Reuters World News - Venezuela latest, Trump on midterms and Yemen

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

President Donald Trump announces a deal worth $2 billion to export Venezuelan crude to the U.S., as exiled opposition leader Maria Corina Machado vows to return and contest elections. The White House says Trump is discussing options for acquiring Greenland, including military options, drawing objections from Denmark and Europe. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveils a new A.I. chip that can do more computing with less power. Recommended Read At 92, judge who defied Trump brings Torah ethos to Maduro trial. Find our Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices.  You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Wednesday, January 7th. Today, Trump says Venezuelan oil will be shipped to the US, with the proceeds managed by him. Venezuela's exiled opposition leader Maria Corino Machado pledges to return to hold elections. Trump says if Republicans don't win the midterms, he'll be impeached. And Invidia announces major advances in the next generation. of AI chips. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week.

Caracas and Washington have reached a deal to export up to $2 billion worth of Venezuelan crude to the United States. President Trump announced the news in a social media post saying that the profits from the oil will be managed by him for the benefit of both nations. But there could be a spanner in the works. Venezuela's main opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, is vowing to return to her home country, declaring her movement ready to win a free election. I mean, January 3rd will go down in history as the day justice defeated a tyranny.

It's a milestone, and it's not only huge for the Venezuelan people on our future, I think it's a huge step for humanity, for freedom and human dignity. The Nobel Peace Prize winner going on Fox News to praise U.S. President Donald Trump for toppling her foe, Nicholas Maduro. That's despite Trump appearing happy for now to work with interim president, Delci Rodriguez, a diehard Maduro ally. The oil agreement with her administration is a strong sign that they're listening to Trump's demand to open up to U.S. oil companies or risk more military intervention. So how might the issue of oil impact what happens next? Carmel Crimmons, host of our sister podcast, Voiters Econ World, explores that very question in a new episode out today. So this move to send Venezuela oil to the US is big politically, but it's small economically.

Venezuela has the world's largest crude reserves, but it accounts for less than 1% of global supply. Its production has dropped sharply from its heyday in the 1970s, and that's due to decades of neglect and the exodus of many foreign oil companies. In fact, Chevron is the only US company that operates there at the moment under a special agreement with DC. So getting this Venezuelan crew to the US would likely mean reallocating cargoes originally bound for China. They're the top buyer of Venezuelan oil. But analysts have said that it will take years and billions of dollars of investment to significantly revive output. The White House says Trump is again looking at ways for the US to acquire Greenland and isn't ruling out using the military. Greenland and Denmark have firmly rejected the

idea, and European leaders warn any US move would rattle the NATO alliance. A senior US official says the options on the table range from buying Greenland to a free association deal. For the first time, the United States is backing security guarantees for Ukraine, alongside a coalition of mostly European nations, in the event Russia attacks. again. Here's US Special Envoy, Steve Whitkoff, at a summit in Paris, dubbed the Coalition of the Willing. Those security protocols are meant to, A, deter any attacks, any further attacks in Ukraine, and B, if there are any attacks, they're meant to defend, and they will do both. The plan includes a proposed U.S.-led ceasefire monitoring mechanism, which officials say would

likely involve drones and satellites, not troops. Kiev says it's grateful for the progress, but that the issue of territorial concessions remains unresolved. Markets are gearing up for the U.S. Jobs Report this week. Here's Annis Mansky from our sister markets pod morning bid to tell us what they're expecting. So investors are going to be looking out today for the ADP private payrolls data and the Joltz data on job openings. And the reason that this is important is that this is going to be the first clean data we're getting on the U.S. employment market since the government shut down. So is this going to massively move the needle in terms of what the Fed does at its next meeting? Probably not. But it is going to provide

more clarity. We saw at the end of last year that there was an uptick in the unemployment rate, but there's a lot of questions about whether that was just an anomaly, whether that was just noisy data. We'll know more about that on Friday when the jobs data comes in, but this is going to give us a bit of a preview. You can catch MorningBid wherever you get your podcasts. Some people want to rewrite the history of January 6th to ignore what we saw with our own eyes. Mississippi Democrat Benny Thompson at a hearing on the January 6th riots, in which lawmakers, like Maryland's Jamie Raskin, accused Republicans of trying to whitewash

history. And the president didn't just free his rioters for doing his. dirty work, he punished law enforcement for doing their jobs. Outside the hearing, Trump's supporters gathered to commemorate five years since the attack on the Capitol. The march was organized by Enrique Tarrio, a former leader of the far-right hard boys group. Tarrio was sentenced to 24 years in prison after being found guilty of helping to plan the January 6th attack, but was one of 1600 pardoned by Trump. A few blocks away, President Trump focused on the future, issuing a warning to GOP lawmakers.

You've got to win the midterms. Because if we don't win the midterms, it's just going to be, I mean, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached. White House correspondent Trevor Honeycutt says it shows Trump is thinking about the stakes in the upcoming congressional elections this year. The president alluded to both his anxieties and what he sees is the opportunities in these upcoming midterm elections. The president in power has lost seats in the House in every midterm elections, such George W. Bush in 2006. So he's aware of that history. And he said at one moment to these Republican lawmakers,

I wish you could explain to me what the hell's going on with the mind of the public. And so as his own public approval has declined around issues around cost of living, you know, the president is clearly cautious about what he thinks the opportunities will be in the midterms. Adding to the strain on House Republicans is the death of California Republican Doug Lamalfa. Even if Republicans were to maintain all the seats that they have in the upcoming elections, right, we're still talking about a caucus that had a 218 to 213 majority. in the House, that's not a lot to work with. You can't lose that many votes before you start actually needing Democrats to vote with

the president on issues. So we really have a situation where the president's agenda is at stake. To Yemen, where the Southern Transitional Council's leader, Adairos al-Zubaydi, has fled to an unknown destination, skipping a flight to Riyadh today, according to the Saudi backed coalition. His disappearance deepens the rift between Saudi Arabia. which backs Yemen's internationally recognized government, and the UAE, which backs Al-Zubaydi's STC,

countries which were once close allies but are now in open rivalry. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced some big advancements in the chipmaker's next generation of AI chip systems. This is completely revolutionary. Huang says it means more data processing in much less time. Our tech reporter, Stephen Nellis, was in Las Vegas for the presentation, and they're here to explain what this could mean for consumers.

A lot of people still think of Nvidia is a chip company, but it's really a supercomputer company at this point. So they actually showed six different chips will come together to form a computer that's about six foot tall and can be linked together into what they call a super pod of more than a thousand of those chips. But I think the key thing that InVideo is really trying to emphasize, actually the practical impact of the supercomputer to the broader world rather than getting into the details of this data, that data or the other,

one-tenth the cost, ten times the output for the same amount of electrical energy going in, which is a big deal because the primary thing at this point that is limiting the development of AI is actually the supply of electricity. But Nvidia is focusing on software too. The big thing they talked about at CES this year was a model for self-driving cars, and this one's called Alpa Mayo, and it's really meant to help bring some of these advances that we've seen in chatbots and reasoning AI models to self-driving cars. One of the things that you consistently see Invidia trying to do is finding the place where the entire AI industry is stuck. And then coming in and putting open source solutions out there to move the industry forward, order to keep selling it a lot of chips.

And today's recommended read is all about the 92-year-old judge who is overseeing the Nicholas Maduro case. An Orthodox Jew with more than three decades on the bench, Judge Alvin Hallstein has ruled against Trump and says his faith impacts his judicial philosophy. There's a link to that in the description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.