SCMP World·Saturday, January 3, 2026

SCMP World - Saturday, January 3, 2026

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

Trump says US will ‘run Venezuela’, keep oil flowing to China after Maduro capture

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States would maintain direct control of Venezuela to prevent “somebody else” taking it over after a military operation that captured President Nicolas Maduro, pledging to keep oil flowing to China even as Washington signalled it would manage the transition itself. Trump’s remarks came hours after overnight air and ground strikes hit Venezuela, with explosions reported in Caracas and other states, prompting local authorities to declare a.

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Trump ‘not thrilled’ with Putin, says too many people dying in Ukraine war

US President Donald Trump expressed fresh frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, bristling at the Kremlin’s continuing military operations even as the US leader seeks to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. “I’m not thrilled with Putin, he’s killing too many people,” Trump said on Saturday during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump spoke hours after a brazen US strike that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, who is now en route to the US to.

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Members of Iranian diaspora in UK rally in London to support protesters in Iran

Members of the Iranian diaspora rallied in London on Saturday in support of protesters in Iran, where demonstrations have spread to more than two dozen cities over the last week. Around 100 pro-democracy demonstrators gathered outside Downing Street for the rally organised by the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women in the UK, waving Iranian flags, chanting slogans and listening to speeches by speakers. A separate protest of a similar size was held nearby in support of the deposed shah of Iran,...

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Cable fire cuts power to tens of thousands of Berlin homes and businesses

Tens of thousands of homes in Berlin will be without electricity until Thursday as authorities struggle to repair power cables seriously damaged in a suspected arson attack, officials said. Some may also be without heating as the outage has affected local systems, at a time when the German capital is blanketed in snow and temperatures are hovering around freezing. Emergency services were alerted early Saturday that several high-voltage cables on a bridge near a power plant had gone up in...

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Managers of Swiss bar face negligence probe after fatal New Year’s Eve fire that killed 40

Swiss authorities have opened an investigation into the managers of the bar where a fire at a New Year’s Eve party left 40 people dead, police said on Saturday. The two are suspected of involuntary homicide, involuntary bodily harm and involuntarily causing a fire, the Valais region’s chief prosecutor, Beatrice Pilloud, told reporters. She said the investigation was opened on Friday night and that it would help “explore all the leads.” The announcement of the investigation did not name the...

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US interventions in Latin America: a history of coups and conflicts

The United States, which on Saturday attacked Venezuela and is said to have abducted its president, has a long history of military interventions and support for dictatorships in Latin America. On multiple occasions the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro – who Donald Trump says is now in US hands – accused Washington of backing coup attempts. Here are the main US interventions in Latin America since the Cold War. 1954: Guatemala On June 27, 1954, colonel Jacobo

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Self-proclaimed ‘peace President’ Trump bombs Venezuela, strikes Nigeria, warns Iran

Donald Trump returned to office vowing to be the peace president. Nearly a year later, he is embracing war on multiple fronts. Trump on Saturday ordered large-scale military strikes in Venezuela and announced that leftist leader Nicolas Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country. The raid to kick off the new year comes after the US military on Christmas Day hit Nigeria, in what Trump said was an operation targeting jihadists who had attacked Christians. And hours before the attack in.

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Iran’s Khamenei demands rioters ‘be put in their place’ as protests grow amid Trump warning

Iran’s supreme leader insisted on Saturday that “rioters must be put in their place” after a week of protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic, likely giving security forces a green light to aggressively put down the demonstrations. The first comments by 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei come as violence surrounding the demonstrations sparked by Iran’s ailing economy has killed at least 10 people. The protests show no sign of stopping and follow US President Donald Trump warning Iran on...

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Elon Musk’s Grok AI faces scrutiny over complaints it undressed minors in photos

Elon Musk’s AI platform, Grok, announced on Friday it is scrambling to fix safety flaws after users successfully used the tool to turn photographs of children and women into erotic images. “We’ve identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them,” Grok stated in a post on X, emphasising that “CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) is illegal and prohibited.” The controversy stems from an “edit image” button rolled out in late December. The feature allows users to modify any image on the..

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China ‘deeply shocked’ as US attacks Venezuela, captures Nicolas Maduro

US military strikes hit Venezuela’s capital before dawn on Saturday, shaking Caracas as US President Donald Trump reported that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife were captured and taken out of the country by US forces. The attack followed months of US sabre rattling and Chinese warnings over growing US military and economic pressure on its oil-producing ally. It also came hours after Maduro met China’s special representative on Latin American affairs, Qiu Xiaoqi, in Caracas. “This...

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