Venezuelan toddler who was kept in US after parents were deported is returned to Venezuela
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(WASHINGTON) — The Venezuelan 2-year-old who was kept in U.S. government custody after her parents were deported has been returned to Venezuela.
In a video posted to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s YouTube page, Maduro is seen greeting the toddler upon the toddler’s return.
The toddler, Maikelys Antonella Espinoza, is seen in the video being carried by Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores before being handed over to the toddler’s mother, Yorley Inciarte, who had been deported two weeks ago from the United States.
Espinoza’s return comes after Maduro and other Venezuelan government officials accused the Trump administration of kidnapping the 2-year old.
Last month, the Department of Homeland Security labeled Inciarte and her partner Maiker Espinoza Escalona as “Tren de Aragua parents,” alleging the two are members of the Venezuelan criminal gang.
Escalona was sent to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador on March 30 under Title 8 authorities. Inciarte was deported two weeks ago to Venezuela without her daughter.
“The child’s father, Maiker Espinoza-Escalona is a lieutenant of Tren De Aragua who oversees homicides, drug sales, kidnappings, extortion, sex trafficking and operates a torture house,” DHS said in a statement. “The child’s mother, Yorely Escarleth Bernal Inciarte oversees recruitment of young women for drug smuggling and prostitution.”
“Everything is false,” Inciarte told ABC News in an interview last week. “Here I am waiting for the evidence they have because if they are accusing me, it’s because they have proof of what they are saying — but here I am waiting.”
“When my partner and my daughter arrive here, the only thing I think about is staying here in my country, because the only one who supported me and fought alongside me was my country, no one else,” Inciarte said. “And I will never, ever abandon my homeland. I won’t even mention the United States, it will never come up. Because what I experienced in that country was so horrible, I don’t even want to talk about how bad it is.”
(LONDON) — Millions of people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France lost power on Monday due to an unknown grid issue, the Spanish government confirmed to ABC News.
The Spanish government said it called an emergency crisis meeting to fix the situation as soon as possible.
Authorities, meanwhile, asked people to stay at home and to avoid circulating, while emergency generators were also being put in place.
Red Eléctrica, the corporation that operates the national electricity grid in Spain, confirmed power outages across the country.
“Plans to restore the electricity supply have been activated in collaboration with companies in the sector following the zero that occurred in the peninsular system,” it wrote in a post to X. “The causes are being analyzed and all resources are being dedicated to solving it.”
A later post said power was recovered in some areas.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(GAZA) — Gaza’s entire population is experiencing critical levels of hunger amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and the third month of Israel cutting off aid to the strip, according to a report published Monday.
Gaza’s 2.1 million residents will face a “crisis” level of food insecurity — or worse — from now through the end of September, according to a new report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification partnership, whose members include the World Health Organization.
“Crisis” is the third-highest level of food insecurity, out of five, according to the IPC classification system. This is when households are either struggling to access food and are seeing cases of malnutrition or “are marginally able to meet minimum food needs but only by depleting essential livelihood assets,” according to the IPC.
Of the entire population, three-quarters of Gaza’s population are already classified at the “emergency” or “catastrophe” levels, which are the two worst stages of food insecurity, per the IPC.
The report projected that by the end of September, about 470,000 people Gaza, equivalent to about 22% of the population, will be classified as living under “catastrophe,” which is equivalent to famine levels of starvation.
In the previous IPC report, released in October 2024, 12% of the population was projected to be under classified as living under “catastrophe.”
The IPC said famine is classified when an area has 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food, 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two of every 10,000 people dying each day due to starvation or a combination of malnutrition and disease.
In a press release, the WHO said the situation in Gaza is “one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time.”
“We do not need to wait for a declaration of famine in Gaza to know that people are already starving, sick and dying, while food and medicines are minutes away across the border,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement on Monday. “Today’s report shows that without immediate access to food and essential supplies, the situation will continue to deteriorate, causing more deaths and descent into famine.”
Ingredients have started running out in Gaza, and some food relief organizations have already closed.
In late April, the United Nations’ World Food Programme said it had delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meal kitchens in Gaza, and it expected to fully run out of food in the coming days.
Additionally, the nonprofit group World Central Kitchen announced on Wednesday that it had run out of supplies and ingredients needed to cook meals or bake bread in Gaza.
“Families in Gaza are starving while the food they need is sitting at the border. We can’t get it to them because of the renewed conflict and the total ban on humanitarian aid imposed in early March,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, said in a statement. “It’s imperative that the international community acts urgently to get aid flowing into Gaza again. If we wait until after a famine is confirmed, it will already be too late for many people.”
The Israeli government said the blockade is meant to pressure Hamas to release its hostages, as well as the remains of those who have died, and to accept a new proposal to extend phase one of the ceasefire deal, which ended March 18.
The WHO said that since the blockade began, 57 children have died from malnutrition, citing figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. If the current situation persists, an estimated 70,500 children between ages 6 months and just under 5 years old will experiencing acute malnutrition by March 2026, according to the IPC report.
Pregnant and breastfeeding women are also at risk with nearly 17,000 expected to need treatment for acute malnutrition by March 2026.
Aid workers told ABC News that malnutrition makes it harder for Gazans to heal from injuries suffered during the war, and they can also be at risk of infections or skin graft failure.
An official from President Donald Trump’s administration told ABC News there is a not-yet-finalized plan to administer the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza, starting with fewer than half a dozen distribution sites set up throughout the enclave.
“Our team members inside Gaza are surviving on the cheapest staples they can find — lentils, fava beans, dry chickpeas — if anything is available at all,” Kate Phillips-Barrasso, vice president of global policy and advocacy for the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, said in a statement. “The people of Gaza are enduring one of the most harrowing humanitarian crises in recent history.”
“All barriers to food, water, and aid must be lifted now,” she said, “before even more lives are lost.”
destroyed house caused by Noto Peninsula earthquake on New Year’s Day 2025/ Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)
(HONG KONG) — Some believe she foretold the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan that killed more than 15,000 people and urban legend goes she also predicted the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, another premonition of a major disaster from manga artist Ryo Tatsuki is about to hit its alleged due date, spooking tourists in Asia and even causing some cancelled flights.
Social media is abuzz with Tatsuki’s prophecy of a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami wrecking her home country of Japan — a place prone to natural disasters but also a top destination for many in Asia — sometime between July 5 and 7.
In a 1999 Japanese comic book, also known as manga, Tatsuki wrote of a “great disaster” striking in March 2011. That same month, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake triggered a deadly tsunami, causing a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, leading to one of the biggest nuclear disasters in history.
Tatsuki updated her book, titled “The Future I Saw,” in 2021, claiming that “the real catastrophe” was due in July this year.
The predictions have irked local officials, with one local governor calling it a “serious issue” that “unscientific rumors are impacting tourism.”
Seismologists say there is no scientific basis for these predictions and, in a post on X last month, the Japanese Cabinet Office Disaster Prevention Division said that “with current scientific knowledge, it is difficult to predict an earthquake by specifying its date, time and location,” adding that “earthquakes can occur at any time.”
But with other psychics sharing warnings similar to Tatsuki’s foretelling, some travelers are getting cold feet, cancelling trips and prompting travel agencies to incentivize Japan-bound journeys by offering discounts.
Demand has plummeted so much that regional carrier Hong Kong Airlines cancelled all its flights to the southern Japanese prefectures of Kagoshima and Kumamoto in July and August.
However, statistics released by Japan’s National Tourism Organization in May showed that overall inbound tourism remains strong this year for the country.
