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Defense secretary says he ‘moved on to my next meeting’ as sensitive military operation was under way; top Democrat calls Hegseth ‘spineless’ and ‘a national embarrassment’. This blog is now closed.White House ‘selling out’ admiral to shield Hegseth over strikes, officials sayTrump threatens strikes on any country he claims makes drugs for USJoseph Gedeon is a politics breaking news reporter based in WashingtonThe FBI director, Kash Patel, is “in over his head” and leading a “chronically under-performing” agency paralyzed by fear and plummeting morale, according to a scathing 115-page report compiled by a national alliance of retired and active-duty FBI special agents and analysts. Continue reading...

Group including Margaret Atwood, Ian McKellen and Richard Branson sign open letter to free Marwan BarghoutiMore than 200 leading cultural figures have come together to call for the release of Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Palestinian leader seen as capable of uniting factions and bringing the best hope to the stalled mission of creating a Palestinian state.The prestigious and diverse group calling for his release in an open letter includes a variety of prominent names, including the writers Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith and Annie Ernaux; actors Sir Ian McKellen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Josh O’Connor and Mark Ruffalo, and the broadcaster and former footballer Gary Lineker. Continue reading...

Malaysia says the deep-sea search for long-missing Flight 370 will resume Dec. 30

US president’s xenophobic rant comes amid reports of ramped-up deportation efforts in Ilhan Omar’s districtDonald Trump on Tuesday called Somali immigrants “garbage” and said they should be sent back home in a rant that came as the administration is reportedly increasing immigration enforcement against undocumented Somalis in Minnesota.In a xenophobic rant during a cabinet meeting, Trump went off on Somalis and Ilhan Omar, the congressional representative who is from Somalia and is a US citizen. He said Somalia “stinks” and is “no good for a reason”. Continue reading...

Millions of people affected by torrential rainfall in Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern MalaysiaHow cyclones and monsoon rains combined to devastate parts of Asia – visual guideSri Lanka and Indonesia have deployed military personnel as they race to help victims of devastating flooding that has killed more than 1,100 people across four countries in Asia.Millions of people have been affected by a combination of tropical cyclones and heavy monsoon rains in Sri Lanka, parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, Thailand and Malaysia in recent days. Continue reading...

Shocking as this moment is, none of us should pretend we weren’t warned. When Donald Trump installed Pete Hegseth — a television provocateur whose public record is soaked in belligerence, booze, and culture-war performance — as America’s Defense Secretary, the world could see exactly where it was headed.Still, nothing prepared us for the Washington Post revelation that Hegseth personally ordered U.S. forces to “kill everybody” on a small wooden boat off the coast of Trinidad on Sept. 2.You’d expect rogue militias or failed-state paramilitaries to speak that way. You don’t expect it from the man running the Pentagon.What the Post reports is almost too grotesque to absorb.After the first U.S. missile ripped the boat apart and set it burning, commanders watched on a live drone feed as two survivors clung desperately to the charred wreckage.They were unarmed. They were wounded. They were no threat to anyone. They were simply alive; inconveniently alive for a man who had allegedly already given the order that there be no survivors.And so, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the strike, the Special Operations commander overseeing the operation ordered a second missile. It hit the water and blew those two men apart.History tells us to watch out for nations that lose their moral compass in real time.It starts when the powerful stop seeing human beings as human. It accelerates when the government itself denies any obligation to justify its killings.And when leaders begin lying to Congress and the public to cover what they’ve done, you’re no longer looking at isolated abuses. You’re staring straight into the machinery of authoritarianism.Instead of telling Congress that the second strike was designed to finish off wounded survivors, Pentagon officials claimed it was to “remove a navigation hazard.”That isn’t just spin: it’s an attempt to rewrite reality.The Post quotes Todd Huntley, a former Special Operations military lawyer now at Georgetown Law, saying exactly what any first-year law student would immediately recognize: because the U.S. is not legally “at war” with drug traffickers, killing the people on that boat “amounts to murder.”Even if a war did exist, Huntley notes, the order to kill wounded, unarmed survivors “would in essence be an order to show no quarter,” which is defined under the Geneva Conventions as a war crime.This isn’t an obscure legal debate. This is basic civilization. Armed states do not execute helpless people in the water.And yet this is now U.S. policy. The boat strike on Sept. 2 was not a one-off. It was the beginning of a campaign.The Post reports that since that first attack, Trump and Hegseth have ordered more than 20 similar missile strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 80 people.The administration insists the victims were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. But in classified briefings to Congress, Pentagon officials have not provided even one single verified name of a trafficker or gang leader they’ve killed. Lawmakers from both parties say they’ve been shown nothing beyond grainy videos of small boats being destroyed from the air.If these men had truly been high-value cartel operatives, Trump would be parading names and photos across every rally stage in America. The silence tells its own story.Experts warn that many of the dead may not have been traffickers at all. They may have been border-crossing migrants, subsistence fishermen, or small-scale smugglers whose crimes did not remotely justify summary execution.International human rights groups are already calling these killings extrajudicial and illegal. Some foreign governments are asking whether the United States has effectively created a free-fire zone over parts of the Caribbean, and several have limited intelligence sharing with us for fear of being complicit in prosecutable war crimes and crimes against humanity.This, too, has been part of the authoritarian playbook since ancient times.Pick a foreign or criminal “other,” paint them as subhuman monsters, and then declare that the normal laws of war, morality, and basic decency no longer apply.For years, right-wing media has been hyping Tren de Aragua as a kind of supercharged successor to MS-13, just as Trump once used MS-13 as a bludgeon to justify abuses at home.The fact that the administration has produced no evidence for its claims isn’t a bug: it’s the point. When the government fabricates an omnipresent threat, it gives itself permission to kill whoever it wants.This may also explain the ferocity with which Hegseth and Trump went after Democratic lawmakers when they reminded U.S. service members that they are duty-bound to disobey illegal orders.Those officers weren’t being dramatic: they were issuing a warning grounded in fresh blood. And Hegseth’s and Trump’s panicked rage — calling for the death penalty for six members of Congress, including a decorated war hero and a CIA officer — now makes perfect sense: he knows perfectly well what he’s already ordered.The strike on Sept. 2 is not just a policy failure; it’s a moral collapse. If the Post’s reporting is accurate — and multiple congressional offices say it is consistent with what whistleblowers have told them — then the United States has engaged in the deliberate killing of wounded, unarmed men floating in the sea.That is the kind of conduct that topples governments, triggers war-crimes investigations, and leaves scars on nations for generations.Nobody elected Trump or Hegseth to serve as judge, jury, and executioner for impoverished people in wooden boats. Nobody gave them the authority to murder suspects without trial. And nobody gave them the right to lie to Congress about it.Congress must not let this pass. These allegations demand immediate public hearings, subpoena power, and full investigative authority.If Hegseth gave an order to “kill everybody,” he must be removed and prosecuted.If U.S. commanders falsified reports to mislead Congress and the public, they must be held accountable.And if Trump approved or encouraged these actions, then impeachment and criminal referral are not optional: they’re required to defend the rule of law.America doesn’t have many chances left to prove to the world, and to ourselves, that we still believe in the value of human life and the restraints of democratic power. This is one of them.

Meanwhile, Iran grapples with one of worst droughts and temperatures fall 10C below normal in USMore heavy rainfall is expected in Sri Lanka in the coming days, likely resulting in further damage across the country. It comes after torrential rainfall in south-east Asia triggered catastrophic flash floods and landslides that have affected millions, killing more than 300 people in Indonesia and 160 in Thailand, with hundreds more still missing.Parts of North Sumatra, Indonesia, were hit with rainfall totals of 800mm over four days, with other areas also experiencing heavy rainfall. Continue reading...

By Evan Ellis, Latin America Research Professor, US Army War College. As an analyst who has worked on security issues for over 30 years, I've been monitoring the US military build-up in the Caribbean for months.The US administration now has the potential to take decisive military action in Venezuela.Washington has described Nicolás Maduro as the leader of a terrorist group and deemed his regime illegitimate.The US has named its mission in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean "Operation Southern Spear" and briefed President Donald Trump on military options.The arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford gives the US Joint Task Force established in the region the option to launch a high volume of attacks against land targets, should Trump give the order. According to media reports, there are now 15,000 troops in the region, including marines on ships and some 5,000 personnel at bases in Puerto Rico.This massive deployment has, arguably, sought to convince Maduro's loyalists that US action is now an option on the table.The message is clear: if a military solution is pursued, the US is highly likely to be successful.This quantity of US military hardware in the region has not been seen since "Operation Uphold Democracy" in Haiti in 1994, when American-led forces helped end the military regime that had overthrown the democratically elected government.The most modern aircraft carrier in the US Navy is the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. Its ability to rapidly launch and recover the 75 modern fighter aircraft on board would allow it to generate a significant number of strikes against Venezuelan targets. This would serve as a complement to the substantial numbers of missiles and other weapons on the other ships in the region.It joins an Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group. This group includes a helicopter dock ship and two landing platform vessels capable of transporting the 2,200 marines of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and their vehicles and equipment onto land, should they be needed.If such an event occurs, they would be transported by V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, helicopters and rapid air cushioned landing craft with the capacity to carry marines and heavier equipment over the beach to their objectives.In addition, the US has six destroyers and two cruisers with hundreds of missiles for both land attack and air defence and an AC-130 gunship capable of delivering high volumes of missiles against land targets.The special operations force's support ship, the "Ocean Trader", is also in the region and there is at least one attack submarine under the water's surface.Then on nearby US territory in Puerto Rico, the US has at least 10 F-35s, the most advanced fighter jet in the world. Flight tracking shows on Nov. 21 at least four additional aircraft were flown into the region from the US.These capabilities are further complemented by rapidly deployable assets from nearby bases in the continental US, from which the US has already flown sorties with B-52 and B-1 bombers.At least one MQ-9 Reaper attack and surveillance drone has also been deployed in the region.The imbalance of military firepower cannot be overstated. The small number of man-portable Igla-S anti-aircraft weapons that Maduro can rely on could take out a handful of US helicopters. But it is likely that few are in workable condition and even those may not be in the hands of people who know how to use them.Venezuela has around 63,000 soldiers, 23,000 troops in the National Guard and 15,000 marines. There are also unknown thousands in the militia. A submarine, two frigates, two corvettes and several missile and patrol boats are patrolling the coast. But they are massively dwarfed by the number, power and reach of what the US has stationed there.How it could unfoldAny move by Venezuelans to oust Maduro themselves could be supported by limited US operations on land targets, including military leaders and facilities supporting what the US alleges are drug operations.Should a home-grown attempt be unsuccessful, a large-scale, decisive US operation to capture or eliminate the regime's leadership, is one option.One way this could be done could involve a massive barrage of missiles and strikes by stealth aircraft, supported by electronic warfare, special operations missions, and clandestine operations from inside the country. The aim would be to take down the regime’s air defence systems, command nodes, fighter aircraft and other threats.Whether the United States would follow up such an operation with "boots on the ground" is not certain.But if Washington has the will, the US certainly has the military might needed to remove the US-designated terrorist group "Cartel de los Soles," including its alleged head, Maduro, which it claims is a threat to US interests.