The US is subjecting Venezuela to the “greatest extortion” in the country’s history, Caracas’ envoy to the UN, Samuel Moncada, has said.

Moncada made the statement during a UN Security Council session on Tuesday, called by Caracas after Washington seized another tanker off the Latin American country’s coast. US President Donald Trump earlier announced a naval blockade of Venezuela, claiming it had “stolen” US energy assets and warning that it would face “the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America” unless it returns them.

The Trump administration “acts outside of international law, demanding that Venezuelans vacate our country and hand it over. This is the greatest extortion known in our history,” Moncada said.

“The masks have come off. It is not drugs, it is not security, it is not freedom. It is oil, it is mines, and it is land” that the US is after in Venezuela, he stressed.

Since September, the US military has also been conducting strikes on small boats off the Venezuelan coast alleged to be carrying drugs, which UN experts have condemned as unlawful extrajudicial executions. Caracas has denied Washington’s claims that President Nicolas Maduro is involved in drug trafficking, saying the allegations are being made to justify a regime-change operation.

Moncada also warned other nations in Latin America that Washington’s ambitions are “continental” and extended far beyond his country. “Venezuela is only the first target of a larger plan. The US government wants us to be divided so it can conquer us piece by piece,” the diplomat said.

The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, insisted that Washington will continue to use all its power to eradicate Latin American drug cartels, calling them the “single most serious threat” to the US. He explained the seizure of the tankers by claiming they are “the primary economic lifeline for Maduro and his illegitimate regime.”

Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, labeled the naval blockade of Venezuela “an act of aggression,” cautioning that the “cowboy-like conduct” by Washington could lead to “catastrophic consequences.”

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A fake video purporting to show Jeffrey Epstein attempting suicide in his prison cell has made it into the latest batch of records on the convicted sex offender released by the US Department of Justice.

Last week, the DOJ uploaded thousands of documents online under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation signed by US President Donald Trump in November, compelling the agency to publish data tied to federal criminal investigations into the disgraced financier and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

Among the recordings, there was a 12-second clip showing a gray-haired male in an orange prison jumpsuit sitting on the floor of a prison cell and apparently trying to choke himself.

The time-stamp in the video claimed that it was made at 4:29am on August 10, 2019. At 6:30am that same day, a prison guard found Epstein dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.

The clip was widely shared on social media on Monday, but turned out to be a fake which had been circulating online for at least five years.

Various media outlets traced it to footage uploaded to YouTube in October 2020. In the caption, the clip’s creator acknowledged that it was made using 3D graphics and said he was “not that great with this stuff.”

The documents published by the DOJ also included an email with the link to the clip sent by a man from Florida to federal investigators in March 2021, asking if it was authentic or not.

The US Department of Justice has since deleted the fake video from its website.

The Bureau of Prisons said in its report in 2023 that no video recording from inside Epstein’s cell on the day of his death exists due to a technical malfunction.

The convicted sex offender apparently hanged himself with his bedsheets, but skeptics continue to insist that he was murdered to cover up for the powerful individuals supposedly implicated in the case.

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Zambia views its relations with Russia as a “strategic partnership,” with cooperation already advancing in education, energy, and trade, Foreign Minister Mulambo Haimbe has said.

Speaking to RT on the sidelines of the second Russia-Africa Ministerial Conference in Cairo, Haimbe said more than 600 Zambian students are currently studying in Russia, many of them in high-demand technical fields, including nuclear energy.

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema “has said repeatedly that our bedrock is giving a future to our people through education,” the minister noted, stressing that skills development is central to the country’s long-term growth.

He welcomed Russia’s role in providing not just academic training, but also infrastructure support in sectors such as energy.

Although bilateral trade between Russia and Zambia currently totals only $39 million, Haimbe said “the potential for that to grow is significant.” He pointed to Zambia’s young population, abundant mineral wealth, and strategic location as key assets.

“Russia has got the technological know-how, they’ve got the advancement, and Zambia has got the young people, the mineral resource,” he stated. “It’s a partnership waiting to happen.” 

The minister highlighted Zambia’s central position in Southern Africa, noting that the country borders eight neighbors by land and one by water, creating access to a regional market of more than 500 million people. He expressed hope that technology transfer and trade cooperation with Russia could eventually scale across the wider African continent.

Haimbe also pointed to the long-standing historical ties between the two countries connected by more than 60 years of diplomatic relations, dating back to Zambia’s independence. “From the birth of our country […] we have had all-weather friends in Russia,” the minister said.

Addressing criticism from Western media over Africa’s engagement with Russia, Haimbe defended the continent’s right to make sovereign choices in a multipolar world.

“I don’t think that any particular region or nation or state should dictate to any other their friendships that they choose to have,” he said, adding that it’s about partnerships that “best fit our people.”

India and New Zealand have concluded a pact aimed at expanding economic ties and unlocking the full potential of trade between the two nations.

Trade between New Delhi and Wellington stood at $2.4 billion in 2024, with services alone accounting for $1.24 billion, led by travel, IT, and business services, India’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

“My friend PM Christopher Luxon and I had a very good conversation a short while ago following the conclusion of the landmark India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X on Monday.

The agreement was concluded in just nine months and “reflects a strong political will and shared ambition to deepen economic ties between our two countries,” Modi added.

Negotiations for a pact started during Luxon’s visit to India in March.

New Zealand has committed to invest $20 billion in India over the next 15 years to boost manufacturing, infrastructure, services, innovation, and employment, the statement said.

The pact also envisages new temporary employment entry visas for Indian professionals, with a quota of 5,000 at any given time and a stay of up to three years in New Zealand.

A formal agreement between the two countries is likely to be signed in three months, the Economic Times reported.

The agreement is the third free trade deal signed by India this year, after a pact with the United Kingdom in July and Oman last week.

The development also comes as India is engaged in talks with the US for a trade deal, after President Trump slapped 50% tariffs in August, half of which are punitive levies for New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil.

Earlier this month, Trump threatened to impose additional tariffs on India, accusing it of dumping rice into the US.

New Delhi is also seeking a preferential trade agreement with Mexico to mitigate a tariff hike of up to 50%, as well as with a dozen other countries or trading blocs.

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At least 20 civilians were killed and 73 others injured, including three children, in Ukrainian attacks last week, according to Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik.

Most of the victims were reported in the Kherson, Belgorod, and Zaporozhye regions, the senior Foreign Ministry official in charge of tracking alleged Ukrainian war crimes said in a weekly update. Most of the deaths and injuries were attributed to drone strikes.

A five-month-old infant injured in the city of Belgorod was the youngest victim highlighted by the diplomat, while a 91-year-old woman hurt in a drone attack on a village in Zaporozhye Region was the oldest.

The number of weekly civilian casualties this year peaked in late May, when Russia and Ukraine held direct talks in Istanbul, Türkiye. Miroshnik said at the time that the spike in Ukrainian attacks was ordered by Kiev’s European backers in an attempt to derail the negotiations. He stated that “Kiev was directed to use virtually any means, including terrorist action,” for that purpose.

Russian officials have repeatedly accused Kiev of using “terrorist tactics” and deliberately targeting civilians due to Ukrainian forces’ inability to achieve success on the battlefield.

Moscow has argued that the attacks predate the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 and prove that the authorities who came to power after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev punish dissent through violence, while rejecting diplomacy.

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Two Russian traffic police officers and another person have been killed by an explosive device in Moscow, not far from where a general was assassinated earlier this week.

The incident occurred overnight in the south of the Russian capital. According to the Investigative Committee, two officers noticed a suspicious person near a police car and approached to investigate, after which an explosion occurred, killing all three. The case is being investigated as an attempted murder of an officer.

On Monday, Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov was killed in the same neighborhood when a bomb planted under his car detonated. Investigators said Ukrainian special forces were potentially behind the attack, although no immediate connection with the latest incident was reported. Russian officials have previously warned that the Ukraine conflict is a source of dangerous armaments, including explosives, for the black market.

Russian media identified the killed officers, who were both in their mid-20s. One of them is reportedly survived by a wife and an infant daughter.

The third individual is suspected of having an improvised explosive device which was detonated either intentionally or accidentally after the patrol interrupted plans that may have involved planting the bomb under the police vehicle.

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By the standards of modern naval history, President Donald Trump’s unveiled plan to build battleships for the US Navy was a genuinely extraordinary announcement. Battleships have not been built since World War II. The new American ships, Trump said, will feature record-breaking displacement and the most advanced weapons ever put to sea.

So here they are: Trump-class battleships for the US Navy, courtesy of President Trump. This is, of course, about more than simply immortalizing his name. The plan envisions the construction of 20 to 25 massive warships, each displacing roughly 30,000 to 40,000 tons. One suspects that the prestige of Russia’s heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov – Project 11442M – may have been keeping Trump awake at night. His answer is a ship even larger than the nuclear flagship of the Russian Navy.

Trump declared that the battleships will be “the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” 

“Each one of these will be the largest battleship in the history of our country, the largest battleship in the history of the world ever built,” he said

“We make the greatest equipment in the world, by far, nobody’s even close. But we don’t produce them fast enough,” President added.

The current plan is as follows: construction will begin with a lead ship named USS Defiant. A second ship will follow shortly thereafter. After an initial operational testing phase, an eight-ship production series is expected. Ultimately, the Navy hopes to bring the total number to 25 ships – or possibly even more.

Beyond their sheer size and numbers, these vessels are expected to set records for weapons density. Laser combat systems, railguns, multiple vertical launch systems loaded with hypersonic missiles, Standard Missile (SM) interceptors, and the newest generation of cruise missiles in both nuclear and conventional configurations – all of it, Trump wants aboard these ships. Many of these systems are still undergoing testing or remain in experimental stages.

That naturally raises an obvious question: how effective would such massive ships be in a modern war? A handful of hypersonic anti-ship missiles – extremely difficult to intercept – and the “pride of the nation” could be sent to the bottom. Billions of dollars would go up in smoke. In an era of space-based surveillance and advanced anti-ship weapons, the combat lifespan of such vessels could approach zero. In that case, these enormously expensive ships would be useful for little more than parades.

Trump, however, disagrees. He appears to believe that his “Golden Fleet” will be protected by a “Golden Shield” – a layered missile defense system with a space-based component capable of shielding these ships from hypersonic threats anywhere in the world’s oceans. Whether that will work remains unclear. But Trump seems willing to gamble. After all, if no war breaks out, the investment resembles a luxury Cadillac parked in the countryside: undeniably beautiful, unmistakably expensive – and possibly useless. Time will tell.

It is also worth noting that the Trump battleship program is only one piece of a much broader naval buildup. The United States is already building new ballistic missile submarines to replace the 14 Ohio-class nuclear submarines armed with Trident II missiles. Two Columbia-class submarines are currently under construction, with a total requirement of 12 boats. This program is a core – and high-priority – element of the US nuclear triad.

These submarines are designed to be exceptionally quiet and advanced. Each will carry 16 Trident II missiles of a new production batch, fewer than the Ohio class. Their deployment may eventually lead to a modest reduction in the sea-based nuclear arsenal, but after 2040, the US is likely to begin building an even more advanced generation of missile submarines.

At the same time, the Navy continues to build nuclear-powered aircraft carriers – the largest and most expensive warships on the planet. Two new frigates are under construction, with plans for a large series of even more advanced frigates. Attack submarines are being built as well. Naval aviation is being modernized with fifth-generation F-35 carrier aircraft and loyal-wingman drones designed to handle much of the “dirty work” in future maritime combat. Several missile programs are also underway.

Taken together, these efforts represent colossal capital investment and account for a substantial share of the overall US defense budget. It increasingly appears that Trump is deliberately pushing toward a record, with future Pentagon budgets confidently crossing the trillion-dollar threshold. For the current administration, this does not seem particularly alarming – and for now, the United States can afford it.

Will the world react to Trump’s “Golden Fleet” initiative? Almost certainly. Military ambition is contagious. Turkey is building an aircraft carrier. France is constructing its first nuclear-powered carrier. The real question, however, is how Russia and China will respond.

Rash, emotional decisions in military procurement are not our path. Russia’s strength lies in hypersonic anti-ship systems, and that asymmetric advantage should continue to be developed. China, for its part, may pursue its own course, leveraging the fastest-growing shipbuilding industry in the world. But it is unlikely that Beijing will respond symmetrically to the American program. A response will come – but of a different kind. One designed to neutralize US naval dominance at sea, and at an acceptable cost.

South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has granted the family of former Zambian President Edgar Lungu the right to appeal a previous ruling that cleared the way for the government to repatriate his body for burial.

The legal tussle over his body has been dragging on for the past six months. It is not clear when he will eventually be laid to rest as no date has yet been set for the SCA appeal. The body, meanwhile, still remains in South Africa.

The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, ruled in August that Lungu’s body must be released for repatriation to his home country of Zambia, for burial in a state funeral.

“The court in this case concluded that the government of Zambia is entitled to proceed with the state funeral for the late president of Zambia,” Deputy Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba said at the time.

The family members were ordered to surrender the body of the former president to representatives of the Zambian government to enable repatriation. They wanted him privately buried in South Africa, citing his wishes to avoid government involvement. Lungu died in June after receiving medical treatment at a Pretoria hospital.

The high court supported the Zambian government’s wishes that Lungu be buried in that country, as per protocol of a former head of state.

The situation remains unresolved, as the family is trying their best to appeal the ruling. After suffering two defeats in the high court – losing the main application for him to be buried here and a subsequent application for leave to appeal – they directly turned to the SCA.

Apart from turning down their appeal bid, the high court in September also saddled the family with the legal costs.

The appeal court on Tuesday issued a short order, in which it not only granted leave to appeal, but it also set aside the costs order. The court, however, said if the family did not go ahead with the appeal, they will have to abide by the high court’s cost order.

In their application, the Lungu family held that the matter raised important legal questions which must be ventilated further. However, the high court rejected these claims, stating that there were no reasonable prospects of success in their appeal.

Three judges, led by Judge Ledwaba, said: “The court considered that the deceased was on a temporary visit to the Republic for medical reasons. The argument that the deceased was stripped of his benefits is of no moment. He remains a former state president with attendant burial benefits at state expense upon death.”

The judge added that conflicts and disagreements about burial rights are a common feature in our courts. He found that there were no compelling reasons to grant leave to appeal because the matter is so fact-specific that there is very little to no prospects that the same set of facts will confront a court again.

The original judgment issued in August, ordering the repatriation of his body, followed an urgent application after plans came to light that the family wanted to bury him here.

The ruling was delivered just moments before a private ceremony was set to commence in Gauteng.

The Lungu family has firmly held that the former president’s dying wishes were that his successor and political nemesis, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, should not be involved in his burial.

First published by IOL

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US President Donald Trump has reiterated claims that he was instrumental in preventing a nuclear war between India and Pakistan during a military standoff earlier this year.

New Delhi and Islamabad were involved in a military conflict from May 7 to 10, which followed a terrorist attack on April 22 in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir that claimed 26 lives.

Trump had claimed in a Truth Social post before India and Pakistan formally announced a ceasefire that a deal was reached following a “long night of talks” mediated by Washington.

“We stopped a potential nuclear war between Pakistan and India… [The] prime minister of Pakistan said that President Trump saved 10 million lives, maybe more,” the US leader told reporters in the White House on Monday.

Trump added, “Eight planes were shot down. That war was starting to rage.”

New Delhi has repeatedly rejected the US president’s claims, including that he used trade as tool to leverage a ceasefire agreement. 

“I want to make two things clear – one, at no stage in any conversation with the United States, was there any linkage with trade and what was going on,” Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said in July.

Jaishankar also said the confrontation had not escalated to such a level.

“At no point was a nuclear level reached,” he added, while describing Trump’s claims as “astonishing.”

Trump’s claims about a probable nuclear confrontation have been countered by several Indian commentators.
“When it comes to our sub-continent, we have received tiresome lectures about it being the world’s dangerous nuclear flashpoint,” former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal, who is also a columnist for RT, posted on X last week.

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