22/12/2025

MONDAY | DEC 22, 2025

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US intercepts second oil tanker off Venezuela

Miami talks urge restraint in Gaza

MIAMI: The United States was joined on Saturday by Qatar, Egypt and Turkiye in urging parties in the Gaza ceasefire to uphold their obligations and exercise restraint. Top officials from each nation met special envoy Steve Witkoff to review the first stage of the ceasefire that came into effect on Oct 10. “We reaffirm our full commitment to the entirety of the president’s 20-point peace plan and call on all parties to uphold their obligations, exercise restraint and cooperate with monitoring arrangements,” said a statement posted by Witkoff on X. Their meeting came amid continuing strains on the agreement. Gaza’s civil defence said six people were killed on Friday in Israeli shelling of a shelter. That brought to 400 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the deal took effect. Israel has also repeatedly accused Hamas of violating the truce, with the military reporting three soldiers killed in the territory since October. Saturday’s statement cited progress yielded in the first stage of the peace agreement, including expanded humanitarian assistance, return of hostage bodies, partial force withdrawals and a reduction in hostilities. It called for “the near-term establishment and operationalisation” of a transitional administration which is due to happen in the second phase of the agreement, and said consultations would continue in the coming weeks over its implementation. Under the deal’s terms, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, an interim authority is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas, and an international stabilisation force is to be deployed. On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed hope that countries would contribute troops for the stabilisation force, but also urged the disarmament of Hamas, warning the process would unravel unless that happened. – AFP MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide said yesterday that he was sure the chances of peace in Ukraine were not improved by changes to US proposals made by the Europeans and Ukraine. Yuri Ushakov said: “This is not a forecast. I am sure that the proposals that the Europeans and Ukrainians have made or are trying to make do not improve the document and do not improve the possibility of achieving long-term peace.” European and Ukrainian negotiators have been discussing changes to US proposals for an agreement to end the nearly four-year old war, though it is unclear what changes have been made to the original proposals. US negotiators met Russian officials in SAN FRANCISCO: A huge electricity outage hit San Francisco on Saturday, leaving 130,000 residents without power and prompting city authorities to ask residents to stay home. Large parts of the West Coast tech hub, which has a population of more than 800,000 people, were plunged into darkness with disruptions to public transport and many traffic lights not working on a busy shopping weekend. The city’s mayor told residents to stay off roads if possible, adding some traffic signals were out and authorities had sent police and traffic officers to manage intersections. “We’ve got rain coming, it’s night time. If you don’t need to go out, stay home,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said. – AFP ‘CHANGES SLOWING UKRAINE PEACE PROCESS’ Florida on Saturday. – Reuters SAN FRANCISCO HIT BY POWER OUTAGE

o Act of international piracy, says Caracas

For now, the oil market is well supplied and there are millions of barrels of oil on tankers off the coast of China waiting to offload. If the embargo stays in place for some time, then the loss of nearly a million barrels a day of crude supply is likely to push oil prices higher. Since the US imposed energy sanctions on Venezuela in 2019, traders and refiners buying Venezuelan oil have resorted to a “shadow fleet” of tankers that disguise their location and to vessels sanctioned for transporting Iranian or Russian oil. The dark or shadow fleet is considered exposed to possible punitive measures from the US, shipping analysts have said. Centuries , which loaded in Venezuela under the false name “Crag” and is part of the dark fleet, was carrying some 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan Merey crude oil bound for China, according to internal documents from state oil company PDVSA, the oil’s seller. The vessel departed Venezuelan waters on Wednesday after being briefly escorted by the Venezuelan navy, according to company sources and satellite images obtained by TankerTrackers.com. – Reuters

British maritime risk management company Vanguard said the vessel was believed to be the Panama-flagged Centuries , which was intercepted east of Barbados in the Caribbean Sea. Jeremy Paner, a partner at Washington, DC, law firm Hughes Hubbard and a former OFAC investigator, said the vessel has not been sanctioned by the US “The seizure of a vessel that is not sanctioned by the US marks a further increase in Trump’s pressure on Venezuela,” Paner said. “It also runs counter to Trump’s statement that the US would impose a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers.” While many vessels picking up oil in Venezuela are under sanctions, others transporting the country’s oil and crude from Iran and Russia have not been sanctioned, and some companies, particularly Chevron, transport Venezuelan oil in their own authorised ships. China is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude, which accounts for roughly 4% of its imports, with shipments in December on track to average more than 600,000 barrels per day, analysts have said.

WASHINGTON: The United States has intercepted an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela in international waters, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Saturday. It’s the second time in recent weeks that the United States has gone after a tanker near Venezuela amid a large US military build-up in the region. The Venezuelan government called the tanker interception a “serious act of international piracy”. Venezuela “denounces and rejects the theft and hijacking of a new private vessel transporting oil, as well as the forced disappearance of its crew, committed by military personnel of the United States of America in international waters,” the statement said. Caracas said the actions will be reported to the UN Security Council, other organisations and governments.

A US military helicopter hovering over the Centuries east of Barbados in the Caribbean Sea on Saturday. – DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY HANDOUT/REUTERSPIC

BR I E F S

Trump missing from Epstein files WASHINGTON: The thousands of documents released by the US Justice Department related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were filled with the names of some of the world’s most famous people, including former President Bill Clinton, but there was one notable exception: President Donald Trump. Republicans and did little to defuse a scandal threatening the party ahead of midterm elections next year.

entrepreneur Richard Branson and the former Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson. Many of the photos were undated and provided without context, and none of those figures have been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The scandal surrounding Epstein has become a political wound for Trump, who for years had promoted conspiracy theories about Epstein to his supporters. The material released included evidence from several investigations into Epstein, along with photos of Clinton. But they appeared to include few if any photos of Trump or documents mentioning him, despite Trump and Epstein’s well-publicised friendship in the 1990s and early 2000s before they had a falling out and before Epstein’s first conviction in 2008. Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing and has denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes. – Reuters

The absence of references to Trump was notable given that pictures and documents related to him have trickled out of previous Epstein releases for years. Trump’s name appeared in flight manifests listing passengers on Epstein’s private plane that were part of a first batch of Epstein material the Justice Department released in February, for instance. The release also contained other items of note, including a complaint accusing Epstein of involvement in“child pornography”that was filed with the FBI in 1996, long before law enforcement began looking into his misconduct. Celebrities who appeared in photos made available as part of Friday’s release include the late news anchor Walter Cronkite, singers Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, British

The department released only a partial tranche of the Epstein-related documents on Friday with much of the information within them redacted, citing the extensive effort required in reviewing the materials and the need to protect Epstein’s victims. Trump’s administration was attempting to comply with a law passed by Congress in November that mandated the disclosure of all Epstein files, despite Trump’s months-long effort to keep them sealed. The extensive redactions and the limited number of documents released angered some