cuba sent doctors, teachers, and security advisers; Venezuela paid in oil. Even today, as both regimes falter, each remains the other’s last dependable ally in a region that has largely moved on. Their bond, however, is finally fraying. Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba have collapsed, from roughly 56,000 barrels per day in 2023 to as few as 8,000 in June 2025. Havana still provides diplomatic cover for Maduro, but both governments are now propping each other up with diminishing strength — two exhausted revolutions clinging to the same fading ideology. In both countries, force has replaced persuasion. Independent journalists are jailed, critics harassed, and citizens whisper their frustrations in private. Once-proud social programs — universal education and health care — have decayed and are now mere shells of what they once were. All that remains are schools without teachers, hospitals without medicine, clinics without electricity. Meanwhile, Washington is again engaged in a high-stakes game in the Caribbean. U.S. warships patrol off Venezuela and have destroyed vessels suspected of smuggling narcotics — a show of force meant to pressure Maduro. Cuban dissident and former political prisoner Óscar Biscet sees the regimes as intertwined. “Cuba and Venezuela are twin dictatorships that sustain each other through corruption and transnational crime,” he told me. “The communist Castro regime effectively occupies Venezuela’s political and military institutions and uses them to export repression and to traffic drugs to the United States.” Formally, President Miguel Díaz-Canel leads Cuba. In reality, decisions still flow from a small cadre of aging revolutionaries — Raúl Castro, now 93, and a few longtime comrades in their nineties. Power moves through personal networks rather than institutions. Preservation, not renewal, is the guiding rule. Across the island, billboards still trumpet “Continuity.” For most Cubans, that no longer means stability — it means continued suffocation. To be sure, Cuba is not Venezuela. Its security forces remain disciplined. Tourism and remittances still bring in dollars that Caracas can only envy. Emigration keeps anger from boiling over. And the Communist Party has survived so many shocks that it is always risky to forecast its collapse. But the warning signs aren’t hard to see. The lights keep flickering. The peso buys less every day. The sugar mills are quiet. The young are leaving. The pillars that once held Cuban socialism upright are giving way all at once. Venezuela’s collapse dominates the headlines, but Cuba’s slow-motion breakdown could have far more profound consequences. A failed state just 90 miles from Florida would unleash new migration waves, invite rival powers into the region, and test America’s resolve. Havana’s flickering lights may be the hemisphere’s next alarm bell. Daniel Allott is the former opinion editor of The Hill and the author of “On the Road in Trump’s America: A Journey into the Heart of a Divided Country.” Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

Peru's President Ousted

Peru’s Congress Ousts President Dina Boluarte Over Corruption and Security Failures Peru Peruvian President Dina Boluarte became the latest leader in the country to be ousted over the weekend, following months of political turmoil marked by corruption scandals, deadly protest crackdowns, and a spiraling security crisis that has gripped the country, CNN reported. On Friday, lawmakers from across the political aisle voted to remove Boluarte for “permanent moral incapacity.” They accused her of failing to curb organized crime and cited a series of corruption allegations, including bribery, abuse of office, and misuse of state resources. The president denied the allegations and refused to attend the session. Boluarte became Peru’s first female president in December 2022 after the impeachment of her predecessor, Pedro Castillo. Her downfall comes amid a deepening crisis of governance in Peru, where more than seven presidents have faced trial or legal challenges related to corruption scandals or human rights abuses since 2000. Boluarte’s term was marked by growing backlash over the deaths of more than 60 protesters killed by security forces during unrest that followed Castillo’s ouster in early 2023. She also came under scrutiny for accepting luxury gifts and secretly undergoing cosmetic surgery while in office without delegating authority, violating constitutional protocol. The legislative vote followed closely after a shooting at a concert in the capital that ignited public outrage over rampant gang violence and rising crime in the country. Peru recorded 2,082 homicides last year – half of them contract killings – and more than 22,000 cases of extortion, underscoring the challenges ahead for the embattled nation. Boluarte will be replaced by Congress President José Jerí, who was sworn in as interim president. In one of his first acts, Jerí launched pre-dawn raids at four prisons, where authorities seized cellphones, weapons, and drugs from gang leaders. The new leader pledged he will make it a priority to tackle Peru’s rampant lawlessness, according to the Associated Press. Jerí will serve as interim president until July 2026, when Peruvians will select their new president in elections scheduled for April 12.

Argentina Congress Limits Melili's Decree Power

Argentina’s Congress Limits Milei’s Decree Power in Latest Blow to the Right-Wing Leader Argentina Argentina’s lower house on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill to limit President Javier Milei’s ability to use emergency presidential decrees, the latest in a series of setbacks for the right-wing leader, whose party has a minority in Congress, Reuters reported. According to the bill, a decree can now be overturned by a single house of parliament. Before, a majority of both houses of parliament had to vote to reject a presidential order to overturn it, France 24 added. The Chamber of Deputies approved the measures by 140 votes in favor to 80 against, and 17 abstentions. The bill was already approved by the Senate, but it will now return to the upper house, where it is expected to be approved, following modifications. Milei could still veto the legislation. Milei’s party argued that the bill would be destabilizing and create legal uncertainty but critics say that the president has excessively used executive decrees, causing institutional damage. In an effort to push forward his austerity agenda, he has issued more than 70 decrees since becoming president in December 2023. Milei, who campaigned on being an outsider, described Congress as a “nest of rats” and its members as a “political caste.” The move is a fresh blow to the libertarian leader, who is already grappling with corruption scandals involving his sister, a peso crisis that forced him to obtain financial aid from the US last month, and three previous congressional votes that have overturned some of his spending vetoes. Meanwhile, Milei appears increasingly vulnerable in the run-up to midterm elections on Oct. 26, where half of the lower house and one-third of the Senate will be up for grabs. Last month, his party only secured about 34 percent of the vote in legislative elections in Buenos Aires province, while Milei’s left-wing Peronist opponents won about 47 percent in a vote seen as a referendum on his policies. Share this story

Argentina' Chainsaw Massacre

Argentina’s chainsaw massacre FT author Edward Luce US National Editor and Columnist ‌ ‌ PREMIUM October 10 2025 The speed of Javier Milei’s reversal of fortunes has been brutal. A few months ago, Argentina’s libertarian president was hailed as an economic miracle-worker and a lodestar for the global populist right. It was Milei who donated that infamous chainsaw to Elon Musk a couple of weeks after Donald Trump took office. At that point Milei was seen as a populist iconoclast who had scythed his way through bureaucracy to deliver inflation-beating austerity. This he had pulled off in terminally ill Argentina of all places. He had also written the road map for Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). It was not just Musk, Trump, JD Vance and other Maga figures who hailed Milei’s magical touch. Centre-left leaders such as Britain’s Keir Starmer, also felt obliged to pay their compliments. So complete was Milei’s status as the populist right’s foreign darling that America’s conservative CPAC gathering was held in Buenos Aires last December. This put him on a par with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who also played host to the conference. “We could call ourselves a rightwing international,” Milei told the audience. “In the hands of Trump, [El Salvador’s Nayib] Bukele and us here in Argentina, we have a historic opportunity to breathe new winds of freedom into the world.” A couple of months later Milei told the Economist, “I am today, one of the two most relevant politicians on planet earth . . . I find it fascinating that the chainsaw has become an emblem of a new golden era of humanity.” Pride goeth before the fall but in Milei’s case Trump is trying to catch him first. The irony of the libertarian nationalist who opposed foreign handouts now turning to Trump for urgent assistance is lost on no one. Those who want to explore the balance of payments challenges Milei faces should read this exemplary Alphaville note by Brad Setser and Stephen Paduano. Their assessment of whether Trump’s $20bn credit swap line will stem the Argentine peso’s fall is technical, so for those in a hurry, here is the gist. Milei slashed inflation from more than 160 per cent when he was elected in 2023 to 32 per cent by ending the use of central bank money printing to finance government spending and propping up the peso with Argentina’s dollar reserves. This kept import prices down and curbed inflation. But the impact on incomes of a high peso and sharp spending cuts was severe. When Milei’s party did badly in local elections last month, an-all-too familiar run on the peso was triggered. Having run through most of his reserves trying to prop it up, Milei had little choice but to turn to Trump (the IMF already gave Milei a $20bn soft loan earlier this year). The US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, obliged with an unconditional $20bn swap line on the softest terms possible. As was reputedly said by another South American strongman, Oscar Benevides, “For my friends everything; for my enemies, the law.” Either way, Setser and Paduano doubt if Trump’s help will be enough. “The problem with Milei is you eventually run out of other people’s money,” they quip. Argentina’s midterm elections later this month poses Milei’s most critical political test. If the opposition Peronists do well, Milei’s strategy could become untenable and the peso’s slide would continue. It is hard to imagine Trump throwing good money after bad. To be clear, and as history repeatedly tells us, the Peronists’ familiar expansionist recipe would be an inflationary cure worse than the disease. Milei’s exceptionalist moment may nevertheless be over. This means he and Musk still have a lot to talk about. I’m turning this week to my colleague Ciara Nugent, the FT’s Southern Cone correspondent, in Buenos Aires. Ciara, we haven’t met but I’ve enjoyed your coverage of Milei’s rollercoaster ride. I know he is the latest among several economic Wunderkinder that Argentina thrown up over the last few decades — though with a uniquely Trumpian flavour. My question is whether he has now exhausted Argentina’s libertarian option for another few years or does he still have scope to rebound? Recommended reading ‌ ‌

Venezuela Thwarts Terrorist Attack On US Embassy

Venezuela Foils Terrorist Attack at US Embassy Amid Worsening Ties with Washington Venezuela Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced this week that his security forces prevented a “false flag operation” by a “local terrorist group” to plant explosives at the United States Embassy in the country’s capital, Caracas, MercoPress reported. During his weekly TV show on Monday, Maduro said that two credible sources, one domestic and one international, had told the government about the possible attack by “extremist sectors of the local Venezuelan right.” Security forces were sent to reinforce security around the embassy, and authorities are searching for those involved in the failed plan. The president also shared details and information about the threat with the US government, and he said he received a positive response. Maduro described the foiled attack as a “provocation,” warning it was part of a larger destabilization attempt aimed at justifying further aggression against his country and heightening tensions with Washington – the US is expanding its military presence off the coast of Venezuela as part of a campaign against drug cartels, Al Jazeera noted. After the rupture of diplomatic relations between Caracas and Washington in 2019, the US embassy in Venezuela has remained closed, only maintaining necessary staff for security and the upkeep of the premises. Despite the difference between the two countries, Maduro insisted that the embassy is protected and respected by his government under international law. News of this alleged attack arrives as US President Donald Trump reportedly called off efforts to find a diplomatic agreement with Venezuela. The Trump administration does not recognize Maduro as the legitimate president and has accused him of being one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers and also the head of the Cartel de los Soles. The US military campaign in Venezuela currently focuses on attacking Venezuelan ships in the Caribbean Sea, which it believes are carrying drugs. Last Friday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said four people were killed during a strike on a small vessel in the Caribbean, which the White House considered involved in drug trafficking. Venezuelan officials have condemned the US’s targeting of shipping, saying it constitutes a campaign of extrajudicial killing.