The U.S. is transferring two alleged drug traffickers to Colombia and Ecuador for detention and prosecution after they were briefly held on a U.S. Navy warship in the Caribbean, President Trump announced on Saturday.
The two people survived an attack on a submersible Thursday and were rescued by the U.S. military. They were taken to the USS Iwo Jima, which has been operating in the region and has a full medical staff, according to defense officials.
President Trump said he hoped Ukraine wouldn’t need the U.S. to provide it with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles as he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday.
“We’re going to be talking about Tomahawks, and would much rather have them not need Tomahawks,” said Trump. “Would much rather have the war be over, to be honest.”
The U.S. is treating survivors from the latest attack on a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
The two survivors were rescued by the Coast Guard and transported to the USS Iwo Jima, which has a full medical staff. Others onboard the submersible died in the attack, the officials said.
TEL AVIV—At the start of the week, President Trump declared the
“
historic dawn of a new Middle East” after securing a truce between Israel and Hamas that stopped the war in Gaza. Days later, the peace process is already stumbling.
The reason: a controversy over Hamas’s failure to return all of the bodies of dead hostages that remain in Gaza. Israel and the Arab mediators in the talks knew Hamas wasn’t able to locate all of them, but the militant group’s initial decision to return only four looked like foot-dragging to Israel and set off a highly political skirmish amid demands the deal be halted until the bodies were back.
Venezuela is moving troops into position on the Caribbean coast and mobilizing what President Nicolás Maduro asserts is a millions-strong militia in a display of defiance against the biggest American military buildup in the Caribbean since the 1980s.
The strongman’s regime has cranked up its propaganda machine. On state television, radio and social media, announcers are telling Venezuelans that the U.S. is a rapacious Nazi-like state that wants to dig its claws into the country’s oil wealth but that the Venezuelan military, the National Bolivarian Armed Forces, are positioning to repel any invasion.
Hamas has returned only nine of the 28 dead Israeli hostages it promised President Trump. Perhaps the terrorists are busy dealing with the corpses of the Palestinians they have been executing since the cease-fire. Where are the protests now from those in the West who claimed to speak for Gazans?
“Death to Zionism. Death to all collaborators,” the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) wrote in an online post Sunday, echoing Hamas’s usual excuse for killing its rivals and dissenters. SJP led the 2024 campus protests in the U.S. and received fawning press coverage for its humanitarian concern.
WASHINGTON—President Trump said Thursday he plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest for talks on ending the war in Ukraine, reviving a diplomatic effort after threatening to send new weapons to Kyiv.
The agreement to hold the meeting in Budapest, at a date yet to be announced, came during a phone call between the two leaders a day before Trump is set to meet at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Having just commemorated two years since Oct. 7, 2023, we’re now approaching another grim anniversary—Feb. 24, four years since Russia invaded Ukraine. For all of President Trump’s shortcomings, he deserves credit for recognizing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was vulnerable after having overreached by bombing Qatar. The president leveraged Bibi’s weakness to force a cease-fire. Russia is in a similarly vulnerable position after the failure of its third offensive against Ukraine, yet Mr. Trump has failed to exploit this weakness. This raises the question: Why is Mr. Trump reluctant to take advantage of
Vladimir Putin’s helplessness?
In February, Mr. Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “You don’t have the cards.” Yet from nearly every angle and measure, it’s Russia whose hand is weak. Mr. Putin is more vulnerable today than at any point in his three decades on the global stage. Either Mr. Trump’s sixth sense for using leverage is failing him, or some strange fondness for the Russian president’s strongman persona is preventing him from appreciating the strategic opportunity that lies before him.
WASHINGTON—The Tomahawk cruise missile that President Trump is considering for Ukraine has been the weapon of choice for decades for U.S. presidents seeking decisive military solutions.
A highly accurate missile with a powerful warhead that can fly more than 1,000 miles, the Tomahawk can reach targets inside Russia far beyond any of the weapons the U.S. has provided to Kyiv until now.
President
Trump has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert action in Venezuela, while also floating the idea of land strikes, in a broadening campaign against alleged drug trafficking.
“I authorized for two reasons,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House, alleging Venezuelan leaders have “emptied their prisons into the United States of America” and “we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.”
PORTLAND, Ore. – Temporary restraining orders blocking the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland are being extended.
U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut issued the ruling Wednesday as the two orders were set to expire this week.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is considering a stay from the federal government that could allow the troops to be deployed.
The temporary restraining order has been extended another two weeks with the three-day trial set for October 29th. If the Court of Appeals rules against the orders they would be dissolved.
A U.S.-brokered cease-fire has hit pause on the war between Hamas and Israel. In its place, a fight between Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip is now under way.
As Israeli troops pulled back last week to facilitate a deal that freed the living hostages still held in Gaza, Hamas surged security forces in behind them—a public assertion of authority intended to make clear the group remains the enclave’s governing power.
TEL AVIV—Israel and Hamas on Tuesday accused each other of violating the cease-fire that was part of the deal that
released all 20 living hostages from Gaza, with Israel reducing the humanitarian aid promised under the agreement to increase pressure on Hamas to return more bodies of deceased hostages.
Israelis celebrated the return of the living hostages on Monday, in what for many marked an end to the two-year Gaza war. But the families of the deceased hostages who are supposed to be returned to Israel as part of President Trump’s 20-point plan for peace said they were angered that only four of 28 bodies had been returned.
Its president is in hiding, an army unit has taken control and crowds of protesters are demanding sweeping social change.
The wave of protests mushrooming around the world has now forced a change of leadership in Madagascar. After weeks of demonstrations over corruption and worsening living standards, the armed forces say they have taken control while President Andry Rajoelina has taken refuge in what he described as a secure, undisclosed location as he tries to shore up enough political support to regain power.
WYRYKI, Poland—After suspected Russian drones violated NATO airspace in recent weeks, closing airports and rattling citizens, European militaries and governments find themselves in a new era of conflict with an urgent need to bolster their defenses.
Allied countries are caught between having to develop long-term solutions to address Russia’s continuing hybrid threats, and a more immediate need to help civilians prepare for the next potential wave of drones. The solutions span from multilayered air-defense systems to civilian target practice against drones.
President Trump declared an end to the Gaza war Monday after more than two years and vowed to extend his peacemaking to the wider Middle East, taking a victory lap in a region still facing deep divisions and numerous unresolved conflicts.
“This isn’t only the end of a war, this is the end of an age of terror and death,” Trump said in an address to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. “This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
NIR OZ, Israel—Inside the bomb shelter of a small house in this kibbutz near the Gaza border, a heart is scrawled on the wall around the letters “AA,” short for Ariel and Arbel.
Above it is a note written by one of them, a former hostage, to the other, her fiancé still in captivity: “I will wait for you, I love you more.”
WARSAW—For more than a decade, Poland has prepared for the worst-case scenario: becoming the front line in a war between Russia and the West.
With an eye on growing Russian aggression in Europe, Warsaw’s military planners built out the country’s armed forces, turning it last year into the largest European military in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It ramped up military spending to 4.7% of gross domestic product this year—the highest in the alliance. A multibillion-dollar spending spree has put Poland among the biggest buyers of U.S. weapons.
A nor’easter churned its way up the East Coast on Sunday, washing out roads and prompting air travel delays as heavily populated areas of the Northeast experienced excessive rain, lashing winds and coastal flooding.
Across the continent in western Alaska, the remnants of Typhoon Halong brought hurricane-force winds and catastrophic flooding to coastal communities, pushing entire houses off their foundations.
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