Responding to the seizure of Bella 1/Marinera, the Russian transport ministry has accused the US of breaking the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, saying “no state has the right to use force against ships properly registered in the jurisdictions of other states.” The tanker had received a temporary permit to sail under the Russian flag on 24 December, it said in a statement.
Donald Trump has renewed his calls for the US to take control of Greenland. It comes after the removal of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on Saturday. We would like to hear what people in the United States think about Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and his latest threat to take control of Greenland. We’re particularly interested to hear from people who voted for or previously supported the Trump administration. What is your reaction to his territorial ambitions? If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.
Every morning at 7am, women gather outside clothing factories in Maseru, the capital of the southern African mountain kingdom of Lesotho, hoping to be offered work. However, since Donald Trump imposed swingeing global tariffs in April 2025, those opportunities have been fewer and farther between. Moleboheng Matsepe lost her full-time job sewing sports leggings for the California brand Fabletics in 2023. She was initially able to pick up three-month contracts, but has not had any work since September. “The pressure is too much … We can’t even sleep at night,” said the 48-year-old, who supports five family members and now makes as little as 50 maloti (£2.23) a week doing occasional laundry jobs. Lesotho’s garment industry employed 50,000 people at its peak in 2004, nurtured by the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which was passed in 2000 and offered tariff-free access to the US market for thousands of African goods. Agoa, which needs to be renewed by the US Congress, expired at the end of September amid the US government shutdown. According to the trade ministry, there are about 36,000 textile workers – mostly women – in the country, which is entirely landlocked by South Africa and has a population of 2.3 million. A third of those workers make clothes for the US, including jeans for Levi’s and Gap. Wages are as low as 2,582 maloti (£115) a month. However, the jobs are still highly prized in a country where unemployment was 30% in 2024, according to official data. Matsepe’s face lit up when asked if she had enjoyed her Fabletics job. “Everything that I wanted I would be able to do with the money that I got there. Also, when I worked there it was very nice. There was no harassment. It was very friendly.” Last April, Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs, based on the difference between what a country exported to and imported from the US. In 2024, Lesotho sold $237m of goods to the US and imported $2.8m. Had the formula been implemented, Lesotho’s exports would have incurred a 50% tariff. Lesotho, which Trump claimed was a country no one had ever heard of, was being treated like a “pariah state”, said its trade minister, Mokhethi Shelile. The tariff was eventually reduced to 15%, which has still chilled Lesotho’s economy. In June, the country’s central bank revised down its economic growth forecasts for 2025 and 2026 by 1 percentage point each, to 1.1% and 0.9% respectively. A government survey in August, to which 12 out of 15 clothing companies exporting to the US responded, reported 400 lay-offs. Five companies were operating their factories at 5-30% capacity and three had stopped operating altogether. At Ever Successful Textiles, hundreds of sewing machines churned out tottering piles of black Reebok sports tops for the US and pastel-coloured children’s leggings for South African retailers. However, only 80% of 470 machines were operational and the company had 550 staff compared with 650 in 2024, said its HR manager, Malefetsane Phahla. Lesotho is exporting more to South Africa, but for much less money. Order forms showed Ever Successful Textiles receiving $5 (£3.71) per piece for a US order, compared with 5 rand (£0.23) for a South African one. Shelile said: “We are busy looking at diversifying or moving more and more to the South African market without reducing what we are sending to the US.” He noted Lesotho still needed US dollars to import electricity, buy heavy machinery and maintain the loti currency’s peg to the South African rand. On 10 December, the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives’ ways and means committee voted for a three-year extension to Agoa. Trump’s administration has said it only supports a year-long extension. Shelile said he was hopeful the three-year Agoa renewal would be passed by both houses of Congress by the end of January and then signed by Trump, so that higher future tariffs could be avoided. However, the 15% “reciprocal” tariff would still apply. Shelile said that needed to be cut to 10%, the level of Eswatini, Ethiopia and Kenya, for Lesotho to remain competitive. Meanwhile, every day women continue to wait outside factory gates, hoping for a job. Mapuseletso Makhake said she was struggling to pay for sanitary towels and school fees for her 15-year-old daughter, as well as providing for her 19-year-old son and sick, elderly father in her home village. The 48-year-old had not worked since a two-month contract packing Reebok clothing in late 2024. As she spoke about the difficulties she had faced since losing her husband in the late 2000s, tears ran down her face. “My heart breaks every time, because I don’t like the life I am living … I wish I had still had my husband here to take the burden with me.”
MPs will have a debate and vote before any UK troops are deployed on peacekeeping duties in Ukraine, Keir Starmer has announced at prime minister’s questions. Speaking after Britain and France said they would be willing to send troops if there was a peace deal, following discussions at a wider summit in Paris, Starmer was pressed by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, as to why he was not making a full Commons statement. In response, Starmer said the debate and vote would happen in the event troops were being deployed, at which point there would be details about how many would be sent. “Yesterday, I stood side by side with our European and American allies and President Zelenskyy at the coalition of the willing meeting in Paris,” Starmer said in introductory remarks. “We made real progress on security guarantees, which are vital for securing a just and lasting peace. Along with President Macron and President Zelenskyy, we agreed a declaration of intent on the deployment of forces in the event of a peace deal. “We will set out the details in a statement at the earliest opportunity. I will keep the house updated as the situation develops and were troops to be deployed under the declaration signed, I would put that matter to the house for a vote.” In response, Badenoch said she welcomed Starmer’s efforts on Ukraine, and a joint European statement about US threats to seize Greenland, but said it was “astonishing that the prime minister is not making a full statement to parliament today”. She added: “No prime minister, Labour or Conservative, has failed to make a statement to the house in person after committing to the deployment of British troops. His comments about making a statement in due course, quite frankly, are not good enough.” In reply, Starmer said a statement was not needed because the decision over troops was a political declaration that “sits under” existing military plans drawn up months earlier. Deployment of troops, which would “conduct deterrent operations and to construct and protect military hubs”, would happen only after a ceasefire, he said. Starmer added: “The number will be determined in accordance with our military plans, which we are drawing up and looking to other members to support. So the number I will put before the house before we were to deploy. “But I’ll do more than that. If we went as far as a legal instrument to deploy, which would be necessary, I would then have a debate in this house so all members could know exactly what we’re doing, make their points of view, and then we would have a vote in this house on the issue, which is the proper procedure in a situation such as this.” This appeared to only partly satisfy the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, who said he would like an “early statement”. In other questions, Badenoch called the fact that Starmer had still not spoken to Donald Trump four days after the US military intervention in Venezuela “concerning”, and urged the prime minister to call a meeting of Nato leaders over Greenland. Starmer responded by noting that when he attended the main Nato summit in June, Badenoch had criticised him for missing PMQs to attend it.
Budgeting for Laura, a single mother of four, often means deciding between buying enough food or paying her electricity bill on time. “Some weeks we’re good, some weeks we’re down and I have to go into the community and ask for vouchers,” she says. The down weeks have been happening more since the pandemic. “The cost of living has gone up dramatically,” she says. “It’s crazy, and it’s getting crazier … it’s continuous every year. Everything is going up and up and up.” Research from The Smith Family released on Thursday found nine in 10 families are worried about affording back-to-school essentials as inflation continues to bite. The annual survey interviewed more than 1,100 lower-income parents and carers whose children are supported by The Smith Family. It was the third consecutive year more than 80% of families surveyed said they couldn’t afford school items, echoing Curtin University’s child poverty report, released late last year, which found an additional 102,000 children fell into poverty during and after the Covid period between 2020 and 2023. Based on population change and the impact of rising rental costs, it projected the national child poverty rate had increased from 15% in 2023 to 15.6% in 2025. “Should this trend continue, we risk seeing over one million children living in poverty in Australia in the next year or so,” the report found. The Smith Family’s CEO, Doug Taylor, says the one in six children in Australia now growing up in poverty risk a detrimental flow-on effect for their education. “Research tells us that by Year 9 a student who experiences disadvantage can be four to five years behind their peers in literacy and numeracy,” he says. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Taylor adds that it’s “incredibly significant” that The Smith Family’s survey results haven’t improved year-on-year and the trend has shown no sign of abating. “For low income families, they feel those cost of living impacts most adversely,” he says. “Once again, at the start of the school year, families are facing those real pressures financially, but it’s also about the distress and the psychological impacts of facing those pressures. “The burden for a parent or carer to start the school year feeling the pressure of having to cut corners in so many areas is a pressure that no family should really face.” More than half (56%) of those surveyed thought their children would miss out on necessary digital devices because they couldn’t afford them. Four in 10 parents or carers thought their children would miss out on educational activities outside of school and feared they wouldn’t be able to afford uniforms or school shoes. The Smith Family has distributed 14,000 laptops to families in the past seven years, but 44%, or 400,000 students, still aren’t digitally included – meaning they have no internet access at home. Taylor says closing the digital divide is crucial, but so too is expanding access to out-of-school activities like tutoring and catch-up classes, which have become increasingly commonplace among middle and high income families. “We know that there’s a big gap in terms of the numbers of students that fall behind in literacy and numeracy that come from disadvantaged backgrounds,” he says. “There’s everything that you can get in the classroom, but then so much happens now outside of the classroom in terms of that extracurricular. “All those things matter. They’re not just about keeping a child busy with activities. They’re about engagement.” For Laura, uniforms and shoes are now the biggest challenge with her children “continuously growing and growing”, as well as funds for extracurricular activities like sports, music and school camps. Her kids are lucky to receive laptops and internet access from The Smith Family. “Otherwise they’d just be using the internet off my phone, which would be impossible” she says. “That just makes it so much harder for them, because all the homework and correspondence with the school is online now. They would just miss out because I can’t afford them.”
The leader of Yemen’s routed southern separatist movement, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, has decided to make a defiant last stand in Aden, his supporters say, rejecting a Saudi ultimatum to travel to Riyadh for talks and – for now – a plan to flee the southern capital. Al-Zubaidi, the president of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), has been gathering his remaining troops in Aden as rival Saudi-backed forces seek to take control of Aden. His supporters said his mood was to fight it out although he knew it was likely there would be an attempt to kill him. The UN-recognised government of national unity that supports the retention of a unified Yemen has accused him of high treason for unilaterally raising the flag of independence for southern Yemen. A former military leader turned politician, he was sacked from the government’s presidential leadership council as a result. Al-Zubaidi’s refusal to travel to Riyadh on Tuesday night, defying a demand from the Saudi defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, prompted Saudi Arabia to launch airstrikes on his remaining military camps in his stronghold in the Zubaid area of Dhale region. One of al-Zubaidi’s advisers, Amr al-Baid, told a briefing: “Al-Zubaidi is on the ground in Aden conducting his duties,” saying there would be chaos if Saudi-backed forces tried to capture the city as was being threatened. Al-Baid said: “Al-Zubaidi was told: ‘Either you come to Riyadh or we bomb you, and that is your last chance.’ That does not create a conducive atmosphere for dialogue.” Al-Zubaidi’s village is being bombed by the Saudis and so far about 14 civilians have been injured and two killed. There had also been concerns that if al-Zubaidi travelled to Riyadh, he would be arrested. A 50-strong STC delegation that did fly to Riyadh for talks had not been contactable, al-Baid said, explaining: “They arrived at 3am and observers told us that they took them to a black bus. Their phones are ringing but no one is picking up. It is very worrying.” Yemen’s deputy foreign minister, Awsan al-Aud, said: “Through its rebellion, the STC has become a banned entity. The ongoing battle will not last long. The STC has to be dismantled, or at the very least, it will have to give up arms and become a political organisation only.” Al-Zubaidi’s unilateral attempt to unfurl the flag of independence for southern Yemen started to collapse once his external backers the United Arab Emirates deserted him after it became clear that Saudi Arabia was willing to use force not just against the STC to prevent Yemen’s fragmentation, but also against UAE arms supplies reaching Yemen through the port city of Mukalla. After carefully extending his base beyond Aden over the past three years, al-Zubaidi in early December took the unilateral step of sending tens of thousands of well-equipped troops into the eastern governorates of oil-rich Hadramaut and al-Mahrah, bordering Oman. With Saudi Arabia hesitating militarily, and the UAE backing the STC, large-scale pro-independence demonstrations were held in the capital of Hadramaut. Codenamed Operation Promising Future, the campaign’s swift territorial gains – and the apparent popular support – meant that by 9 December the STC had taken control of most areas spanning the six governorates of the former southern Yemen. The turning point came when on 30 December, the royal Saudi air force carried out airstrikes on the STC-controlled Mukalla, targeting what it said was a shipment of weapons that had arrived from the UAE. Abu Dhabi denied that the shipments contained weapons, but the UN-recognised Yemeni government ordered all UAE forces to leave Yemeni territory within 24 hours, announcing a 72-hour air, land, and sea blockade, and declared a 90-day state of emergency. Saudi Arabia also assembled a large Gulf diplomatic alliance to oppose the splitting of Yemen, saying such a split would weaken the fight against the Houthis in northern Yemen. Later that day, the UAE announced it would voluntarily withdraw its remaining counter-terrorist forces from Yemen, but in reality it also removed much of the command and control structure it had been providing to the STC, hobbling the council’s operation. The withdrawal has resulted in the Saudi-backed forces regaining Hadramaut and al-Mahrah. At the weekend a previously STC-oriented Shabwah governorate returned to the STC fold, signalling the full-scale collapse of the revolt. Late last week the UAE in effect advised the STC it was on its own in future, ending more than six years of cooperation. In his letter to al-Zubaidi summoning him to visit, Prince Khaled said he wanted to “hear directly from you, ‘What happened?’ and what are the justifications for what occurred?” It adds: “You and the Prince must reconcile, meet, and engage in a serious, brotherly discussion so that he clearly understands the justifications for your military operation and your position in Hadramaut and al-Mahra, and this matter is closed. “The Prince will discuss with you the Transitional Council’s needs in full, including its forces, operational mechanisms, and communication channels. The Kingdom has assumed responsibility for this file following the UAE’s withdrawal. “The Prince will discuss with you future coordination and cooperation, both at the southern level and regarding the overall solution and the Yemeni situation. Any delay or failure to respond to the invitation to come to Riyadh, or any procrastination in doing so, will have serious consequences.” The UAE has been backing the separatist STC since its formation in 2017 partly because it was seen as a bulwark against Muslim Brotherhood and Salifist forces inside Yemen, but also because the STC was seen as a route for Abu Dhabi to control Red Sea ports. The STC under UAE influence had also shown a willingness to cooperate with Israel. Saudi Arabia, which shares a border with Yemen, opposes Yemen’s fragmentation, believing it will weaken the fight against the Houthis that control the north of Yemen. The UAE, finding itself isolated over Yemen, is now likely to review its strategy elsewhere in the region including in Sudan where it has been backing a different faction to Riyadh. Reuters and Agence France-Presse have contributed to this report
France has said it is working with allies on how to react if the US were to invade Greenland, amid mounting tension over Donald Trump’s escalating threats to take over the Arctic territory. The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said the subject would be discussed at a meeting with the German and Polish foreign ministers on Wednesday. “We want to take action, but we want to do so together with our European partners,” he told France Inter radio. Denmark has said that should the US – a fellow Nato ally – invade or seize Greenland, which is part of the Danish kingdom, it would mark the end of the western military alliance and “post-second world war security”. Trump, however, claimed on Wednesday that the US would not desert Nato in a backhanded social media post that also criticised the alliance. “We will always be there for Nato, even if they won’t be there for us,” he wrote on Truth Social. Russia and China would “have zero fear” of Nato without the US, he said. Addressing “all of those big Nato fans”, he added: “They were at 2% GDP, and most weren’t paying their bills, UNTIL I CAME ALONG.” After one of Trump’s leading aides said on Tuesday that the US may be willing to seize control of the Arctic territory by force, European leaders rallied around Denmark and Greenland with a rare rebuke to the White House, declaring that Greenland “belongs to its people”. Despite this, on Tuesday night, the White House said that Trump and his team were looking at “a range of options” to acquire Greenland, including using the US military, which it said was “always an option”. But Barrot said that in a phone call on Tuesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had told him that he had “ruled out the possibility of an invasion” of Greenland. “I myself was on the phone yesterday with US secretary of state, Marco Rubio … who confirmed that this was not the approach taken,” he said. Trump has long expressed an interest in acquiring Greenland. But in recent days, after the US military operation in Venezuela on Saturday in which troops removed the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration’s rhetoric – and, subsequently, international tensions – have ramped up to new heights, putting the survival of Nato into question. On Tuesday night, the Danish parliament held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the unprecedented situation. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the Danish foreign minister, and his Greenlandic counterpart, Vivian Motzfeldt, are seeking an urgent meeting with Rubio. “We would like to add some nuance to the conversation,” Rasmussen said on social media. “The shouting match must be replaced by a more sensible dialogue. Now.” Trump has claimed that Greenland is “full of Chinese and Russian ships” and that Denmark is incapable of defending Greenland, which the president has said is vital for US national security. But Rasmussen said after the extraordinary meeting that the US was giving a false representation of what was happening in Greenland. “The image that is being painted of Russian and Chinese ships right inside the Nuuk fjord and massive Chinese investments being made is not correct,” he said. The situation, Rasmussen said, was “based on a misreading of what is up and what is down”, adding: “We are looking after the kingdom.” Denmark’s defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, disputed US claims that the country was not doing enough to protect Greenland. “We have invested close to 100bn [Danish kroner] (£11.6bn) in security capabilities,” he said.
Hours after Nicolás Maduro was captured by US special forces in Venezuela and indicted on drugs, weapons and “narco-terrorism” charges, Donald Trump spoke extensively about his plans for something else entirely: oil. Venezuela’s oil reserves – reputedly the world’s largest – are set to be pumped by a parade of powerful US oil companies, according to the US president, most of whom have not operated in the country in decades. “The oil companies are going to go in and rebuild their system,” Trump said on Sunday, describing oil’s nationalization in Venezuela as “the greatest theft in the history” of the US. “They took our oil away from us,” he declared. US oil giants have been largely silent about Trump’s claim they will rush into Venezuela and invest billions of dollars in the process. Analysts are skeptical of the president’s vision of a significant increase in oil production in the country within 18 months. It’s far from the first time the industry has been at the center of global conflict. Though Trump is expressing dreams of a US business takeover of Venezuela’s oil, such ousting of dictators from petrostates has not historically guaranteed a boom in production, according to data. Venezuela While oil giants enjoyed a boon with Venezuelan oil in the late 1990s, by the mid-2000s, production started to fall as then Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez increased government control over the industry and drove out many foreign oil companies. The US had sanctions on Venezuelan oil from 2005 until 2022, when they were narrowly lifted to allow Chevron to resume oil production in the country, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chevron is the only US oil company operating in Venezuela. While Trump is bullish about the opportunities presented by the country’s oil, some analysts have questioned whether large oil companies will rapidly re-enter Venezuela and invest heavily in operations there should it continue to face political instability. Iraq It took several years after the US invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 for oil production in the Middle Eastern country to rebound. International oil companies restarted oil production in the country starting in 2009, when Iraq’s then prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, invited companies to purchase licenses. By 2024, Iraq was the second-highest crude oil producer in the Opec oil cartel, after Saudi Arabia. Oil production drives the country’s economy, although water shortages and ongoing political instability have caused major oil companies to start pulling back production in the country. Libya Libya is an altogether different story. Over a decade after Muammar Gaddafi, its longtime dictator, was killed in 2011 by rebel militias who had received support from the US government, oil production in the country has never recovered. It continues to heavily fluctuate, due to political turmoil. The country is now effectively ruled by two separate governments, who use oil exports – the country’s dominant source of income – as leverage in conflicts. While a ceasefire in 2020 led to a rapid rise in oil production, things still remain in flux. In late 2021 and 2022, armed militants and blockade protests led to a slight dip in production. The US Energy Information Administration notes that oil development and exploration in the country is constrained because of this ongoing volatility.