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Mar 24, 2026 - World

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified Tuesday in a federal criminal case involving his once-roommate and friend, former Rep. David Rivera, saying during cross-examination that he did not know about Rivera's alleged crimes, CBS News reported. Rivera has been accused of secretly lobbying for the Venezuelan government. Rubio and Rivera had a close relationship in the past. Both are Cuban American immigrants from Miami, and Rivera was with Rubio when he picked out his wife's engagement ring. Rivera stood by Rubio's side as he pushed his political career forward while they both pursued their political ambitions in the Florida House of Representatives. "Rubio described a 2017 meeting with Rivera where he said 'insiders in the regime in Venezuela' had convinced former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step aside, and Rubio said he had no knowledge that Rivera had allegedly been contracted out by a subsidiary of a Venezuelan state oil company to arrange the meeting," according to CBS News.Rubio described his response to the claims that Maduro was planning to step down. "I was skeptical that it was true," Rubio said. "Because we've had so many other people" attempt to do the same thing with "double dealers who were constantly making these claims."Federal prosecutors allege that Rivera and his codefendant Esther Nuhfer sought to influence the first Trump administration to lower political tensions and tone down sanctions on behalf of Maduro and then-Foreign Minister and now interim Venezuelan president Delcy Rodriguez. Rivera and Nuhfer were indicted in 2022 by a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida for failing to register as a foreign agent and money laundering. "Prosecutors allege that the pair were hired in a $50 million contract in exchange for three months of lobbying work in 2017 on behalf of a U.S.-based subsidiary of a Venezuela state oil company, PDVSA, which operates under the name CITGO," CBS News reported.The indictment revealed that both Rivera and Nuhfer were accused of trying to lobby Rubio, who was at the time a Miami Republican senator, and Kellyanne Conway, former White House advisor, on behalf of the Venezuelan government's high ranking leaders. "The attempts to meet Conway were unsuccessful, prosecutors said, but added that the pair did arrange two meetings with Rubio, who is a longtime friend of Rivera's and had been an outspoken critic of the Maduro regime," according to CBS News.This was the first time in more than 40 years that a current Cabinet member was called as a witness in a federal trial, according to The Washington Post.Rubio was asked what he knew about the alleged $50 million contract between Rivera, Nuhfera and a Venezuela oil subsidiary. "I have no such knowledge other than what is in the press and what is in the indictment," Rubio said.

Mar 24, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump claimed to have received a "very big present" from the leaders of Iran.During a Tuesday press conference at the White House, Trump was asked who his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and special envoy Steve Witkoff were negotiating with to end the war with Iran."We killed all their leadership, and then they met to choose new leaders, and we killed all of them," Trump noted. "And now we have a new group, and we can easily do that, but let's see how they turn out."The president claimed that he had accomplished "regime change" in Iran."This is regime change, right?" he said. "They're going to make a deal. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present. And the present arrived today. It was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money.""And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize," he added. "And they gave it to us, and they said they were going to give it. So that meant one thing to me. We're dealing with the right people."Trump said the "present" was not related to Iran's nuclear capabilities."It was oil and gas related," he explained. "And it was a very nice thing they did. But what it showed me is that we're dealing with the right people. Because, you know, you don't know, because the leadership was killed. All gone.""But we're dealing with a group of people that I think turned out. And the present — the gift they made to us was very significant. And they said they were going to do it, and it happened. And they're the only ones that could have done it."

Mar 24, 2026 - World

Marco Rubio welcomes release of Dennis Coyle, who was detained in January last year for violating unspecified lawsAfghanistan’s Taliban authorities have released the American academic Dennis Coyle after holding him for over a year, with the foreign ministry saying the release came on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.A statement from the ministry said the academic researcher had been released in Kabul on Tuesday, following an appeal from his family and after Afghanistan’s supreme court “considered his previous imprisonment sufficient”. Continue reading...

Mar 24, 2026 - World

Donald Trump's improvised comments about Iran while boarding Air Force One on Monday demonstrated his chaotic approach to military strategy — and his apparent blindness to critical consequences unfolding around him, according to a report.The president made a comment revealing that Iran's regional retaliation caught planners of the military action against the country off guard."Look at the way Iran attacked unexpectedly all of those countries surrounding them. That was not supposed to-- nobody was even thinking about it," the president conceded before reasserting without substantiation, "But they wanted to take over the Middle East."The remarks prompted analysis from New Republic correspondent Greg Sargent and Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy.Sargent highlighted the troubling implications on his podcast. "He said no one anticipated that Iran would attack other countries in an effort to widen the war," he commented. "But in saying that, Trump revealed that he didn't anticipate it — which is a striking admission about his own lack of foresight."He continued, "We think this captures something broader. On one front after another, Trump plainly didn't prepare for eventualities that most experts fully did anticipate. So how directly responsible are these failings for what we're seeing right now — that by most indications, the war is getting worse for Trump and the U.S. on many fronts?"Duss responded, "Well, we know that this is going much worse than Donald Trump himself thought it would. We know that Donald Trump does not do the reading. We know that Donald Trump has the attention span of a fly. We know that he just makes stuff up all the time. Trump made this threat over the weekend to bomb power plants — which is clearly a war crime, to attack plants that produce power for civilians. And then I think he woke up and saw that the stock market is in trouble, oil prices are continuing to go higher."Duss dismissed Trump's characterization that the attacks blindsided everyone as fundamentally dishonest."Everyone anticipated this," he stated flatly. "Every one of these countries that Iran has attacked — we should have expected it, whether it's Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, obviously Israel. This is part of Iran's defensive strategy. This is part of how they believe they were creating deterrence."He went on, "So Iran is following through — they have to follow through, in a sense, if they want to make sure that this doesn't happen again in the future. So yes, to answer your question, of course, people knew Iran was going to do this. Again, Donald Trump does not bother to do the reading."

Mar 24, 2026 - World

According to former Defense Secretary Mike Esper, who served in Donald Trump’s first administration, the leadership of Iran is feeling pretty confident about its position after three weeks of having war waged upon them by the president.In a clip shared on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” Esper admitted the Pentagon’s military objectives seem to have been met, but now the hard part begins — and Iran has some leverage to make demands.“In terms of the military objectives that [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen. Dan Caine outlined, you know, taking down the navy, the air force, ballistic missiles production, etc. Degrading the nuclear, they've made incredible progress on those things,” he said before adding the caveat, “I'm not hearing as much about the nuclear, but I think the military objectives are being accomplished.”“Now, of course, it's unclear what the political objectives are," he continued. “The president has moved around and said different things at times, and so it's hard to see what the yardstick is at when it comes to that. At the end of the day, it's going to be the political yardstick that determines, you know, win-loss. You know how much of a victory, whatever the case may be.”“But what's interesting now, I think, is the Iranians. My sense is they survived the decapitation,” he elaborated. “They probably feel like they've taken three weeks of, you know, America's and Israel's best, and they've survived. There's no signs of the regime fracturing.”“I mean, the [director of national intelligence] said that the other day in the hearing,” he pointed out. “And they feel emboldened, so much so that they're making demands as to what it would take to have a negotiated end to the conflict. So they are emboldened.”“I don't see them giving up anytime soon,” he predicted. - YouTube youtu.be