Venezuela’s first shipment of liquefied petroleum gas has left Venezuela bound for the US
The Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) Amuay oil refinery at the Paraguana Refinery Complex in Punto Fijo, Falcon State, Venezuela. (Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez announced on Sunday that the country’s first shipment of liquefied petroleum gas had been exported.
The announcement in a post on her Telegram channel on Sunday comes almost a month after President Donald Trump ordered a military operation that led to the capture of Venezuela’s former President Nicolas Maduro, who now faces federal charges in the U.S.
Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president, was sworn in as the interim president after his capture in January.
Rodriguez said the ship, the Chrysopigi Lady, had set sail from Venezuela “with the first shipment of Liquefied Petroleum Gas,” in a post, originally in Spanish.
The Singapore-flagged Chrysopigi Lady left from a port in northern Venezuela on the evening of Feb. 1 and is set to arrive in Providence, Rhode Island, according to marinetraffic.com.
“Proud to share this moment: the vessel Chrysopigi Lady has set sail from Venezuela with the first shipment of Liquefied Petroleum Gas,” Rodriguez said in the post. “We are marking this historic milestone by exporting the country’s first molecule of gas; an achievement for the well-being of the people of Venezuela.”
Rodriguez faces key tests in the weeks ahead. Since becoming the country’s de facto leader, she has struggled with her new twin responsibilities of maintaining order at home and managing diplomatic relations with the United States who conducted a military operation on her country’s soil weeks ago.
Last week, Rodriguez appeared to struggle publicly with the appropriate tone to both satisfy Washington and assert Venezuela’s independence.
Rodriguez said Venezuela has “opened a space for political dialogue,” but warned “those who seek to perpetuate harm and aggression against the people of Venezuela should stay in Washington,” in public comments during a ceremony recognizing her as Venezuela’s Commander-in-Chief in Caracas on Jan. 28.
Rodriguez also said “no one” in Venezuela surrendered during the military operation on Jan. 3. “That is why I say honor and glory to the heroes and heroines of January 3, 2026,” she said during the ceremony on Jan. 28.
About 100 people overall were killed during the U.S. military operation on Jan. 3, Venezuela’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, said on Jan. 8, according to Reuters. Out of the 100, 32 Cuban security officials were killed during the attack, the Cuban government confirmed on Jan. 4.
(NEW YORK) — Typhoon Kalmaegi was barreling on Thursday morning toward Vietnam after leaving a trail of destruction in the Philippines.
The storm was expected to make landfall later on Thursday or early on Friday, the U.S. Consulate in Vietnam said in a weather advisory.
Vietnam’s Prime Minister urged the country’s emergency response agencies and ministries to ready themselves as the country braces for the impact of the typhoon.
The Vietnamese National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said coastal areas may see waves up to 26 feet and a storm surge up to 2 feet. Winds were expected to be as strong as about 84 mph, the center said.
The country is already battling flash floods and landslides after record rainfall in late October. Those floods killed at least 35 people, officials told AFP.
Some 100,000 homes flooded and the country experienced more than 150 landslides, Vietnam’s environment ministry said, according to AFP.
The typhoon is expected to bring a heightened risk of flooding, flash floods and landslides, weather and state officials said.
“Additionally, infrastructure already weakened by previous flooding may be increasingly unreliable,” the U.S. Mission’s advisory added.
A trail of destruction in the Philippines
In the Philippines, where the typhoon made landfall on Tuesday amid heavy rains and flooding, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. approved a state of emergency declaration on Thursday.
That declaration was intended to “expedite government response efforts in areas” affected by the storm, according to a press release from the official Philippine Information Agency.
The storm killed at least 66 people, according to state-run media. The official Philippine News Agency reported that “most” of those deaths “were due to fallen debris, landslides and flooding.”
Another six Philippine Air Force personnel were killed in a helicopter crash on Tuesday while performing humanitarian assistance, officials said.
The country was already recovering from an offshore earthquake and typhoons in the last few months. The Philippine Area of Responsibility is hit an average of 20 per year, most in the world, according to the Philippines Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.
Another potential super typhoon is approaching the country now, local officials said in a news release. That storm is expected to make landfall either Friday night or Saturday morning, officials said.
(LONDON) — A month after a massacre that was reported in a war-ravaged city of Sudan shocked the world, the United Nations and others are warning that there’s nowhere near enough humanitarian aid being provided to the tens of thousands of residents who fled.
Many thousands more are believed to still be trapped inside El Fasher, the besieged capital of the Darfur region in Sudan’s west. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the powerful Sudanese paramilitary group that took over the city last month, is allegedly preventing people from leaving and stopping lifesaving supplies from coming in.
The U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan, Denise Brown, who returned from the Darfur region last week, said the amount of aid they were able to currently provide to the survivors from El Fasher wasn’t close to what is needed.
“We do not have enough food, we do not have enough of anything,” Brown told ABC News in a telephone interview last Friday. “The international community has to step up.”
Sudan has been embroiled in a brutal civil war since 2023, when fighting erupted in the capital of Khartoum between forces loyal to rival military leaders. It was the culmination of weeks of tensions between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the head of the RSF. The two men were once allies who had jointly orchestrated a military coup in 2021 that dissolved Sudan’s power-sharing government and derailed its short-lived transition to democracy, following the ousting of a long-time dictator in 2019.
Officially formed in 2013, the RSF evolved out of the notorious Janjaweed militias used by the Sudanese government to crush an armed rebellion in the Darfur region in the 2000s. Sudanese forces and the Janjaweed were accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.
Ultimately, the International Criminal Court charged Sudan’s former dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir with genocide. The reported atrocities in El Fasher are seen by experts as a continuation of that genocide.
Sudan’s civil war has since become “one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century,” according to the U.N., with tens of thousands of people killed and millions more displaced. In January, the U.S. Department of State said both sides had committed war crimes and concluded “that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan,” citing the systematic murder of civilians, sexual violence and denial of humanitarian aid for civilians caught in the conflict.
El Fasher was the last stronghold of the Sudanese army and its allied militias in the wider Darfur region, under total siege for over a year and a half before falling to the RSF in late October. At least 80,000 people are estimated to have fled El Fasher and sought refuge in a massive displacement camp in the town of Tawila, with most making the 35-mile journey on foot. The camp was already home to around 600,000 displaced people, according to humanitarian aid workers.
Many of those from El Fasher bring with them horrific accounts of atrocities allegedly carried out by the RSF, including summary executions, gang rape and killing anyone who tries to flee the city. The U.N. believes as many as 50,000 people may still be trapped in El Fasher, considered to be detained there by the RSF, according to Brown.
An analysis of satellite imagery by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab found evidence of continuing mass killings in the days after the RSF took control of El Fasher, with blood-stained sand and piles of bodies apparently visible from space. Moreover, a U.N.-backed monitor for food security declared earlier this month that famine had taken hold in El Fasher and surrounding areas.
Brown said the U.N.’s capability to respond to the crisis is limited by a yawning shortfall in funding from countries and donors.
“We are 28% funded,” she told ABC News. “So what would the international community like me to do to respond to the needs of the people who are traumatized?”
Despite having less than a third of the funding needed, Brown said: “We’re one of the best funded humanitarian responses in the world, at 28%, and there have been cuts across the board by donors. So it’s a cumulative effect of those cuts.”
The United States has long been the U.N.’s largest donor but, under President Donald Trump, has recently withdrawn from several U.N. agencies, frozen funding for others and clawed back $ 1 billion in previously approved funds for the U.N.
“Everyone is calling and asking how can we help? Well, here is how you can help,” Brown told ABC News. “Money is not the solution to what’s going on in Sudan, but money is surely going to help our humanitarian response.”
In particular, Brown said, the U.N. was currently unable to provide enough care or psychological support for women and girls in the Tawila camp who had suffered sexual violence. The U.N. has hundreds of documented cases of gang rape and other sexual violence in the Darfur region, but that is believed to be just “the tip of the iceberg,” according to Brown.
The U.N. has been trying to negotiate with the RSF to allow humanitarian access into El Fasher — so far, unsuccessfully.
The head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, traveled with Brown to Darfur last week to meet with the RSF, requesting complete access throughout Sudan for humanitarian operations and providing the U.N.’s conditions for such an agreement.
“We need safe passage. We want a small team, no presence of any armed militia,” Brown told ABC News. “We need to go to the sites which we have identified as important. We need to be able to evacuate the injured and access to detainees.”
A large flash is seen in Tel Aviv, Israel, June 13, 2025. (ABC News)
(LONDON) — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Tehran is in a “full-scale” war with the U.S., Israel and Europe, describing the country’s diplomatic situation as “complicated and difficult.”
“In my opinion, we are in a full-scale war with America, Israel, and Europe; they do not want our country to stand on its feet,” Pezeshkian said in a lengthy interview posted to the official website of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
“This war is worse than the war in Iraq with us; if one understands well, this war is much more complicated and difficult,” Pezeshkian added, referring to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
Pezeshkian said that despite sanctions and foreign pressure, Iran remains steadfast and capable of defending its national interests.
The interview was published ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S., where he will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump at the latter’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Iran is among the topics expected to be under discussion.
The meeting is expected to be on advancing the Gaza peace plan, disarming Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza and the fate of the last hostage still remaining in the Strip, a spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry said before the Israeli delegation departed on Sunday for the U.S. The spokesperson added that Netanyahu’s agenda is expected to include the “danger Iran poses” to both the Middle East and United States.
The U.S. and Israel combined to attack Iran in June during a 12-day conflict that killed some 1,100 Iranians and saw strikes against Iran’s key nuclear facilities, its air defense network and prominent military and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites around the country.
Senior military, IRGC and nuclear research personnel were among those killed. Retaliatory missile attacks by Iran killed 28 people in Israel.
In the lead up to and during the June conflict, Netanyahu repeatedly hinted that Israel may pursue a regime change strategy in Iran, seeking to topple the Khamenei-led theocracy there. “This is your opportunity to stand up,” Netanyahu said in an address to Iranians during the war.
Trump even raised the prospect of killing Khamenei in the days before the U.S. joined Israel’s campaign. “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote on social media. “He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
The months since the conflict have seen little progress on a new deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program or cap its ballistic missile arsenal — two goals long expressed by Trump.
Earlier this month, Trump said that Iran “can try” to rebuild its ballistic missile program, but “it’s going to take them a long time to come back.”
“But if they do want to come back without a deal, then we’re going to obliterate that one, too,” Trump said. “You know, we can knock out their missiles very quickly, we have great power.”
Netanyahu will meet with Trump on Monday shortly after Iran conducted a major military exercise involving ballistic missiles. Referring to recent Iranian activity, Netanyahu warned last week that “any action against Israel will be met with a very severe response.”
At home, the Iranian regime faces serious economic challenges as the country’s currency — the rial — edged lower over recent weeks, causing widespread dissatisfaction and protests.
Over the weekend, groups of shop-owners closed their businesses in two large malls in downtown Tehran protesting the rapid drop in the value of the rial.
Pezeshkian was elected to replace late President Ebrahim Raisi — who died in a helicopter crash in 2024 — with the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s presidential election history. He was widely seen as a moderate alternative to hardliners aligned with the IRGC.
