After #Maduro, who’s next? #Trump’s comments spur anxieties about his plans for #Greenland and #Cuba.

The comments from Trump and Secretary of State #Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.

With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who’s next?

“We do need Greenland, absolutely,” Trump said in an interview with The Atlantic in which he described the strategically located Arctic island as “surrounded by Russian and Chinese ships.”

Asked what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump, in his administration’s National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.

Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he’s made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.

Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president’s foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.” . Saturday’s dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s Atlantic interview heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement following Trump’s latest comments on Greenland said he has “no right to annex” the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.

“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.

Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.

Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON.”

“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark’s chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump’s influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.

The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.

The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
A stern warning to Cuba

Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.

Rubio, in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.

“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside to make sure there are no traitors.”

Trump on Saturday told reporters that he viewed the Cuban government as “very similar” to Venezuela.

“I think Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about, because Cuba is a failing nation right now, a very badly failing nation, and we want to help the people,” Trump said.

Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”

Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.

“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.

Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”

“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.

AP writer Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba contributed reporting.

Aamer Madhani, The Associated Press

Prominent South Korean movie star Ahn Sung-ki has died, hospital says. The death of Ahn, who had been fighting blood cancer for years, was announced by the Seoul-based Soonchunhyang University Hospital.

Ahn had collected more than 20 trophies in major movie awards in South Korea, including winning the prestigious Grand Bell Awards for best actor five times, an achievement no other South Korean actors have matched yet.

Ahn built up an image as a humble, trustworthy and family-oriented celebrity who avoided major scandals and maintained a quiet, stable personal life. Past public surveys chose Ahn as South Korea’s most beloved actor and deserving of the nickname “The Nation’s Actor” the most.

U.S. lifts #Caribbean airspace curbs after attack on #Venezuela, The U.S. advised airlines on Saturday that its Caribbean airspace curbs would expire at midnight ET (0500 GMT) and flights could resume as schedules are quickly updated, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

The comments on X followed the cancelation of hundreds of flights by major airlines after the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolas Maduro.

Key carriers United Airlines, American Airlines, Spirit and Delta were readying to resume flights to the Caribbean by Sunday.

In a statement, United said a flight to San Juan in Puerto Rico was planned for Saturday night, adding, “We expect to operate most scheduled flights to the region for Sunday.”

Delta Air Lines expects to fly its normal Carribean schedule on Sunday, it said in a statement, but adjusted to reposition resources.

American Airlines said in a statement that it was preparing for the Eastern Caribbean airspace to reopen Sunday and had added more than 3,700 extra seats to and from the region on top of resuming scheduled service.

It said it was operating extra flights and deploying larger aircraft, including widebodies, to “add as much lift as possible” to help customers affected by the FAA‑mandated closure.

Spirit Airlines said in an emailed statement that it had resumed flights to and from the Caribbean on Jan. 4, following the expiration of the U.S. FAA’s airspace closure directive.

Even after the removal of curbs, however, airlines will need several days to restore normal operations, said airline analyst Robert Mann, adding, “They have a day’s worth of passengers basically,” already stranded in the Caribbean.

American Airlines, Delta, United, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines and JetBlue Airways began canceling flights, in line with Federal Aviation Administration airspace closures in the Caribbean.

JetBlue canceled 215 flights, an airline spokesperson said. The company said on Sunday it would resume normal operations.

In a notice to airmen, the FAA said it closed the airspace to U.S. carriers “due to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity.”

In other security notices for non-U.S. air carriers, the agency warned them away from Venezuelan airspace.

It cautioned British operators against “potential risk from anti-aircraft weaponry and heightened military activity” if flying within 100 miles (160 km) of Venezuelan airspace.

The FAA declined further comment.
Non-U.S. airlines also cancel flights

Several European and South American airlines also canceled flights.

The curbs would be lifted “when appropriate,” Duffy had said in a post on X.

American military activity near Venezuela led to a near mid-air crash in November between a JetBlue airliner and a U.S. aerial refueling tanker, media said.

Several carriers waived change fees and fare differences for customers affected by the closures if they postponed travel.

Saturday’s U.S. military operation captured Venezuela’s long-serving President Nicolas Maduro, President Donald Trump said, promising to put the country under American control for now, by deploying U.S. forces if necessary.

Air Canada said its Caribbean and South American operations were normal, under guidance from Transport Canada, and it was monitoring the situation, adding, “We will update as required if the situation changes.”

Commercial air traffic over Venezuelan airspace appeared to stop after Saturday’s attack, records on tracker FlightRadar24 showed.

Reporting by Dan Catchpole in Seattle, David Shepardson in Washington, Preetika Parashuraman, Gnaneshwar Rajan and Bipasha Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese, Rod Nickel and Clarence Fernandez.

#MOSCOW, January 3. The #US military operation against Venezuela could trigger a short-term rise in oil prices to $70-80 per barrel, editor-in-chief of InfoTEK Alexander Frolov told #TASS.

The price of March Brent crude futures stood at $60.8 per barrel at the close of trading on January 1 on London’s ICE exchange.

"The oil market may react sharply in the immediate term, with prices surging. However, a pullback can be expected just as quickly, since in real terms Venezuelan production has a negligible impact on global supply," he said.

"If global agencies suddenly start saying that the global oil market will stabilize specifically without Venezuela and that the surplus of supply predicted by international agencies will not materialize, then prices could return to the $70-80 per barrel range. That effect, however, would be driven exclusively by verbal interventions," the expert added.

Frolov explained that Venezuela only nominally possesses the world’s largest oil reserves, as this indicator does not translate into actual production volumes due to high production costs and sanctions pressure.

According to the expert, sanctions have affected about 0.5 mln barrels per day of output, while persistently high costs over more than a decade of crises have resulted in losses exceeding 1 mln barrels per day.

On January 3, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto said that the United States had attacked civilian and military facilities in Caracas, describing Washington’s actions as military aggression. A state of emergency has been imposed in Venezuela. US President Donald Trump confirmed that the United States had carried out large-scale strikes on Venezuela. According to him, the country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, along with his wife, was captured and taken out of the country.

US releases new photos of #Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in custody.

BREAKING : Kim Jong-un WARNS the United States amid the #Venezuela crisis, calling Nicolás Maduro his “friend” and demanding his IMMEDIATE RELEASE, saying:
“Release my friend or this oppression will lead to a WORLD WAR.”

Marco Rubio told the New York Times that he will wait to see if the current Venezuelan government hands over the oil.

If it refuses, new attacks on Venezuela will follow.

#CARACAS, Venezuela — The U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and flew him out of the country in a stunning military operation early Saturday that plucked a sitting leader from office — the culmination of months of escalating Trump administration pressure on the oil-rich South American nation.

Maduro and his wife, taken overnight from their home on a military base, were aboard a U.S. warship on their way to New York, where they were to face criminal charges.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. planned to run Venezuela until a transition of power can take place, and he claimed the American presence was already in place.

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a news conference where he boasted that “no nation in the world could achieve what America achieved.”

The legal authority for the attack, which echoed the 1990 U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, was not immediately clear. The U.S. government does not recognize Maduro, who last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.

Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges, but the Justice Department released a new indictment Saturday of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, accusing them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” Trump said the couple were aboard the U.S. warship Iwo Jima and headed to New York.

Trump, who was set to speak Saturday morning, posted on his Truth Social account a photo of Maduro blindfolded and in a sweatsuit aboard the ship.

Early morning attack

Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital. Maduro’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an “imperialist attack” and urging citizens to take to the streets.

The attack lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what they’d seen and heard. Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, said Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, without giving a number. Trump said some U.S. forces were injured in Venezuela but he believed none were killed.

Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.

Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.

Venezuelan ruling party leader Nahum Fernández told The Associated Press that Maduro and Flores were at their home within the Ft. Tiuna military installation when they were captured.

“That’s where they bombed,” he said. “And, there, they carried out what we could call a kidnapping of the president and the first lady of the country.”

Under Venezuelan law, Rodríguez would take over from Maduro. There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike, demanding proof of life for Maduro and his wife.

The strike followed a months-long Trump administration pressure campaign on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.

As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed at least 115, according to the Trump administration. Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as a necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S.

Maduro has decried the U.S. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.
Some streets in Caracas fill up

Venezuela’s ruling party has held power since 1999, when Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez took office, promising to uplift poor people and later to implement a self-described socialist revolution.

Maduro took over when Chávez died in 2013. His 2018 reelection was widely considered a sham because the main opposition parties were banned from participating. During the 2024 election, ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner hours after polls closed, but the opposition gathered overwhelming evidence that he lost by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

In a demonstration of how polarizing a figure Maduro is, people variously took to the streets to deplore his capture and celebrate it.

At a protest in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas Mayor Carmen Meléndez joined a crowd demanding Maduro’s return.

“Maduro, hold on, the people are rising up!” the crowd chanted. “We are here Nicolás Maduro. If you can hear us, we are here!”

Earlier, armed people and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party.

In other parts of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack, as residents absorbed events. Some areas remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.

“How do I feel? Scared, like everyone,” said Caracas resident Noris Prada, who sat on an empty avenue looking down at his phone. “Venezuelans woke up scared, many families couldn’t sleep.”

In the Chilean capital of Santiago, people waved Venezuelan flags and banging pots and pans as vehicles passed by honking at them.

In Doral, Florida, home to the largest Venezuelan community in the U.S, people wrapped themselves in Venezuelan flags, ate fried snacks and cheered as music played. At one point, the crowd chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
Questions of legality

The Armed Services committees in both houses of Congress, which have jurisdiction over military matters, have not been notified by the administration of any actions, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised deep reservations and flat-out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling near the Venezuelan coast and Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.

U.S. strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country

#Japan says Trump has invited its leader to the US. It comes as ties with China are strained.

The White House is yet to confirm the call and the invitation. It comes as ties between Japan and China have been strained, ramping up tensions in the region. The U.S., a close ally of Japan, is seeking to strengthen its ties with Tokyo but also stabilize its relationship with Beijing ahead of a likely trip by Trump to China in April.

Beijing staged two-day military exercises in the waters off Taiwan this week. Takaichi, Japan’s first female prime minister, infuriated China late last year when she said Chinese military action against Taiwan could be grounds for a Japanese military response, breaking away from former Japanese leaders’ strategic ambiguity on the highly sensitive matter.

In a statement Friday, the Japanese foreign ministry said Takaichi and Trump agreed to coordinate for the visit to happen this spring. Kyodo News, Japan’s news agency, suggested that Takaichi’s trip could coincide with the annual cherry blossom festival in Washington.

The foreign ministry said the two leaders affirmed that they would “carve out a new chapter in the history of the Japan-U.S. alliance” in a year when the U.S. celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding and that they would “further deepen the friendly relations” between the two nations, including economic and security cooperation.

Takaichi and Trump also agreed on their commitment to promoting cooperation among like-minded partners, including the Japan-U.S.-South Korea partnership, and to a free and open Indo-Pacific, the foreign ministry statement said.

The two exchanged views “mainly on the Indo-Pacific region,” the ministry said, but it did not provide details, including whether the two discussed recent actions by Beijing in the region.