President Nicolás Maduro orders Venezuelan navy to escort oil tankers after seizure by US forces

• What action is Trump taking against Venezuela’s oil industry?

Donald Trump and his top advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela as Nicolás Maduro urged his navy to escort oil tankers defying the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.

In an interview broadcast on Friday morning, Donald Trump told NBC News that going to war with Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I don’t rule it out, no,” he said in a phone interview with the network.

Lula acknowledges his decision to uphold 27-year sentence could be overridden by conservative lawmakers

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised to veto a bill passed by congress to reduce the prison term of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president who was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison for masterminding an attempted coup to overturn the 2022 elections.

Lawmakers passed the bill late on Wednesday after it was approved last week by the lower house. On Thursday, Brazil’s leftist president – who, investigations showed, was the target of an assassination plan as part of the coup plot – acknowledged his veto could be overridden by the largely conservative congress.

Six more oil supertankers added to sanctions list, as well as members of Maduro’s extended family, amid rising tensions following tanker seizure

Donald Trump has exerted more pressure on Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, expanding sanctions and issuing fresh threats to strike land targets in Venezuela, as the South American dictator accused the US president of ushering in a new “era of criminal naval piracy” in the Caribbean.

Late on Thursday, the US imposed curbs on three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six crude oil supertankers and the shipping companies linked to them. The treasury department alleged the vessels “engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime”.

Grainy footage uploaded to X by the attorney general shows US forces landing on the helicopter – in a major escalation of Trump’s pressure campaign

• US politics live – latest updates

US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro.

The US president confirmed the operation on Wednesday, saying: “We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually.”

Bolsonaro was under house arrest for masterminding coup to stop 2022 election winner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking office

Brazil’s former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been arrested at his villa in the capital, Brasília​, amid suspicions he was poised to abscond to a foreign embassy to avoid going to prison for masterminding a military coup.

In a brief statement, federal police confirmed officers had executed a preventive arrest warrant at the request of the supreme court. The 70-year-old politician was taken to a federal police base, 7 miles from the presidential palace he occupied from 2019 until 2022, when he lost the election and tried to launch a military coup.

The former president’s far-right supporters have discovered a new interest in prison conditions as incarceration looms

He fought the law and the law won.

Two months after receiving a 27-year sentence for trying to “annihilate” Brazil’s democratic institutions, former president Jair Bolsonaro finally looks jail-bound.

London mayor says government should stay true to its beliefs and face down those who claim net zero adds to cost of living

Keir Starmer’s government has shown a lack of confidence that it has the answers to the country’s problems, the mayor of London has said, as he called on the chancellor to back green investment in this month’s budget.

Speaking on the eve of a summit of world mayors in Rio de Janeiro, Sadiq Khan said the Treasury should be more supportive of the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, in his pursuit of the government’s target of an 81% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.