The Guardian

Experts believe decision is designed to pressure Venezuela’s leader into stepping down with threat of military force
Is US preparing to attack Venezuela and how has Maduro regime responded?
The US has said it will designate a putative Venezuelan drug cartel allegedly led by Nicolás Maduro as a foreign terrorist organization, as the Trump administration sent more mixed messages over its crusade against Venezuela’s authoritarian leader.
The move to target the already proscribed group, the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), was announced by Marco Rubio on Sunday. “Headed by the illegitimate Nicolás Maduro, the group has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence conducted by and with other designated FTOs as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe,” the US secretary of state tweeted, generating excitement among hardline adversaries of Maduro who interpreted the announcement as proof Washington was preparin..

Donald Trump’s remarks on resuming nuclear testing have highlighted the risks. Proliferation must not be considered inevitable
When Eisaku Satō, a former prime minister of Japan, received the Nobel peace prize in 1974 after committing his country to not making nuclear bombs, owning them or allowing them on its territory, he assured the audience: “I have no doubt that this policy will be pursued by all future governments.”
Yet last week, Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s new prime minister, declined to say whether the country that understands the cost of nuclear war better than any other would stand by its commitment – reflecting the bleak broader outlook. Eighty years after the US dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima, incinerating tens of thousands of people, and almost 40 after Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan seriously discussed nuclear abolition in Reykjavik, the spectre looms once more. Last month, Donald Trump ordered the US military to match other countries’ nuclear weapons testing.
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Iran’s foreign minister says it has had requests to reopen negotiations, which collapsed after nuclear site bombings
Tehran is willing to restart nuclear talks with Washington as long as it is treated with “dignity and respect”, Iran’s foreign minister has told the Guardian.
Abbas Araghchi said only diplomacy worked, and disclosed fresh requests had come from intermediaries to reopen negotiations with the Trump administration. He said Iran did not have any undeclared nuclear sites, and Tehran could not yet allow the UN nuclear inspectorate to visit bombed nuclear sites for security reasons.
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These widely condemned strikes are just the latest sign of Trump’s imperialist revival – and the collapsing of the rules-based world order
The UK’s reported decision to restrict intelligence-sharing with the Pentagon on suspected drug-traffickers’ boats in the Caribbean is a modest yet symbolic act of resistance to Donald Trump’s imperialist revival. Britain is said to have objected to repeated, lethal US airstrikes on alleged smugglers off Venezuela’s coast – which have been widely condemned as illegal extrajudicial killings amounting to murder.
The strikes appear to foreshadow direct US attacks on Venezuela itself. Trump makes no secret of his wish to topple Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian, ostensibly leftist regime. Most Venezuelans support this aim, but not the means. Regime change forcibly imposed by a foreign power contravenes international law, unless it is authorised by the UN or undertaken in self-defence as a last resort. Legal or not, it never ends well.
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Strike comes as navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier arrives in Caribbean Sea and president says US may open talks with Venezuelan leader
The United States conducted another attack on an alleged drug trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific on Saturday, killing three people aboard, the Pentagon said on Sunday.
“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics,” the US Southern Command announced in a post on social media.
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London and Moscow’s rivalry stretches back to the imperial era, but the Ukraine war has brought relations to a new low
In recent years, Britain has become the villain of choice in Moscow’s eyes. It has been accused of plotting drone strikes on Russian airfields, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, directing “terrorist” raids inside Russia, and even abetting last year’s gruesome Islamic State concert attack in Moscow.
This week, a new charge was added to the pile: Russian authorities claimed that British intelligence had tried and failed to lure Russian pilots into defecting to the west.
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Embattled Hungarian leader says he won an indefinite reprieve from sanctions on oil and gas from Russia, but the US has since disputed this
As Viktor Orbán would tell it, he had the perfect meeting with Donald Trump.
After visiting the White House last week, the embattled Hungarian prime minister quickly declared victory, saying he had secured an indefinite exemption from US sanctions on oil and gas imported from Russia. The deal would shield Hungarians from skyrocketing energy prices ahead of parliamentary elections next year and potentially boost Orbán’s chances of extending his 15-year rule.
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Exclusive: Almost all Palestinians have been displaced to ‘red zone’ where no reconstruction is planned
The US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a “red zone” to be left in ruins.
Foreign forces will initially deploy alongside Israeli soldiers in the east of Gaza, leaving the devastated strip divided by the current Israeli-controlled “yellow line”, according to US military planning documents seen by the Guardian and sources briefed on American plans.
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German far-right party urges Berlin and other European nations to also designate ‘antifa’ groups as terrorist organisations
Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party has welcomed the US government’s decision to classify a prominent German anti-fascist group and three other European networks as terrorist organisations, calling on Berlin and other European governments to follow the example.
But historians of anti-fascism warned that at a time when far-right groups were making electoral gains across the continent, the move set a dangerous precedent that could prepare the ground for a broader crackdown on leftwing activism.
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Suspension of intelligence cooperation in Caribbean is unusual move and there is potential for political fallout
Explainer: is US preparing to attack Venezuela?
It is an intelligence relationship that predates even the Five Eyes: the UKUSA alliance that began, naturally enough, in secret in 1946. But this week the strain of trying to be the closest security ally to a freewheeling White House has begun to show.
Britain, it emerged, had quietly suspended intelligence cooperation with the US in the Caribbean because London does not consider the deadly US military campaign against ships accused of drug trafficking to be in line with international law.
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