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A view of a damaged building, belonged to medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), following the Israeli attack in al-Mawasi, Khan Yunis, Gaza on February 21, 2024 [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]
An Israeli airstrike damaged a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) bus carrying humanitarian workers in Gaza City on Monday, injuring one staff member, the organisation said.
In a statement posted on X, MSF said the bus was carrying 10 of its humanitarian staff when it was damaged in an Israeli air strike, leaving one worker injured.
It said the targeted vehicle was clearly identifiable by the organisation’s large logo displayed on its roof.
“Once again, Israeli forces have shown a blatant disregard for the safety of humanitarian and medical personnel. Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Civilians, healthcare workers and humanitarian staff must be protected,” the statement said.
MSF stressed the need to respect international law and prevent attacks on medical and humanitarian vehicles displaying clear and distinctive markings.
According to the United Nations and international human rights organisations, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since 8 October 2023, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians and injuring more than 174,000, most of them women and children.
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Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
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U.S. President Donald Trump raises his hand to wave goodbye while preparing to board his vehicle during his departure from Aras an Uachtarain on September 12, 2026, in Dublin, Ireland. [Artur Widak – Anadolu Agency]
US President Donald Trump reiterated on Monday that he was “open” to engaging with Iran to end the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran in February.
“The failing Nation of Iran wants to make a deal, quickly and badly. I will determine whether or not the USA will choose to engage — The concept of which we are open to,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said on Monday that it had shot down an advanced US MQ-1 drone over the Strait of Hormuz, as diplomatic efforts faced a setback with the postponement of a meeting between Iran and Gulf states.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
Mobilization in Caracas demanding the return of Nicolás Maduro. Photo: Francisco Trias
The implications of this case extend far beyond Venezuela. The entire process against Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores threatens to establish the US court system as one with global and unlimited jurisdiction.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is not guilty. This is a statement of law and fact, since Maduro has not been convicted of any crime. He has pleaded not guilty to every charge brought against him, and the accusations made by the United States remain precisely that: accusations. Under the presumption of innocence – recognized in the United States Constitution and in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – the burden rests entirely upon the prosecution to prove guilt. It is not Maduro who must prove his innocence, but it is the United States government that must prove his guilt.
On January 3, 2026, United States forces illegally entered Venezuela, attacked targets in and around Caracas, seized President Maduro and his wife and an elected official, Cilia Flores, and transported them to the United States. Two days later, shackled and injured, Maduro appeared before a federal court in Manhattan. “I am innocent. I am not guilty,” he told the court. Both defendants entered pleas of not guilty and are now imprisoned in Brooklyn while awaiting a trial provisionally scheduled for June 2027.
The charges against Maduro
The United States alleges that Maduro participated in conspiracies to import cocaine, possess machine guns and destructive devices, and collaborate with organizations Washington has designated as terrorist groups. These charges developed out of an indictment announced during Donald Trump’s first presidency in March 2020. The case was substantially expanded after Maduro was kidnapped through a fourth superseding indictment. An indictment, however, is not evidence tested before a court. It is a document prepared by prosecutors and approved through a grand-jury proceeding at which the defense is normally neither represented nor permitted to challenge the government’s account.
The prosecution relies heavily upon the idea that Maduro directed the so-called Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns. But even organizations deeply hostile to the Venezuelan government acknowledge that this is not a cartel in the conventional sense. The name has long been used as an umbrella expression for disparate Venezuelan officials allegedly involved in criminal activity, long before Maduro entered political life. It does not describe an organization with a demonstrated membership, command structure, headquarters or chain of authority comparable to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. When Washington designated the Cartel de los Soles a foreign terrorist organization in 2025, the Associated Pressnoted that it was “not a cartel per se.”
This matters because the prosecution’s language performs much of its political work. Allegations concerning individual acts of corruption are assembled into the image of a unified organization, the organization is then attributed to the Venezuelan state, and responsibility for everything allegedly done by anyone within that loose network is placed upon Maduro. The indictment must still demonstrate that Maduro knowingly joined the specific conspiracies charged. Political authority over a state in which crimes occur does not by itself establish personal criminal responsibility for those crimes.
Case is dead on arrival
Venezuela is not a major producer of coca leaf or cocaine. The principal cocaine-producing countries remain Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Venezuela has been used as a transit territory, particularly for cocaine originating in neighboring Colombia. But transit through a country does not prove that its president commands the traffic, and nor does it substantiate the extravagant political image of Venezuela as the central source of the drugs entering the United States. The US Drug Enforcement Administration’s own 2025 threat assessment concentrated overwhelmingly upon Mexican organizations and their supply chains. The global cocaine trade operates primarily through production in the Andean region, maritime export corridors, Central America and Mexico, not through a single organization supposedly commanded from the Venezuelan presidential palace. The International Criminal Court’s investigation into the situation in Venezuela, for example, is an investigation into alleged crimes within its jurisdiction. It is not a conviction of Maduro and has not produced an individual judgment of guilt against him.
The US government is expected to rely upon cooperating witnesses, including former Venezuelan intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal and former general Clíver Alcalá. Both men pleaded guilty to serious offenses in the United States. Their evidence cannot be treated as disinterested truth. Cooperating defendants may hope to obtain sentencing benefits by assisting prosecutors. Their claims must therefore be corroborated and subjected to cross-examination. Until that happens, their statements do not establish Maduro’s guilt. In fact, it is better to see their statements as proof of their own attempt to lighten their sentences and launder their soiled reputations.
The circumstances under which Maduro was brought before the US court create an even deeper problem. Washington did not request extradition through an agreed legal process. It employed military force within another sovereign country without Venezuela’s consent or authorization from the United Nations Security Council. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of a state, subject to narrow exceptions such as self-defence. Arresting a person accused of drug offenses is not one of those exceptions. International-law specialists described the operation as an unlawful use of force, while governments including Brazil, Mexico, and China condemned the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty.
Maduro’s lawyers have argued that the prosecution violates the immunity enjoyed by an incumbent head of state. Venezuela continued to recognize Maduro as its constitutional president when the United States seized him – a fact tacitly recognized by the United States when it calls Delcy Rodriquez the Acting President. Washington cannot necessarily extinguish the international legal status of another country’s head of state merely by withholding diplomatic recognition. The defense has consequently requested dismissal of the indictment on immunity grounds and has separately challenged the narco-terrorism count for lacking an adequate jurisdictional connection to the United States. Oral argument on these questions is scheduled for November 2026.
The case of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández exposes the selectivity of Washington’s supposed war against narco-states. Hernández was a close US ally during his presidency from 2014 to 2022. After leaving office, he was extradited – not abducted through a military invasion – and tried in the same federal district in New York where Maduro is now being prosecuted. In March 2024, a jury convicted Hernández after a three-week trial. Prosecutors presented evidence that he had accepted millions of dollars from traffickers, protected cocaine shipments with the Honduran police and military, and helped move more than 400 tons of cocaine towards the United States. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Unlike the claims against Maduro, these allegations were tested through testimony, cross-examination and a jury verdict. Yet on December 1, 2025, President Donald Trump pardoned Hernández and secured his release, claiming that the former president had been treated unfairly.
The contrast could hardly be more revealing. Trump pardoned a former president whose participation in cocaine trafficking had been established in a US courtroom, while threatening and eventually invading Venezuela to seize a president against whom no verdict had been rendered. Hernández belonged to Washington’s political camp; Maduro did not. One was released despite his conviction, while the other was captured despite his legal innocence. This disparity does not by itself disprove the accusations against Maduro, but it demolishes the claim that Washington acted from a consistent concern about narcotics. The determining distinction was political alignment, not the strength of the evidence.
The implications of this case extend far beyond the specific circumstances of Maduro and Cilia Flores or their consequences for Venezuela. Allowing a foreign state to override the jurisdiction of another country’s legal system, pursue an accusation for which there is no evidence, and proceed with a trial that lacks a basis in international law effectively establishes the US court system as one with global and unlimited jurisdiction. The ambivalence of governments around the world toward this case is therefore alarming, as it risks signalling consent and normalizing such gross overreach. This is particularly relevant for Mexico, which is already facing a series of accusations and extradition demands from the United States with clear political implications. The outcome of Maduro’s trial could set an important precedent for how Mexico – and other countries – are treated in similar circumstances.
Nicolás Maduro is not guilty therefore expresses the only defensible conclusion at this stage. He was seized through an act of military force, placed before the courts of the state that had pursued his overthrow for years, and charged based on a politically constructed theory that has yet to survive adversarial examination. He remains innocent unless and until admissible evidence proves otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. Sovereignty is not an ornament, an indictment is not a verdict, and an accusation issued by a powerful state does not become truth merely because that state possesses the weapons to seize the accused.
Stephanie Weatherbee Brito is the co-coordinator of the International Peoples Assembly (IPA).
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director ofTricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor ofLeftWord Books(New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him Up
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Steel Across America event at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 8, 2026. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images)
“He created a fictitious event featuring himself, who did nothing, as the hero of 9/11.”
While Republicans express “offense” at plans for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to attend September 11 remembrances this week due to his Muslim faith, President Donald Trump provoked outrage on Tuesday when he told what seems to be a fabricated story about his heroism following the terrorist attack.
Before a crowd that included over 100 first responders, Trump described being at ground zero with a construction crew he said he’d deployed to help with the aftermath of the attack. He described walking beneath the US Steel building, now known as One Liberty Plaza, which was believed to be at risk of collapsing.
“The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down,” Trump recalled. “And I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys—and I’m not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here!’ And they literally lifted me up.”
“This is not easy to do. I’m big,” Trump continued. “They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down.”
Trump on 9/11: I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened., Wasn't too much we could do. We had other buildings, the United States steel building was creaking. I'll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming… pic.twitter.com/kEt6IO71qR
Trump has claimed on multiple occasions to have been present in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and has told a version of the same story before, including on the 2016 campaign trail.
But many aspects of the tale are in doubt or contradicted by both the public record and others known to be involved in the recovery.
Trump said he saw the attacks happen from his office in Trump Tower, about four miles away from the World Trade Center. In an interview with WWOR-TV that day, he infamously boasted (incorrectly) that he now had the tallest building in downtown Manhattan after the collapse of the World Trade Center.
While Trump himself was documented on September 13 to have been a few blocks from ground zero and said he’d visited the site, his claim to have sent over 100 of his construction workers in the immediate aftermath of the attack and to have “helped a little” himself has been disputed.
In 2019, Richard Alles, a New York City Fire Department battalion chief on the day of the attack, who said he was on the scene about 20 minutes after the second tower collapsed, told PolitiFact that he had no knowledge of Trump sending a crew of men to help with the wreckage.
“I was there for several months—I have no knowledge of his being down there,” Alles said, adding that if Trump had sent a crew of 100 workers, “there would be a record of it. Everybody worked under the direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services. Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn’t know it? It’s possible, but I know of no one who ever witnessed him there.”
Other outlets, including The Associated Press and The Washington Post, said they contacted Trump’s 2016 campaign to ask for details about his activity following the attacks, but received no response.
Neither of the two firefighters who supposedly carried Trump to safety has ever publicly come forward to discuss their run-in with the famous New York developer, and Trump did not mention the incident during interviews at the time.
Reminder: Donald Trump’s immediate reaction to the 9/11 attacks was to brag that his building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed. pic.twitter.com/iAkUeGafG9
Trump has a history of lies surrounding 9/11, including that he saw “thousands” of Muslims “cheering” in Jersey City as the towers fell and that he personally “predicted” the attacks in one of his books.
He has also been found to have misled the public about his philanthropy related to the tragedy: In 2001, he pledged to donate $10,000 to a recovery fund for victims and first responders, which the city comptroller’s office ultimately found was never delivered. More than 15 years later, his foundation gave $100,000 to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
His business empire also received $150,000 from a post-9/11 recovery program meant for businesses affected by the attacks, which Trump has claimed was reimbursement for allowing victims to use his building at 40 Wall Street to take shelter. But the application made no mention of shelter and instead stated that the request was for compensation for lost rent, cleanup, and repairs following the attacks, according to a 2016 investigation by the New York Daily News.
Journalist Ron Filipkowski described Trump’s tale about the firefighters as yet another instance of what he’s called “stolen valor,” but was astonished by its specificity.
“I know he’s lied about his non-role in 9/11 rescue and recovery before, but never this level of detail,” he said. “Trump could have made the ceremony with 9/11 first responders today about the many heroes who died attempting to rescue people and others who risked their lives and long-term health. But instead, he created a fictitious event featuring himself, who did nothing, as the hero of 9/11.”
Making it more offensive, other commentators said, was the double standard from Republicans, like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who have claimed “offense” at the fact that Mamdani, as a Muslim, was planning to attend 9/11 memorials on Friday.
“The people mad about the Mayor of New York attending the 9/11 event must be ENRAGED that Trump just lied about being at ground zero on 9/11,” wrote Tim Fullerton, a former digital strategist for the Obama administration, on X. “This is all about honoring the victims and not just to score points. Right???”
Mamdani on Tuesday released around 170,000 pages of records indicating that Giuliani’s administration had misled New Yorkers about the severity of air quality risks near ground zero after the attacks.
Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says Sundown Syndrome is a dead givaway and he wishes someone would Lock Him UpOrcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks at the Saadabad Cultural and Historical Complex in Tehran, Iran on August 24, 2026. [Iranian Presidency – Anadolu Agency]
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Friday that he does not support the continuation of war with the US, calling for the country’s resilience to be strengthened for the next phase.
His remarks came during a meeting with heads of Iranian universities, according to the local Mehr News Agency.
Addressing the conflict with Washington, Pezeshkian said, “I am not in favor of continuing the war, but we must strengthen the country’s resilience in the face of upcoming developments.”
Strengthening the country’s resilience requires following a path that does not force Iran to negotiate with the “enemy” from a position of weakness, he said, calling on universities to support the government in this regard.
Economic measures must take into account existing social conditions, the Iranian president said, warning that uncalculated steps would be harmful rather than remedial.
“We must benefit even from the contributions of Generation Z students to solve society’s problems, and ensure their participation in presenting solutions instead of engaging in protests,” he said.
Pezeshkian stressed that, as president, he has no political ties to specific groups, saying he is open to cooperation with all political currents and anyone who contributes to addressing the country’s crises.
The US and Israel launched a war on Iran on Feb. 28, prompting Tehran to fire missiles at Israel and attack US targets and bases in several countries in the region.
Iran also announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to navigation, causing widespread disruption to global energy and trade flows.
On June 18, Washington and Tehran reached a memorandum of understanding to end military operations, including guarantees for the passage of commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz and the launch of negotiations to reach a final agreement within 60 days.
However, the understanding later faltered, and confrontations resumed in July, with the US renewing strikes on targets inside Iran and reimposing a naval blockade on Iranian ports.
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Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Strait of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
