US | DD News

December 24, 2025 10:21 AM

US tells UN it will deprive Venezuela’s Maduro, drug cartel of resources

The United States told the United Nations on Tuesday it will impose and enforce sanctions "to the maximum extent" to deprive Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of resources as Russia warned other Latin American countries could be next. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has for months waged a campaign of deadly strikes against suspected drug trafficking boats off the Venezuelan coast and the Pacific coast of Latin America. He has threatened strikes on Venezuelan land. "The single mo...

December 22, 2025 8:47 AM

Ukraine says latest peace talks with US, Europe productive

Ukraine's talks with US and European partners over the past three days in the US state of Florida were ‘productive and constructive,’ Ukraine's top peace negotiator Rustem Umerov said. In a Facebook post, Umerov said discussions between Ukraine and the US focused on further development of a 20-point peace plan, aligning positions on multilateral and US security guarantee frameworks for Ukraine, and further development of an economic and prosperity plan, Xinhua news agency reported. The sid...

December 13, 2025 6:00 PM

US, Ukraine to discuss ceasefire in Berlin ahead of European summit

Germany will host U.S. and Ukrainian delegations over the weekend for talks on a ceasefire in Ukraine, ahead of a summit with European leaders and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Berlin on Monday, a German official said on Saturday. A U.S. official said overnight that President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were travelling to Germany for talks involving Ukrainians and Europeans. The choice to send Witkoff, who has led negotiations with Ukraine and Russia rega...

December 12, 2025 1:19 PM

Can Trump invalidate Biden actions recorded by autopen?

U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed, without evidence, that some actions by former President Joe Biden were invalid because he signed them using an autopen, including appointments to the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. Below is a look at the controversy and legality of the device. WHAT IS AN AUTOPEN? It is a mechanical device that replicates a signature with a pen or other writing device and is used by government officials, celebrities, business leaders and members of Congress. It a...

December 12, 2025 1:22 PM

US strategy shakeup asks tough questions of Germany and Japan

As the final session began at last month's Berlin security conference, U.S. ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said he looked forward to the day when Germany would volunteer to take over the role of Supreme Allied Commander Europe, the officer who would lead the alliance in a major conflict. It prompted some consternation on the panel, and even more beyond. The senior German speaker, NATO Lieutenant General Wolfgang Wien, Berlin’s military representative to the EU, was taken aback. While Ge...

December 12, 2025 1:08 PM

Trump plan to require social media handles from Europeans and other expedited travelers sparks pushback

A U.S. travel association, a top Democrat, and would-be travelers from Europe and Australia are bristling at President Donald Trump's new plan to require Europeans and other visitors using the visa waiver program to provide social media handles used over the past five years. The change, announced in a U.S. government notice this week and effective February 8, would require travelers from countries in the visa waiver program to submit the social media data. Applicants for immigrant and non-immig...

December 12, 2025 12:57 PM

Trump administration unlawfully cancelled disaster prevention program, US judge rules

A federal judge ruled on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration unlawfully terminated a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant program designed to protect states and communities against natural disasters before they occur. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston sided with 20 mostly Democratic-led states in finding that the Republican president's administration lacked authority to end the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program and use money Congre...

December 12, 2025 12:53 PM

Trump threatens funding for states over AI regulations

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he will withhold federal broadband funding from states whose laws to regulate artificial intelligence are judged by his administration to be holding back American dominance in the technology. "We want to have one central source of approval," Trump told reporters, flanked by top advisers, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, arguing that 50 different regulatory regimes hamper the growth of the nascent industry. "To win, United States AI compani...

December 12, 2025 9:50 AM

US offers ‘free economic zone’ in east if Ukraine cedes Donbas, Zelenskiy says

Ukraine has presented the U.S. with a revised 20-point framework to end its war with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday, adding that the issue of ceding territory remains a major sticking point in negotiations. Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said the U.S. is offering as a compromise to create a "free economic zone" in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas which Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede. "They see it as Ukrainian troops withdrawing from th...

December 11, 2025 12:58 PM

US House committee approves Africa trade bill, no mention of South Africa exclusion for now

A U.S. House committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would renew for another three years Washington's preferential trade programme for Africa, and there was no immediate mention of excluding South Africa as the U.S. trade envoy had said was possible. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a law first enacted in 2000 to provide duty-free access to the U.S. market for eligible Sub-Saharan countries and products, expired in September and hundreds of thousands of African jobs are estima...