Global News Podcast - US seizes oil tanker off Venezuelan coast

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela amid escalating tensions. President Trump said it was done for "very good reason" but Caracas accused Washington of "blatant theft" and "international piracy". Also: María Corina Machado arrives in Norway for her Nobel Peace Prize; the latest on Ukraine peace talks; we hear from Palestinians as severe storms hit Gaza; scientists shed light on the discovery of fire; Nicolas Sarkozy's new book on his experience in prison; Italian cuisine gets the UNESCO stamp of approval; film critics are panned in the digital age; and would you hand over your social media history for a trip to the US?The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Chris Barrow, and in the early hours of the 11th of December, these are our main stories. Venezuela has accused the United States of blatant theft and piracy after US troops seized an oil tanker off the country's coast. Meanwhile, Venezuela's opposition leader, Maria Carina Machado, has appeared publicly for the first time in 11 months after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Also in this podcast, tourists could be asked to provide five years' worth of their social media history to enter America.

There is an underlying intention to monitor and restrict travellers to the US that are not aligned with the ideology of the current administration. And researchers in Britain make a significant discovery. This is huge because it transforms what we think about early Neanderthals and their abilities to create fire. For months, the Trump administration has been pressurizing Venezuela's president, accusing Nicolas Maduro of being complicit in the drugs trade and blaming him for the large number of Venezuelan migrants entering the U.S. Warships have been moved to within striking distance of the mainland and several strikes have destroyed boats that are alleged to have been transporting drugs.

Now, in the latest escalation, Donald Trump made this announcement. We've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker very large. Largest one ever seized, actually. It was seized for very good reason. The White House then released a 45-second video showing military helicopters approaching the tanker, then troops descend from ropes and board the vessel. The ship is accused of transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. Our Washington correspondent Nomya Iqbal told us more.

Trump didn't go into many details on the matter. He said, to quote him, it was an interesting day. He said that more news would come out, but he didn't offer a specific deadline. Now, we know that the administration has been targeting alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean since September, characterising it as the US being in an armed conflict with drug cartels. And then over the last month, the administration has built up military force in the region. We saw the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier sent to the Caribbean. And this is the latest move in terms of Venezuela. There are those who view the Trump administration as being after regime change.

And that's certainly, you know, is something that Donald Trump has even suggested that he wants Maduro to go quietly. Venezuela, we know, has the world's largest proven all reserves, as has his long coastline in the Caribbean Sea. It's a vital sea lane for U.S. goods that travel through the Panama Canal. And there is this belief that regime change for US and European corporations could unlock vast wealth. And I should add, this is all happening as Venezuela's opposition leader, Maria Carina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, is officially accepting that prize. And she has been pitching a post-Moduro future to US investors. The Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said there won't be a regime change. called for an end to the illegal and brutal interventionism of the United States.

Caracas has accused Washington of blatant theft after the seizure. Our South America correspondent Ione Wells has this assessment. The Maritime Risk Company, Vanguard Tech, has identified this as an oil tanker, known as Skipper, which it said was sanctioned by the United States for carrying Venezuelan oil exports. Now, while it isn't unprecedented for tankers to be seized because of sanctions around the world, this does certainly suggest new efforts from the US's perspective to potentially go after Venezuelan oil. Donald Trump was asked in a press conference what will now happen to that oil on the sea's tanker and he says, well, we'll keep it, I guess. Now Venezuela has some of the

world's largest proven oil deposits in the world. The US has sent this huge military deployment to the Caribbean in the past two months. As you mentioned, it has carried out dozens of strikes on alleged drug trafficking vessels killing at least 83 people. It says this military campaign is to tackle drug trafficking, but Venezuela believes this is about the US trying to grab Venezuelan oil. Certainly, this is a view shared, including by some Venezuelans who aren't particularly fans of the government, but certainly do, are skeptical of the US's goals in the region. Now, before this seizure was announced, Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro had said in a public speech on Wednesday, again calling for peace in the region, but saying that anyone who wants

Venezuelan oil must respect the law and that he wouldn't want Venezuela to turn into what he described as an oil colony. Ione Wells. When the announcement was made that the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Carina Machado was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, she was in hiding and barred from travelling out of the country. But she escaped and has finally managed to make her way to Norway. She arrived in Oslo hours after the official ceremony, her daughter picked up the prize. People gathered outside Miss Machado's hotel and they've been singing and chanting

freedom and bravery. The crowd cheered when, after not being seen in public for nearly a year, she stepped out onto the balcony of the Grand Hotel. Ms. Machado waved and sang along with the crowd before going back inside, where she met our correspondent Lucy Hawkins. When she came into the room, she greeted me with a hug and a smile. She is absolutely thrilled to be here, as you can imagine. months in hiding in Venezuela, where she said she has had no physical contact with people. So it felt like now she can't stop touching people, touching her daughter, her mother,

her children who are here, who she hasn't seen for so long, going outside to greet the crowd, so many friends and supporters were there as well. So she felt incredibly moved by this entire experience. And one of the things I also asked her is just what has been through over the past few days. And there are lots of different stories. it's kind of the buzz in Oslo because there's been the big banquet tonight everyone talking about her escape

clearly quite dangerous she's considered a fugitive by the Venezuelan government so faces arrest if she goes back she was worried always about being disappeared in Venezuela but there are some reports saying that she had to go through 10 military checkpoints she wore a wig

a disguise she got a fishing boat to Kurosau where she then in a complicated headed way, got a private jet all the way here to Norway. Quite a few stories going around about how she actually got her. I asked her about that and she wasn't keen to comment, other than to say she was very grateful for all the people who risked their lives so that she could be here today.

Lucy Hockings in Oslo. Can you remember what you posted on social media five years ago? Well, the United States wants to know. A new proposal from the White House would require tourists from dozens of countries to submit five years' worth of their social media history as a condition of entry to the United States. Farsha Aalji is a U.S. immigration lawyer. It's also about the ideology that one has.

So we think that there is an underlying intention to broaden this to basically monitor and restrict travelers to the U.S. that are not aligned with the ideology of the current administration. Our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman is in Washington. The US is a destination for millions of European tourists every year. Most don't need a visa, instead filling in an online waiver form. But the Trump administration's proposals could make coming to America a far more arduous process. So I've just gone through the first couple of pages on the current Esther website

where you have to put in your passport details and then you get to this page where it asks you for some basic personal information, contact details, and then this, social media, asking for Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, if you have it. But crucially, this is all optional. What would change under the new proposals is that would become mandatory, and you would have to put details for the last five years. In addition, applicants could also have to supply phone numbers and email addresses for up to the last 10 years, family member names, and potentially even biometrics, photo, and fingerprints, though it's not clear how these would be gathered.

Asked by the BBC about the proposals, Mr. Trump said tonight it was about stricter vetting. We just want people to come over here and save. We want safety. We want security. We want to make sure we're not letting the wrong people come into our country. The U.S. has for years required social media details for some types of visas, but the Trump administration has broadened its use, including for student visas when it said officials could look for what they called

indications of hostility towards the culture or government of the US. It comes ahead of a bumper year for travel to the US, which is co-hosting the World Cup. These are still proposals, but they amount to a far more invasive series of checks than now.

A move the administration says is to protect liberties at home, but adding to the scrutiny in crossing America's borders. Tom Bateman. An update now on the Ukraine Peace Talks, It's from Donald Trump speaking in the White House, and in it he doesn't sound particularly positive

about a phone call with the leaders of Britain, Germany and France. Well, I think we had some little disputes about people, and we're going to see how it turns out. And we said before we go to a meeting, we want to know some things, you know. They would like us to go to a meeting over the weekend in Europe and we'll make a determination, depending on what they come back with. We don't want to be wasting time.

Sometimes you have to let people fight it out, and sometimes you don't. But the problem with letting people fight it out is you're losing thousands of people a week. It's ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous. The U.S. President was speaking after Ukrainian officials said they'd submitted their proposals to Washington for ending the war, which included revisions to an initial US plan, which would have required Ukraine to surrender uncaptured land to Russia. From Washington, here's our North America correspondent, Sean Dilley. US-brokered peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia appear to be in something of a holding pattern with no sign of an agreement about the future of land seized by President Putin's army.

In public, Germany, France and the UK have praised President Trump's leadership and efforts to secure peace. In private, European leaders have been lobbying the United States about widespread perceptions that an earlier draft peace agreement asked too much of Ukraine. Last month, US officials engaged in meetings with Ukrainian and European counterparts in Geneva, prompting further talks between Ukraine and the United States, described by US negotiators, as very productive. Now, though, it seems, President Trump is frustrated. He told reporters at the White House, his allies wanted to hold a meeting in Europe this weekend.

He said the US would decide whether to attend based on, in his words, what they come back with. Sean Dilley, the discovery of fire is one of the main things that shaped humanity. From forming social groups to early religious beliefs, it's played a part in almost everything. And after finding a Stone Age lighter at a site in southern England, scientists from London's British Museum now think it happened 350,000 years earlier than previously thought. Professor Nick Ashton is curator of Paleolithic Collection, at the museum. He brought the artefacts into the BBC and showed them to my colleague Paul Henley. First of all, we have these heat-shattered hand axes. I'm just pulling up one now. And here you can

see the pop marking and the crazing on the surface of the flint and it's actually shattered. And that's caused by high heat. It looks very like a heavy oyster shell, actually, and you can see it split through. Yeah, the colouration, that sort of grey colouration, a little bit like an oyster shell, but you can see the heat shattering and the pot marking on that surface, which shows its classic signs of heating. And these small blackish fragments that you've got alongside? Yep, they're the second part of the evidence, and these are tiny fragments, literally sort of fingernail size, tiny fragments of iron pyrite, and iron pyrite can be struck

against splint to create sparks, and sparks if you have the right tinder, will ignite, and then you have a flame. How can you know that these items were not affected by, say, wildfires, which must have existed then? So the third part of the evidence is heated sediment, and we found a isolated patch, which has a reddened colour colour. It's a bit like a terracotta pot or a garden flower pot. And initially we thought, yes, this looks as though it's been heated, but we had to do geochemical tests to actually demonstrate this was the case. And that's why it's taken so long to actually prove. These tests are things like changes in the magnetic properties of the clay, and the

magnetics also show repeated use of fire in that one area. Lightning may occasionally strike twice in the same place, but it's unlikely to strike multiple times. Because presumably early humans learnt of the usefulness of fire if they, I don't know, pounced on a lightning strike and kept the flame burning, they'll have discovered the importance for cooking and for heat. But how do you think they got to setting up a fire, striking a flame themselves? I think we have to look at this sort of, you know, deep period of time and the multiple generations of people experimenting by chance, a huge amount of experimentation, some of which may not have taken off, and then one maverick in the corner suddenly said, look, how about

this? And what do you think the primary use was? So I think apart from warmth and apart from protection, I think the primary use and the really important use is cooking. and this transforms their lives. I like the idea of The Maverick in the corner. That was Professor Nick Ashton from the British Museum, speaking to my colleague Paul Henley. This is the Global News Podcast, and just a reminder, we're now on YouTube.

Covering a new story in-depth every weekday, just search for BBC News, click on the logo, and then choose podcasts and Global News Podcasts. Still to come, though, in this episode... There's a lot of sort of, like, faux, fake critics slash influencers that don't really have the training or the verbiage or anything to be talking about our films, and I think that's a shame. The death of the film critic, why people prefer to get their film reviews from social media.

How do you future proof of business when you can't predict what's coming next, and change is taking place at break next speed? I'm Chip Klinexel, host of Resilient Edge, a business vitality podcast, podcast Hayden presented by Deloitte. Decision making nowadays, I would say, is much, much harder than it was maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago. Jan Gilg from SAP sees it everywhere, the complexity, the pressure, the stakes. Here's what I discovered about transformation.

The companies that will thrive aren't trying to predict the future. They're building something more powerful. The way we create value is evolved. It used to be around how do we create more efficient and more standardized processes. Now it's about how to we use AI in a more meaningful way to do that. How does data play a huge role in enabling AI to create value? Vadi Narasem-Hmurdi from Deloitte has watched this evolution across hundreds of transformations. The rules of business are being rewritten in real time.

It's almost like a digital brain for your business. So we really talk about autonomous business processes rather than just automating business processes. That's not just clever technology. It's a fundamental reimagining of how business. We have a whole framework around vision to value. You're investing a lot of money in this transformation journey.

You really want to understand how to plan it. Futureproofing is about connecting your strategic vision and the value you actually deliver. So how do winning companies stay focused while everything shifts around them? Find out by listening to

NT plus OPE equals EOP, the first episode of Resilient Edge wherever you get your podcast. You'll have to listen if you want to find out what NT plus OPE equals EOP means. It'll be live. changing. I promise. A severe winter storm has hit Gaza, where most of the residents are displaced and living

intense. Forecasts last for several days. The risk of flooding means that up to a third of Gaza's residents may require winter shelter. The Israeli military body, which controls the border crossings, says it's working on a response. We've been sent these messages from people across the Gaza strip. Thank you very much for reaching out. It's right now, it is raining cats and dogs here in Gaza. I don't know if you can hear it in the background, but it's really heavy, it's really windy, and the thunder's really heavy. When we talk about Gaza, as we are starting a new chapter of tragedy right now, hundreds of thousands of people are living in tents and in temporary shelters made out of

nylon and this is something from this weather it's like literally people are sinking in the tents it's very cold in front of my eyes like the streets are completely destroyed full of water destruction around me it rains heavily here in Gaza and people they are living inside and surrounded by water everything is destroyed the infrastructure is completely completely destroyed. The water is running in the streets. It's been three years now. They are living inside tents and even in destroyed houses without electricity, without water, without any source of heating. I'm speaking to you as the storm has truly begun to creep into the sky of Gaza. The collapse of thunder and flashes of lightning closely resemble the sounds of explosions

that our children haven't yet been able to forget. And the storm is tearing tents apart, leaving those who are inside, unable even to escape or to find a protection. There's no shelter for people to seek refuge from this storm. And here in Gaza, I think we're not yet prepared well for the winter season. How can we as devastated people face the storm of winter before we have recovered from the storm of war? Now next, Nicholas Sarkozy became the first president in modern French history to be sent to prison.

He was given a five-year sentence in September for allowing his aides to seek money for a presidential election campaign from the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In the end, Mr. Sarkozy served just 20 days in silence, but that hasn't stopped him writing a 216-page book about his ordeal behind bars. It's called Diary of a Prisoner. Our Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield told us more. It's La Sante Prison. It's a very old prison.

It's a kind of Victorian-era prison. It's been done up recently, so it's not as terrible as it has been in the past, but it is overcrowded. That is very much part of the picture here. Now, Nicolas Sarkozy was in a special wing, next to cells where there were. rapists, dangerous Islamists and so on, but he never saw them, because when you're in that bit of the prison, you can't see anyone, but he could hear them. One of the things he says over and again in the book is how it's the noises at night, which were the most frightening and unsettling. One of the people on his wing chanting and rattling the metal plate

against the rails and all the sort of stuff, and the lights coming on in the middle of the night suddenly for no reason. One thing that got him through this was his daily round of exercise in the tiny gym where you could go and do his running on a machine. But, I mean, the book is not a complaint. Very deliberately, Sarkozy is taking the high ground. He had some very spiritual moments, he says, having conversation with the chaplain every Sunday. He's very full of praise for the staff,

who treated him with great respect and professionalism and so on. And that's very much the pitch of the book. It's a man rising above it all. You would not be doing himself any favours if he came out complaining. That's not what he's doing. Hugh Schofield. If you're thinking of going to see a film, and you want to know whether it's worth two hours of your time, you can get advice from lots of different places, audience reviews, online, social media videos, and sometimes simply just good old word of mouth. Once or so that we're all apparently resorting to less is professional film critics.

In the US, a large number of critics are being made redundant, leading to what's being described as a crisis in criticism. Tom Brooke reports from New York. Everybody on your left. This week, American cinemas will be showing a new release. Hamnet, an adaptation of an historical novel on William Shakespeare's family. What do you wish to do, Hamlet? I shall be one of father's players. Moviegoers will be going to see the film influenced by word of mouth, advertising, and by what they have read online.

Back in analogue times, it was newsprint and the sacred words that film critics wrote, which held sway and guided moviegoers. But that has changed. Critics and newspapers and other media outlets face possible extinction. Alyssa Wilkinson at the New York Times is one of America's top film critics. This year has been pretty rough on the full-time film critics in America in particular. A lot of people have lost their jobs. New York's Museum of the Moving Image recently held a special panel discussion on the so-called film

criticism crisis. Participating were top critics who recently lost their jobs. One of them, Richard Lawson, from Vanity Fair, was Chief Film Critic for 12 years. It's a really big problem. I think there is something important about people being able to make a living doing it because that means they can see more. They have more time to really devote their passion to it, which helps everyone.

So I'm nervous. I don't see a lot of the jobs that are going away coming back. Outside this New York cinema, filmgoers don't appear that concerned. Many don't read traditional film reviews, relying instead on TikTok and different social media. media and other sources to determine what films they will go and see. People's recommendations online, like Instagram reviews and stuff like that. I think critics just have a lot less influence than they do in general in all fields.

But Michael Koreski, senior curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image, who brought the panel discussion together, fervently believes film criticism is a vital and necessary art. I think good art criticism is so essential. to understanding and appreciating art, one can't really live without the other. Defenders of traditional film criticism will argue that it's being marginalized because the claim is made that we live in an age when the characteristics of a critic, which include knowledge, expertise, and independence of thought, are not valued as much as they once were.

Alyssa Wilkinson again. Criticism complicates art, right? It tells you that there are shades of meaning, that there's a range of reactions that you can have to work of art. Even that different people can have different reactions to a work of art, that we don't all have to have the same kind of response to art. And that scares people. That scares people in power.

That scares people who would prefer for us to all kind of be uniform in our reaction to the world around us. Filmmakers too are alarmed by the thinning ranks of critics. A few years ago, a low-budget documentary, Detropia, portraying the decline of the city of Detroit, got a lot of recognition. One of its co-directors, Heidi Ewing, claims that only happened because of a film critic.

Our film Dutropia only got a big profile because a critic in the New Yorker decided that he loved the film. And it really was our springboard. And I love film criticism. I don't like being on the negative end of film criticism, but that's part of the game sometimes. They don't like your work.

So I do worry about it. And there's a lot of sort of like faux, fake critics slash influencers that don't really have the train. or the verbiage or anything to be talking about our films, and I think that's a shame. Now the faithful are saying they just can't imagine a world where there is film without film criticism. But the stark reality is that the traditional film critic

in many countries has now become an endangered species. Tom Brooke reporting from New York. Italy has achieved a first by having its entire national cuisine recognized as culturally significant by the United Nations. UNESCO added it to its prestigious, intangible cultural heritage list, which already has Italian favourites that include pizza and espresso. It's thought that this new status will bring more visitors not only to Italy, but also to Italian restaurants around the world.

The newsrooms Alex Ritson went down to one of them, Conchelia, here in central London, to meet the owner. My name is Giovanni. I'm from Pompeii, Vitallone. So you know how to cook Italian properly? Well, I know how to eat Italian food properly, yes, definitely. Are you surprised? I mean, it's an extraordinary thing to have the first country ever to have its entire cuisine listed for this status? No, I'm very happy, actually. Because I think it's something that we have achieved throughout the years

because we are fussy people. We are very fussy in what we're eating. We are very particular. And then we make sure that whoever does the cooking, does it, What's the secret ingredient in Italian food? I think it's love. That's my point. We love to eat.

Giovanni, when people think Italian food, they think pasta, they think pizza. But this is an entire country's cuisine that has been honoured here. But what else is there? Because you are familiar with the most famous dishes that we have exported. But when you go to Italy, you will find in different areas, different ingredients,

So they turn out to have a different dish. So every area in every region in Italy, they work on what they have in the countryside, whatever in the land, whatever in the mountain, whatever they see, and they work on that ingredients to make a dish. So instead of having just pizza and pasta, you have in a different area,

you won't see even a pizza or you won't see even a pasta maybe, but you will see something different. Can I ask some of your diners why they like Italian, Yes, please. Excuse me. Alex Ritson from the BBC. Why do you like Italian food? Well, I'm actually unbiased because I'm originally from the northwest of Italy, the Turin area. And my town is actually a strong sort of gastro-culinary tourist resort. But because Italy is very, very sort of wide-ranging when it comes to 22 different regions, each of which has got its own

specialities, I'm very keen to try this type of cuisine, which is more from the south part of the country. Madam, why do you like Italian food? I love the simplicity of Italian food. I love the fresh ingredients, fresh pasta, fresh tomatoes, a little bit of oregano on there. Don't need anything else. Can we go down to the kitchen, please? Oh, hello, hello.

So you're the chef? Yes. What's your name? What's the secret of running a really good Italian restaurant? Tomato sauce. Oh, okay. That simple. But it's not that simple.

It has to be cooking, like, ours. There's different ways of cooking tomato sauce. They are, they are. What's your favourite Italian food? It's very difficult. There are so many of them. Well, I would say just a simple spaghetti aleolio, extra virgin olive oil, garlic and chili.

And one last question, this might be controversial. Yes. What do you make of Hawaiian pizza, a pizza with a pineapple on the top? Oh, dear. It's not Italian. It's more American. What would you do if someone ask for it here? I see it's not on the menu.

If they want it, then we try. We don't like doing it, but you have to please the customer. I did not think that Susan was going to say that, but there you go. That's Susan the chef at Conquilia here in London, ending that report by Alex Ritson. Before we go, in an earlier edition of this podcast, we referred to the creator of the font Calibri, Lucas de Groot, as Danish, when in fact he's Dutch.

We'd like to apologise for the error. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later on. to comment on this podcast and some of the topics we've been covering, do send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.uk. You can find us on X at BBC World Service. Just use the hashtag Global News Pod. This edition was mixed by Louis Griffin.

The producers were Will Chalk and Charles Sanctuary. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Chris Barrow. And until next time, goodbye.