US Issues ‘Do Not Travel' Warning for Venezuela, Citing Wrongful Detention, Terrorism Concerns
In a May 27
There is currently no U.S. embassy or consulate operating in Venezuela. As a result, the State Department said Venezuelan authorities do not notify the U.S. government when American citizens are detained.
The department said, 'More U.S. citizens are currently wrongfully detained in Venezuela than in any other country.'
The South American country does not allow U.S. officials to visit detained Americans, and detainees are often denied legal counsel or access to their families, according to the State Department.
'Venezuelan security forces have detained U.S. citizens for up to five years without respect to due process, in harsh conditions—including torture—frequently based solely on their U.S. nationality or U.S. Passport,' the State Department said.
Related Stories
5/28/2025
5/27/2025
U.S. embassies in
'Dual citizenship, a Venezuelan visa, past travel to Venezuela, or a job in Venezuela does not protect U.S. national travelers,' the State Department's alert states. 'Every American is at risk of being detained by [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro's regime.
Any American citizens currently in Venezuela have been advised to leave immediately.
'Anyone with U.S. citizenship or any other U.S. residency status in Venezuela should leave the country immediately, including those traveling on Venezuelan or other foreign passports,' the State Department said. 'Do not travel to Venezuela for any reason.'
Venezuela recently
The deportation process involved Honduras acting as a stopover for deportation flights of Venezuelans being sent from the United States to Venezuela.
On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that there would be
'Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of Americans should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country,' Rubio said in a May 28
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
17 minutes ago
- The Hill
Asian markets gain, with Japan's Nikkei up more than 3%, lifted by deal on Trump's tariffs
TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares rallied on Wednesday, with Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei 225 index up more than 3% after Japan and the U.S. announced a deal on President Donald Trump's tariffs. The agreement as announced calls for a 15% import duty on goods imported from Japan, apart from certain products such as steel and aluminum that are subject to much higher tariffs. That's down from the 25% Trump had said would kick in on Aug. 1 if a deal was not reached. 'This Deal will create Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs — There has never been anything like it,' Trump posted on Truth Social, noting that Japan was also investing 'at my direction' $550 billion into the U.S. He said Japan would 'open' its economy to American autos and rice. Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1.1% to 25,397.81, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.8% to 3,608.58. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.6% to 8,731.90 and the Kospi in South Korea edged 0.1% higher to 3,172.10. 'President Trump has signed two trade deals this week with the Philippines and Japan which is likely to keep market sentiment propped up despite deals with the likes of the EU and South Korea remaining elusive, for now at least,' Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at Kohle Capital Markets, said in a report. There was a chorus of no comments from the Japanese automakers, despite the latest announcement, including Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co and Nissan Motor Corp. Japanese companies tend to be cautious about their public reactions, and some business officials have privately remarked in off-record comments that they hesitate to say anything because Trump keeps changing his mind. The Japan Automobile Manufacturers' Association also said it had no comment, noting there was no official statement yet. Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba welcomed the agreement as beneficial to both sides. Wall Street inched to another record on Tuesday following some mixed profit reports, as General Motors and other big U.S. companies gave updates on how much Trump's tariffs are hurting or helping them. The S&P 500 added 0.1% to the all-time high it had set the day before, closing at 6,309.62. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4% to 44,502.44. The Nasdaq composite slipped 0.4% from its own record, to 20,892.68. General Motors dropped 8.1% despite reporting a stronger profit for the spring than analysts expected. The automaker said it's still expecting a $4 billion to $5 billion hit to its results in 2025 from higher tariffs and that it hopes to mitigate 30% of that. GM also said it will feel more pain because of tariffs in the current quarter than it did during the spring. That helped to offset big gains for some homebuilders after they reported stronger profits for the spring than Wall Street had forecast. D.R. Horton rallied 17%, and PulteGroup jumped 11.5%. That was even as both companies said homebuyers are continuing to deal with challenging conditions, including higher mortgage rates and an uncertain economy. So far, the U.S. economy seems to be powering through the uncertainty created by Trump's on-and-off tariffs. Many of Trump's proposed taxes on imports are currently on pause, and the next big deadline is Aug. 1. Talks are underway on possible trade deals with other countries that could lower the stiff proposals before they kick in. Trump said he reached a trade agreement with the Philippines following a meeting Tuesday at the White House, that will see the U.S. slightly drop its tariff rate for the Philippines without paying import taxes for what it sells there. In the bond market, Treasury yields sank as traders continue to expect the Federal Reserve to wait until September at the earliest to resume cutting interest rates. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.34% from 4.38% late Monday. In other dealings early Wednesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil gained 14 cents to $65.45 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard added 18 cents to $68.77 a barrel. In currency trading, the U.S. dollar inched up to 146.80 Japanese yen from 146.64 yen. The euro cost $1.1745, down from $1.1754. ___
Boston Globe
17 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Trump's favorability has fallen among AAPI adults since last year, new poll finds
The poll is part of an ongoing project exploring the views of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, whose views are usually not highlighted in other surveys because of small sample sizes and lack of linguistic representation. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up AAPI independents' unfavorable view of Trump is higher than his unfavorable rating among independent adults overall, which was 52% in a June AP-NORC poll, having nudged slightly higher from 44% in December. Advertisement Economic concerns could be playing a central role. About 8 in 10 AAPI adults expect Trump's tariff policies will increase the cost of consumer goods, the poll found, while only about 4 in 10 think those policies will boost domestic manufacturing and just 2 in 10 anticipate more U.S. jobs as a result. 'To me, it seems like a lot of not-really-well-thought-out things that are happening,' said Michael Ida, a 56-year-old independent in Hawaii who teaches high school advanced-placement calculus. 'In the process, there's a lot of collateral damage and fallout that's hurting a lot of people.' Ida was referring specifically to government spending cuts, including for education. Advertisement AAPI adults represent a small segment of the U.S. population, making up about 7% of the nation's residents in 2023, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Likewise, they are hardly a pro-Trump voting bloc generally. In last year's election, English-speaking Asian U.S. voters shifted slightly toward Trump, but with only about a third supporting him, up from 29% in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. The new poll also suggests that they are especially likely to be worried about the economy's trajectory, and remain anxious about high costs. About two-thirds of AAPI adults, 65%, say they are 'extremely' or 'very' concerned about the possibility of the U.S. economy going into a recession, higher than the 53% of the Americans generally who said the same in an April AP-NORC survey. 'On the economy, you saw AAPI voters shift — not in a big way, but shift nonetheless — toward Trump' in the 2024 election, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, executive director of AAPI Data and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. 'They are not seeing big economic benefits pan out. Quite the contrary, they are seeing big economic risks on the horizon based on Trump's action on tariffs.' Shopan Hafiz, a 39-year-old independent and engineer at Intel in Oregon, described his view of Trump as 'very unfavorable,' and bemoaned the Republican president's tariff policy which he expected to hit American consumers harder in the coming months. 'With all the tariffs, I don't think it's going to help,' Hafiz said. 'All the tariffs will ultimately be paid by U.S. nationals, and inflation is going to get worse.' Advertisement The poll comes in the midst of Trump's on-and-off threats to impose tariffs for what he says is his goal of leveling the nation's trade imbalance. Inflation rose in June to its highest level since February as Trump's tariffs pushed up the cost of household goods, from groceries to appliances. Consumer prices rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, the Labor Department said last week, up from an annual increase of 2.4% in May. On a monthly basis, prices climbed 0.3% from May to June, after rising just 0.1% the previous month. Like Hafiz, Ida, the teacher in Hawaii, did not vote for Trump last year. Instead, both voted for Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver. Hafiz's decision was in opposition to the two major U.S. parties' support for Israel in its war in Gaza. Ida said the two major parties had become 'too extreme.' Ida is among the roughly two-thirds of AAPI adults who say they are at least 'very concerned' about the cost of groceries. He's noticed fear of higher prices in his Pacific island state, and even more within the ethnic businesses, in light of Hawaii's reliance on shipped goods. 'Here in Hawaii, because we're so isolated, everything comes on a ship or a plane,' he said. 'We're especially vulnerable to prices rising and disruptions in the supply chain. There's definitely some anxiety there.'
Boston Globe
17 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
From tech podcasts to policy: Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas
The plan and related executive orders are expected to include some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products, according to a person briefed on Wednesday's event who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up It might also include some of the AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year. Advertisement Blocking 'woke AI' from tech contractors Countering the liberal bias they see in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini has long been a rallying point for the tech industry's loudest Trump backers. Sacks, a former PayPal executive and now Trump's top AI adviser, has been criticizing 'woke AI' for more than a year, fueled by Google's February 2024 rollout of an AI image generator that, when asked to show an American Founding Father, created pictures of Black, Latino and Native American men. Advertisement 'The AI's incapable of giving you accurate answers because it's been so programmed with diversity and inclusion,' Sacks said at the time. Google quickly fixed its tool, but the 'Black George Washington' moment remained a parable for the problem of AI's perceived political bias, taken up by X owner Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Vice President JD Vance and Republican lawmakers. The administration's latest push against 'woke AI' comes a week after the Pentagon announced new $200 million contracts with four leading AI companies, including Google, to address 'critical national security challenges.' Also receiving one of the contracts was Musk's xAI, which has been pitched as an alternative to 'woke AI' companies. The company has faced its own challenges: Earlier this month, xAI had to scramble to remove posts made by its Grok chatbot that made antisemitic comments and praised Adolf Hitler. Streamlining AI data center permits Trump has paired AI's need for huge amounts of electricity with his own push to tap into U.S. energy sources, including gas, coal and nuclear. 'Everything we aspire to and hope for means the demand and supply of energy in America has to go up,' said Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a video posted Tuesday. Many tech giants are already well on their way toward building new data centers in the U.S. and around the world. OpenAI announced this week that it has switched on the first phase of a massive data center complex in Abilene, Texas, part of an Oracle-backed project known as Stargate that Trump promoted earlier this year. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and xAI also have major projects underway. Advertisement The tech industry has pushed for easier permitting rules to get their computing facilities connected to power, but the AI building boom has also contributed to spiking demand for fossil fuel production that will contribute to global warming. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the world's major tech firms to power data centers completely with renewables by 2030. 'A typical AI data center eats up as much electricity as 100,000 homes,' Guterres said. 'By 2030, data centers could consume as much electricity as all of Japan does today.' A new approach to AI exports? It's long been White House policy under Republican and Democratic administrations to curtail certain technology exports to China and other adversaries on national security grounds. But much of the tech industry argued that Biden went too far at the end of his term in trying to restrict the exports of specialized AI computer chips to more than 100 other countries, including close allies. Part of the Biden administration's motivation was to stop China from acquiring coveted AI chips in third-party locations such as Southeast Asia or the Middle East, but critics said the measures would end up encouraging more countries to turn to China's fast-growing AI industry instead of the U.S. as their technology supplier. It remains to be seen how the Trump administration aims to accelerate the export of U.S.-made AI technologies while countering China's AI ambitions. California chipmakers Nvidia and AMD both announced last week that they won approval from the Trump administration to sell to China some of their advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence. Advertisement AMD CEO Lisa Su is among the guests planning to attend Trump's event Wednesday. Who benefits from Trump's AI action plan There are sharp debates on how to regulate AI, even among the influential venture capitalists who have been debating it on their favorite medium: the podcast. While some Trump backers, particularly Andreessen, have advocated an 'accelerationist' approach that aims to speed up AI advancement with minimal regulation, Sacks has described himself as taking a middle road of techno-realism. 'Technology is going to happen. Trying to stop it is like ordering the tides to stop. If we don't do it, somebody else will,' Sacks said on the All-In podcast. On Tuesday, 95 groups including labor unions, parent groups, environmental justice organizations and privacy advocates signed a resolution opposing Trump's embrace of industry-driven AI policy and calling for a 'People's AI Action Plan' that would 'deliver first and foremost for the American people.' Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which helped lead the effort, said the coalition expects Trump's plan to come 'straight from Big Tech's mouth.' 'Every time we say, 'What about our jobs, our air, water, our children?' they're going to say, 'But what about China?'' she said in a call with reporters Tuesday. She said Americans should reject the White House's argument that the industry is overregulated and fight to preserve 'baseline protections for the public' as AI technology advances. Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
