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President Donald Trump is planning a dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman reported on Thursday."Invitations have been going out for a Nov. 18 dinner PRESIDENT TRUMP is throwing for Saudi Crown Prince MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN in D.C.," Sherman posted on X. "Not a state dinner because he's not officially the head of state. But a formal dinner with a lot of pomp. Some members of Congress, members of admin and biz leaders all invited."Trump has long sought to cultivate a strong relationship with the Saudi crown prince, who has postured himself as a moderate reformer of his country but has been accused by human rights observers of suppressing dissent and consolidating absolute power.The issue came to a head during Trump's first term, when Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident critic of the regime, was reportedly murdered on the Saudi prince's orders at an embassy in Turkey.Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward has alleged in his writings that Trump bragged about helping the Saudi royals cover up this killing.

For decades, Washington has sold the world a deadly lie: that “regime change” brings freedom, that US bombs and blockades can somehow deliver democracy. But every country that has lived through this euphemism knows the truth — it instead brings death, dismemberment, and despair. Now that the same playbook is being dusted off for Venezuela, the parallels with Iraq and other US interventions are an ominous warning of what could follow.As a US armada gathers off Venezuela, a US special operations aviation unit aboard one of the warships has been flying helicopter patrols along the coast. This is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) — the “Nightstalkers” — the same unit that, in US-occupied Iraq, worked with the Wolf Brigade, the most feared Interior Ministry death squad.Western media portray the 160th SOAR as an elite helicopter force for covert missions. But in 2005, an officer in the regiment blogged about joint operations with the Wolf Brigade as they swept Baghdad, detaining civilians. On Nov. 10, 2005, he described a “battalion-sized joint operation” in southern Baghdad and boasted, “As we passed vehicle after vehicle full of blindfolded detainees, my face stretched into a long wolfish smile.”Many people seized by the Wolf Brigade and other US-trained Special Police Commandos were never seen again; others turned up in mass graves or morgues, often far from where they’d been taken. Bodies of people detained in Baghdad were found in mass graves near Badra, 70 miles away — but that was well within the combat range of the Nightstalkers’ MH-47 Chinook helicopters.This was how the Bush-Cheney administration responded to Iraqi resistance to an illegal invasion: catastrophic assaults on Fallujah and Najaf, followed by the training and unleashing of death squads to terrorize civilians and ethnically cleanse Baghdad. The United Nations reported over 34,000 civilians killed in 2006 alone, and epidemiological studies estimate roughly 1 million Iraqis died overall.Iraq has never fully recovered — and the US never reaped the spoils it sought. The exiles Washington installed to rule Iraq stole at least $150 billion from its oil revenues, but the Iraqi parliament rejected US-backed efforts to grant shares of the oil industry to Western companies. Today, Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, India, the UAE, and Turkey — not the United States.The neocon dream of “regime change” has a long, bloody history, its methods ranging from coups to full-scale invasions. But “regime change” is a euphemism: the word “change” implies improvement. A more honest term would be “government removal” — or simply the destruction of a country or society.A coup usually involves less immediate violence than a full-scale invasion, but they pose the same question: Who or what replaces the ousted government? Time after time, US-backed coups and invasions have installed rulers who enrich themselves through embezzlement, corruption, or drug trafficking — while making life worse for ordinary people.These so-called “military solutions” rarely resolve problems, real or imaginary, as their proponents promise. They more often leave countries plagued by decades of division, instability, and suffering.Kosovo was carved out of Serbia by an illegal US-led war in 1999, but it is still not recognized by many nations and remains one of the poorest countries in Europe. The main US ally in the war, Hashim Thaçi, now sits in a cell at the Hague, charged with horrific crimes committed under cover of NATO’s bombing.In Afghanistan, after 20 years of bloody war and occupation, the United States was eventually defeated by the Taliban — the very force it had invaded the country to remove.In Haiti, the CIA and US Marines toppled the popular democratic government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, plunging the country into an ongoing crisis of corruption, gang rule, and despair that continues to this day.In 2006, the US militarily supported an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to install a new government — an intervention that gave rise to Al Shabab, an Islamic resistance group that still controls large swaths of the country. US AFRICOM has conducted 89 airstrikes in Al Shabab-held territory in 2025 alone.In Honduras, the military removed its president, Mel Zelaya, in a coup in 2009, and the US supported an election to replace him. The US-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez turned Honduras into a narco-state, fueling mass emigration — until Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife, was elected to lead a new progressive government in 2021.Libya, a country with vast oil wealth, has never recovered from the US and allied invasion in 2011, which led to years of militia rule, the return of slave markets, the destabilizing of neighboring countries, and a 45 percent reduction in oil exports.Also in 2011, the US and its allies escalated a protest movement in Syria into an armed rebellion and civil war. That spawned ISIS, which in turn led to the US-led massacres that destroyed Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria in 2017. Turkish-backed, al-Qaeda-linked rebels finally seized the capital in 2024 and formed a transitional government, but Israel, Turkey, and the US still militarily occupy other parts of the country.The US-backed overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government in 2014 brought in a pro-Western leadership that only half the population recognized as a legitimate government. That drove Crimea and Donbas to secede and put Ukraine on a collision course with Russia, setting the stage for the Russian invasion in 2022 and the wider, still-escalating conflict between NATO and Russia.In 2015, when the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement assumed power in Yemen after the resignation of a US-backed transitional government, the US joined a Saudi-led air war and blockade that caused a humanitarian crisis and killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis — yet did not defeat the Houthis.That brings us to Venezuela. Ever since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, the US has been trying to overthrow the government. There was the failed 2002 coup; crippling unilateral economic sanctions; the farcical recognition of Juan Guaido as a wannabe president; and the 2020 “Bay of Piglets” mercenary fiasco.But even if “regime change” in Venezuela were achievable, it would still be illegal under the UN Charter. US presidents are not emperors, and leaders of other sovereign nations do not serve “at the emperor’s pleasure” as if Latin America were still a continent of colonial outposts.In Venezuela today, Trump’s opening shots — attacks on small civilian boats in the Caribbean — have been condemned as flagrantly illegal, even by US senators who routinely support America’s illegal wars.Yet Trump still claims to be “ending the era of endless wars.” His most loyal supporters insist he means it — and that he was sabotaged in his first term by the “deep state.” This time, he has surrounded himself with loyalists and sacked National Security Council staffers he identified as neocons or warhawks, but he has still not ended America’s wars.Alongside Trump’s piracy in the Caribbean, he is a full partner in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Iran. He has maintained the global empire of US military bases and deployments, and supercharged the US war machine with a trillion-dollar war chest — draining desperately needed resources out of a looted domestic economy.Trump’s appointment of Marco Rubio as secretary of state and national security adviser was an incendiary choice for Latin America, given Rubio’s open hostility to Cuba and Venezuela.Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made that clear when he met Trump in Malaysia at the ASEAN conference, saying: “There will be no advances in negotiations with the United States if Marco Rubio is part of the team. He opposes our allies in Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina.” At Lula’s insistence, Rubio was excluded from talks over US investments in Brazil’s rare earth metals industry, the world’s second largest after China’s.Cuba bashing may have served Rubio well in domestic politics, but as secretary of state it renders him incapable of responsibly managing US relations with the rest of the world. Trump will have to decide whether to pursue constructive engagement with Latin America or let Rubio corner him into new conflicts with our neighbors. Rubio’s threats of sanctions against countries that welcome Cuban doctors are already alienating governments across the globe.Trump’s manufactured crisis with Venezuela exposes the deep contradictions at the heart of his foreign policy: his disastrous choice of advisers; his conflicting ambitions to be both a war leader and a peacemaker; his worship of the military; and his surrender to the same war machine that ensnares every American president.If there is one lesson from the long history of US interventions, it’s that “regime change” doesn’t bring democracy or stability. As the United States threatens Venezuela with the same arrogance that has wrecked so many other countries, this is the moment to end this cycle of imperial US violence once and for all.

Cabinet says explosion near Red Fort that killed 12 is suspected to have been perpetrated by ‘anti-national forces’India has confirmed it is treating the explosion that killed 12 people outside Delhi’s Red Fort on Monday as a “terror incident” perpetrated by “anti-national forces”.The statement by the cabinet, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, confirmed mounting speculation that a terrorist attack was behind the blast that took place during peak time in one of the capital’s busiest areas and outside one of India’s major landmarks. Continue reading...

Canadians are still boycotting travel to the United States and say there's "no way we're going back" while Donald Trump is in power. 10 months on from the start of Trump's second term and it seems Canadians are still being cautious about holidaying in the US. Both last-minute holidaymakers and planned breaks abroad see members of the public avoiding the States, as they instead head further afield for their trips. The number of Canadians returning from the US by car and plane in September dropped by a third compared to the same month last year, according to The Economic Times. Canadian holidaymakers have since shed some light on why they are avoiding the US, with some fearing ICE Agents and rising travel costs. Nathalie Morisseau says the US is currently "not attractive" as a place to holiday in, and she even considers it "scary." She added, "With my father being Haitian, there’s a certain fear around being able to go to the United States."Americans are trying to appeal to Canadians with little success. Governor Gavin Newsom launched the "California loves Canada" drive, but Senior VP of Visit California Ryan Becker says it hasn't worked. Figures show a drop of $700 million on the expected spend from Canadian visitors to California. Becker said, "That's a gut punch to the industry." Canadian services are suffering too as a result of the travel downturn. Will McAleer, executive director of the Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada, said, "Canadians are really choosing destinations other than the US to travel." The group found that just 10% of baby boomers have plans to head to the US this winter, a drop of two-thirds compared to last year. Not all Canadians are avoiding the US though, with younger residents heading to the States but not publicly profiling their trip as they once would have. Travel blogger Barry Choi explained this quieter change is because travelling to the US is still "cheaper" than holidays to other continents. Choi said, "Going to Orlando Disney is probably cheaper than going to Tokyo Disney." Weather could play a part in bringing Canadians down to the US, with Jill Wykes, editor of Snowbird Advisor, suggesting the first snowstorm of the year will be a major factor in changing Canadian travel plans. She said, "We haven't even had the first snowstorm yet. That normally makes people want to go."

By Robert Muggah, Princeton The U.S. military buildup along South America’s northern rim is, Washington insists, aimed at “narco-terrorists.” A growing chorus of analysts aren’t convinced; they suspect what the Trump administration is really after is regime change in Venezuela.Nicolás Maduro, the country’s leader since 2013, is taking no chances. In recent weeks, he responded to the Trump administration’s moves as if invasion were imminent. After a September emergency decree and martial rhetoric about a “republic in arms,” the Venezuelan president says militias and reservists are now mobilized nationwide.The leftist leader has ordered armed forces, police and militia to deploy across 284 battlefronts — a national defense posture that surges troops on sensitive borders. He has also massed 25,000 soldiers near Colombia, a likely vector for infiltration.In addition, roughly 4.5 million members of the National Bolivarian Militia, an auxiliary force created in 2005 and made up of civilian volunteers and reservists, have reportedly mobilized. Civilians are being trained by the armed forces in weapons handling and tactics sessions to knit local “people’s defense” committees into the defense architecture.This placing of Venezuela on a war footing follows months of U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean. And there is no doubt that should it come to it, the U.S. boasts a far larger and more sophisticated military than Venezuela.But as an expert on Latin American politics, I suspect that might not be enough to remove Maduro from power — or encourage opposition figures in Venezuela on Washington’s behalf. In fact, any direct attempt to do so might only lead to a slow process that risks entrenching Maduro’s position.Powerful friends Alongside nationwide domestic mobilization, the Venezuelan leader still has some pretty powerful international friends. Maduro boasts some 5,000 Russian Igla-S, man-portable anti-aircraft missiles positioned at key air-defense points. While unverified, these reports are indicative of the short-range air defense and anti-ship capabilities being supplied by nations friendly to the Maduro regime.On Oct. 28, a Russian Il-76 heavy cargo plane, operated by a sanctioned carrier tied to Russian military logistics, landed in Caracas after a multi-stop route through the Caucasus and West Africa. If not an outright sign of solidarity, this is a signal that Russia can airlift advisers, parts and munitions at will.Iran’s long, quiet hand is visible in Venezuela’s drone program. It was reportedly seeded with Mohajer-2 kits and expanded over the years into armed and surveillance platforms assembled at state plants by Tehran-trained technicians.Cuba, for its part, has for more than a decade embedded intelligence and internal security advisers across Venezuela’s military services, an underdiscussed force multiplier that helps the regime police dissent and maintain loyalty.Although Russia, Cuba and Iran may help Maduro survive, they are unlikely to save him from any determined American campaign.Cautious oppositionIf Washington is hoping that its military squeeze may encourage Venezuelans to take matters into their own hands, the domestic scene is less favorable. The opposition to Maduro is fragmented and vulnerable after being deprived, fraudulently by most accounts, victory in a 2024 vote and a subsequent year of repression.The Democratic Unitary Platform remains split between a pressure wing and a participation wing after the disputed vote. The jolt of morale handed to the opposition on Oct. 10, when the de facto 2024 opposition candidate María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize, has yet to move the needle.There is a low probability, in my opinion, that the opposition can forcibly remove Maduro without a trigger, such as a major split within the security services, sustained mass mobilization with elite defections, or a massive U.S. intervention.The regime’s domestic security architecture and control of courts, prosecutors and the electoral council make a sudden elite split unlikely. Electoral displacement is also unpromising given that the official opposition is split on tactics, faces daily repression, and Maduro has repeatedly signaled he will not accept a loss — even if he loses.Street power, backed by sustained international leverage and U.S. military threats, are arguably the opposition’s best asset.Diaspora politics are febrile. South Florida’s large Venezuelan exile community reads the naval buildup as a potential turning point and lobbies accordingly, even as U.S. immigration and travel policies cut against their interests. The opposition’s mainstream leaders still mouth the catechism that change should come by Venezuelan hands, but more are openly courting external pressure to tilt the balance.What Washington might do nextThe Trump administration has certainly shown willingness to mount pressure on Maduro and encourage his opponents. Since August, the Pentagon has surged forces, destroyers and amphibious ships into the U.S. Southern Command’s patch. Then, on Oct. 24, Washington redirected the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the Caribbean.Meanwhile, attacks against suspected drug vessels will likely continue.The campaign has already resulted in at least 13 strikes and 57 killed in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific. And President Donald Trump has been consistent in linking the targeted cartels to Venezuela’s government and Maduro directly. Should the U.S. wish to escalate further, precision strikes on Venezuelan territory are not out of the question. With an aircraft carrier nearby and F-35s staged in Puerto Rico, the Pentagon has options.Meanwhile, covert actions will accompany any overt military posturing. The White House has openly declared that the CIA has authority to operate inside Venezuela. A U.S. Homeland Security agent reportedly tried to recruit Maduro’s chief pilot to fly the president into U.S. custody, a plot that fizzled but hints at the psychological ops now in play. Venezuela, meanwhile, has condemned “military provocation” by the CIA and others.It is worth recalling past attempts to unseat Maduro, including a 2018 drone attack at a Caracas parade and a failed freelance operation in 2020 that ended with deaths and dozens captured, including two former U.S. soldiers. The U.S. has denied any connection to both incidents.In any event, such operations seldom topple strongmen – but they do seed paranoia and crackdowns as regimes chase ghosts.Possible endgamesIf Washington’s real objective is regime change, the plausible outcomes are sobering. To be sure, a quick collapse of Maduro’s government is unlikely. A short, sharp campaign that dismantles the regime’s coercive tools could trigger elite defection. Yet Cuba-hardened internal security, patronage over the generals and years of sanctions-induced siege mentality make a palace coup improbable on a timetable that suits Washington.In my view, a slow squeeze is likelier.A hybrid strategy involving maritime and air pressure, covert agitation and inducements, targeted strikes to degrade regime capacity, and political, legal and cyber warfare to isolate Caracas and split the officer corps is realistic. But that path risks entrenching the regime’s hard-liners and worsening a humanitarian crisis even as it degrades Maduro’s capacity.Analysts warn that the regime change logic, once engaged, is hard to calibrate, especially if strikes kill civilians or hit national symbols.A boomerang is always possible. Military action will very likely rally nationalist sentiment in Venezuela, fracture hemispheric consensus and drag the U.S. into a longer confrontation with messy spillovers, from uncontrolled migration to maritime security threats.It is worth recalling that approximately 7.9 million migrants and refugees have already left Venezuela, with over 6.7 million residing in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Even the successful decapitation of Maduro’s regime would not guarantee a successor able to govern the country.At least three signposts matter in determining what happens next.The first is airlift cadence: More Russian cargo flights into Caracas point to accelerated military and technical aid. A second is the expansion of U.S. targets — a strike on a military installation or a presidential bunker would cross a political Rubicon, even if framed as a counter-narcotics operation. The third is opposition mobilization. If there are credible signs of Venezuelan demonstrations, protests and action, this will shape Washington’s appetite for escalation.But even if the White House clings to its current counter-drugs and counterterrorism narrative, all evidence points to the trajectory as an incremental regime change push with less than certain outcomes.

President Donald Trump has reportedly decided to order attacks on Venezuela's military installations.Sources told the Miami Herald that the strikes could come at any moment. The Trump administration has suggested that it is opposing the Sóles drug cartel.According to the paper, the targets "could be struck by air in a matter of days or even hours" in an effort to destroy the cartel hierarchy.Trump has been clear that he wants Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro out of power. Earlier this month, the U.S. president reportedly ordered covert CIA operations in Venezuela. The Herald's sources "declined to say" if Maduro was a target.On Friday, Trump denied that he had decided on strikes inside the country. The president's remarks came as the FAA issued flight restrictions over Ceiba, Puerto Rico, a potential refueling site for U.S. military airstrikes.

President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will resume testing its nuclear weapons, stating that the move is necessary because America's adversaries have done so.While the U.S. has the top military equipment in the world, spending several times more than other countries, Trump wants the U.S. to start blowing things up again. The problem, however, is that the government shutdown means the people who deal specifically with nuclear issues are furloughed. Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday, Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the Eurasia Group, said that the tit-for-tat between Trump and Putin can't start right away. "Well, they can't start nuclear testing now because the officials that would be in charge of that have mostly been furloughed," said Bremmer. "So, you have to get the government started. I guess that's an irony."He noted that it appears to be a direct response from Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats to begin nuclear testing. Trump withdrew the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia in August 2019.Bremmer noted that it was revealed that Russia had a successful test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile, "which had the ability to hit the United States easily. And a torpedo, but that was not a nuclear test. It appears the president was confused about that and responded by saying, 'Yeah, we're gonna start doing nuclear testing.'"The U.S. joined the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, and Bremmer thinks if the U.S. began testing again, then the Russians and Chinese would quickly follow.

When President Donald Trump was in China, he left Xi Jinping with very little. But one reporter noticed it was similar to what Trump got with Russian President Vladimir Putin."I mean, look, it's the old diplomatic strategy, right? Take what you get, declare victory, and go home," said New York Times reporter Peter Baker, speaking to MSNBC's Katy Tur. "Whether it is a victory or not, beyond being able to say you've got one is the bigger question." At this point, however, Baker said that Trump's wins look "modest." "I was struck when the president said that he gave this a 12 on a scale of 10 for being a great meeting, and that they made a lot of progress and 'We're very close on some important things,'" Baker quoted. "That's almost word-for-word the things he said when he met in Alaska with Vladimir Putin. I was there in the room for that, he said. It was a 10 out of 10, not 12, but it was a 10 out of 10. 'And they made a lot of progress. And we're very close on some really important things.'"Trump visited Alaska to meet with Putin and lobby for an end to the war in Ukraine."And of course, we all know what happened after Alaska, which is nothing," said Baker. "So, you know, you've got to be careful about overevaluating how much this will be worth. If it means, though, that there is sort of a, kind of a truce in a way, that there is a less hostile relationship for them now."The exchanges, he said, are less hostile and less volatile, and that's the only real progress.