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American forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, President Donald Trump announced yesterday, escalating pressure on Nicol谩s Maduro鈥檚 government. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the tanker, called The Skipper, had been sanctioned for illegal oil shipping. Caracas called the seizure 鈥渋nternational piracy.鈥� Meanwhile, a House committee closed its bipartisan inquiry into a September聽follow-up strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean that killed two survivors.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mar铆a Corina Machado greeted crowds in Oslo late last night, after her daughter attended the award ceremony on her behalf. It was a covert and risky trip for Venezuela鈥檚 opposition leader and pro-democracy activist, who has been in hiding for nearly a year. Venezuelan officials vowed to consider her a fugitive if she left the country. Ms. Machado told the BBC she was seeing her family for the first time in 16 months and could finally 鈥渃ry and pray鈥� with them.

The deployment of California National Guard troops聽in Los Angeles must end, a federal judge ruled yesterday, rejecting arguments that they are still needed to protect federal personnel and property. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Trump administration鈥檚 efforts 鈥� spanning cities from Chicago to Portland, Oregon 鈥� amount to trying to create 鈥渁 national police force made up of state troops.鈥� An appeal is expected.

The United States may ask visitors聽to share five years of social media history for entry, according to a new U.S. Customs and Border Protection proposal. The policy would affect travelers from 42 countries on the visa waiver program, including Australia, Israel, Japan, and many countries in Europe. The State Department implemented a similar measure for聽student visa applicants聽in June to vet for what it called 鈥渉ostile attitudes鈥� toward American culture or institutions.

Washington imposed new sanctions on a network it accused of fueling the civil war in Sudan. The U.S. Treasury said four people and four companies, primarily Colombia-based, were part of a transnational network that has enlisted Colombian mercenaries to train soldiers and fight for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The United States called for an end to all financial and military support to the fighters in Sudan.

Neanderthals began making fires much sooner than we thought, according to research published yesterday in Nature. Archaeologists found the earliest evidence of intentional fire, including handaxes warped by heat and pyrite, at a 400,000-year-old archaeological site in eastern England. Previous evidence of the key technological milestone dated back just 50,000 years. One of the researchers called this the 鈥渕ost exciting鈥� discovery of his career.

Italian cuisine became the first to earn heritage status from UNESCO, the United Nations鈥� cultural body. Other recognitions of intangible cultural heritage have involved food 鈥� from Peruvian ceviche to the French gastronomic meal 鈥� but never an entire national cuisine. Italian contributions already on the list include opera singing, Neapolitan pizza making, and manual bell ringing.

鈥� Our staff writers around the world

Russia鈥檚 Vladimir Putin has vowed to take all of the mostly occupied Donetsk region either through negotiation or militarily. Even as Ukraine resists ceding territory, how is the city of Sloviansk maintaining morale in the face of a forbidding future?

The volatility of some cryptocurrencies can shake up financial markets. There鈥檚 a stabler version of crypto, but as people continue to buy in, even that carries some risk to the greater economy.

With Europe worried over the threat from Russia and finding the United States increasingly unreliable, Germany is feeling pressure to lead the way on European defense. Whether Germans themselves are ready to pick up arms is another matter.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping鈥檚 views were shaped by the experiences of his father, Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary whom the Communist Party cast aside. Author Joseph Torigian examines the life of the father to shed light on the actions of the son.

United States Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was a firm believer in 鈥渢he good sense of the people鈥� when it came to exercising citizenship in a democracy. To promote constructive public engagement, he urged, 鈥済ive them full information ... thro鈥� the channel of the public papers.鈥�

鈥淲ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,鈥� Mr. Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1787.

The third U.S. president could likely not have imagined the huge volume and varied forms of today鈥檚 鈥渘ewspapers鈥� 鈥� accessed 24/7,聽 in print, over the airwaves, and online. However, even as media access has increased exponentially, press freedoms in 2025 are shrinking globally.

News outlets are facing unprecedented political and financial pressures, and journalists are increasingly being silenced or targeted. In its annual December report, the watchdog group Reporters Without Borders lists 503 journalists in detention, 67 killed, and 135 missing over the past year. In most cases, the organization says, governments are responsible, although criminal cartels and rebel groups are also implicated.

Amid this sobering picture, citizens around the world continue to strongly believe in the value and importance of a free press. A Pew Research Center survey of 35 countries reported that 84% of respondents viewed the ability to report news freely as important. (For the U.S. alone, that figure rose to 93%.) Over the past 10 years, the share of respondents defining press freedom as 鈥渧ery鈥� important increased in one-fourth of those countries.

Citizens are also expressing concern over increasing partisanship in the media, reflective of broader political divisions. In the case of the U.S., according to historian Miles Smith, 鈥淭he founding fathers understood that a free press would often be a messy press.鈥� The system, Professor Smith said on a podcast in July, was designed to present 鈥渃ompeting ideas and narratives鈥� to 鈥渁n educated citizenry capable of self-government.鈥�

Perceptions of a vibrant press appear to correlate with civilians鈥� satisfaction with governance. Citizens who think the media in their country can freely report the news rate their democracies positively; those who believe the press is constrained tend to rate their governments and leaders more negatively.

Perhaps Walter Cronkite, the legendary 20th-century American journalist, captured this dynamic most aptly, when he observed: 鈥淔reedom of the press is not just important to democracy; it is democracy.鈥�