WORLD - The African Mirror

Jan

09

2026

Venezuelans are reacting to Maduro’s capture with anger, fear, hope and joy

WORLD

WHEN the news broke of Nicolás Maduro’s arrest following a US attack on Venezuela on January 3, que locura (“what madness”) was the line that seemed to capture the moment. As Venezuelans around the world reached for their phones and anxiously followed the news, they grappled to make sense of what they were seeing. Drawing on our long-term ethnographic research with Venezuelans living in Spain, the US and Venezuela itself, the insider accounts and interviews detailed below show the diverse ways in which these events are being experienced and understood. In the Spanish capital of Madrid, many Venezuelan migrants celebrated…

Jan

09

2026

By MARIEL PADILLA

Five years after January 6, dozens of pardoned insurrectionists have been arrested again

WORLD

WHEN President Donald Trump, on the first day of his second term, granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people convicted in connection with the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Linnaea Honl-Stuenkel immediately set up a Google Alert to track these individuals and see if they’d end up back in the criminal justice system. Honl-Stuenkel, who works at a government watchdog nonprofit, said she didn’t want people to forget the horror of that day — despite the president’s insistence that it was a nonviolent event, a “day of love.” This story was originally reported by

Jan

09

2026

By MALGORZATA (GOSIA) K. CITKO-DUPLANTIS

How tourism, a booming wellness culture and social media are transforming the age-old Japanese tea ceremony

WORLD

ONE of Japan’s most recognisable cultural practices – the Japanese tea ceremony, known as chanoyu, or chado – is being reshaped by tourism, wellness culture and social media. Matcha, the Japanese powdered green tea that is used during the ceremony, has entered the global marketplace. Influencers post highly curated tearoom photos, wellness brands market matcha as a “superfood,” and cafés worldwide present whisked green tea as a symbol of mindful living. The Japanese tea ceremony is deeply rooted in the ideals of Zen Buddhism, but the current matcha hype has little to do with the tea ceremony. Green tea has…

Jan

08

2026

By PABLO UCHOA

The ‘Donroe doctrine’: Maduro is the guinea pig for Donald Trump’s new world order

WORLD

SHORTLY after US special forces captured and extracted Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, Donald Trump said that the US would now “run” Venezuela. Whatever Washington’s plans for the future of Venezuelan governance, this show of US force in Latin America looks like the first manifestation of a more assertive American foreign policy outlined in the national security strategy published in November 2025. This plainly asserted the Trump administration’s intention to “reassert and enforce the Monroe doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere. Rather than force regime change at this point, Trump has indicated…

Aug

21

2025

By AMANDA BECKER

Free DC: Inside the women-founded movement opposing Trump’s militarized takeover

WORLD

NEARLY an hour into Friday night’s game between the Washington Spirit and Racing Louisville FC, a chant started to spread throughout the stadium that briefly silenced the television announcers for the women’s soccer match. “Free D.C.! Free D.C.! Free D.C.!” the spectators chanted at the stadium in the southwest quadrant of the nation’s capital. This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy. It was a response to Republican President Donald Trump’s militarised takeover of policing in the District of Columbia that began last week;…

Jan

08

2026

By KAMRAN TALATTOF

‘Neither Gaza nor Lebanon!’ Iranian unrest is about more than the economy − protesters reject the Islamic Republic’s whole rationale

WORLD

A familiar slogan has echoed through the streets of various Iranian cities in recent days: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, I sacrifice my life for Iran.” That phrase has been chanted at protests that have sprung up around Iran since December 28, 2025. The spark of the uprising and bazaar strikes has been economic hardship and government mismanagement. But as an expert of Iranian history and culture, I believe the slogan’s presence signals that protests go deeper than economic frustration alone. When people in Iran chant “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon,” they are, I believe, rejecting the theocratic system in Iran entirely.…

Jan

07

2026

By JULIETTE MCINTYRE and TAMSIN PHILLIPA PAIGE

Venezuela, Gaza, Ukraine: is the UN failing?

WORLD

THE United Nations turned 80 in October last year; a venerable age for the most significant international organisation the world has ever seen. But events of recent years – from last weekend’s Trumpian military action to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza – represent major challenges to the UN system. Many are now asking whether the United Nations has any future at all if it cannot fulfil its first promise of maintaining international peace and security. Has the UN reached the end of its lifespan? The…

Jan

07

2026

By OWN CORRESPONENT

UN rights office condemns US military intervention in Venezuela as violation of international law

WORLD

THE United Nations human rights office on Tuesday condemned the United States military operation that resulted in the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro over the weekend, calling it a violation of international law that undermines global security. Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told reporters in Geneva that the operation "violates a fundamental principle of international law… it violates the UN Charter," which prohibits states from threatening or using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of other nations. Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High…

Jan

07

2026

By MONICA DUFFY TOFT

Can the US ‘run’ Venezuela? Military force can topple a dictator, but it cannot create political authority or legitimacy

WORLD

AN image circulated over media the weekend of Jan. 3 and 4 was meant to convey dominance: Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed aboard a U.S. naval vessel. Shortly after the operation that seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would now “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be arranged. The Trump administration’s move is not an aberration; it reflects a broader trend in U.S. foreign policy I described here some six years ago as “America the Bully.” Washington increasingly relies on coercion – military, economic and…

Jan

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Trump’s seizure of Maduro: an unprecedented gambit that has shaken the global order

WORLD

THE world is witnessing what may be the most audacious assertion of American power in a generation, as deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro sits in a Brooklyn detention cell awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges following an extraordinary weekend military raid that has sent shockwaves through international diplomacy. The operation, U.S. Special Forces descending on Caracas by helicopter to extract a sitting head of state, represents the most dramatic American intervention in Latin America since the 1989 Panama invasion. But unlike that Cold War-era action, this raid comes at a moment when the post-World War II international order appears increasingly…