The Headlines - C.I.A. Strikes Inside Venezuela, and U.S. Tells U.N. Agencies to ‘Adapt, Shrink or Die’

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Plus, the mountain climbing brothers trying to rewrite the world's maps.Here’s what we’re covering:C.I.A. Conducted Drone Strike on Port in Venezuela by Julian E. Barnes and Tyler PagerU.S. Kills 2 in Strike in Pacific, as Trump Pressures Venezuela by Eric SchmittRussia Threatens to Toughen Its Stance on Ending the War in Ukraine by Neil MacFarquhar and Ivan NechepurenkoU.S. Pledges $2 Billion for U.N. Aid but Tells Agencies to ‘Adapt, Shrink, or Die’ by Nick Cumming-BruceAs Youth Sports Professionalize, Kids Are Burning Out Fast by Ken BelsonTwins’ Peaks: The Gilbertson Brothers Want to Rewrite Your Country’s Map by Sarah ScolesTune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, December 30th. Here's what we're covering. There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs. They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats and now we hit the area. The Times has learned new details about a U.S. attack in Venezuela from last week

that President Trump has been talked. walking up. People briefed on the strike tell the times that the CIA used a drone to hit a port facility where U.S. officials think the gang Trendi Aragua was storing narcotics and potentially preparing to move drugs onto boats. While the U.S. has been targeting vessels at sea for months, claiming their smuggling drugs, the dock strike marks the first known American operation inside Venezuela. It suggests the Trump administration has launched an aggressive new phase of its pressure campaign against the country's president, Nicholas Maduro. The White House has alleged that there are close ties between Maduro and Trenda Aragua, even though the U.S.'s

own intelligence agencies have cast doubt on those claims. For its part, Maduro's government has not directly commented on the dock strike, but yesterday, Venezuela's interior minister denounced months of, quote, imperial madness, harassment, threats, attacks, piracy, and murders. Meanwhile, the U.S. military carried out another deadly strike yesterday against alleged drug traffickers, hitting a boat in the eastern Pacific. Pentagon officials said Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth directed the attack, which killed two people. They said the boat was traveling along a, quote, known narco-trafficking route. It was the 30th attack of its kind announced by the military since early September.

The strikes, which have killed at least 107 people, have been condemned by legal experts and members of Congress who have called them extrajudicial killings. In Russia, officials are accusing Ukraine of targeting one of Vladimir Putin's homes, saying Ukraine launched a wave of attack drones on Monday near one of Putin's most secretive hideouts. It's one thing to be offensive because they're offensive. It's another thing to attack his house. President Trump said he was very angry about the alleged attack, though Russia has provided no clear-cut evidence that had happened. I mean, you're saying maybe the attack didn't take place it's possible to, I guess,

but President Putin told me this morning it did. Russia's accusation came just after Trump hosted Blodomier Zelensky for talks about a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine. Zelensky called the claims of an attack a complete fabrication and said that Russia had invented it as a pretext to undermine the negotiations. Russian officials have now issued a dramatic threat to harden the country's stance in peace talks and said that their position on previously reached agreements about ending the war would be, quote, revised. In an incident two years ago, Ukraine denied sending a pair of drones that exploded over Putin's residence in the Kremlin,

but U.S. officials determined the country was likely behind it. The Trump administration has announced that it will provide an initial $2 billion for United Nations aid programs in the coming year. That will likely keep the U.S. as the biggest international aid donor, even as President Trump has drastically scaled back funding. Over the last decade, the U.S. regularly used to cover a third or more of the U.N.'s total humanitarian efforts. This year, that dropped to about 15%. Trump has frequently criticized foreign aid as wasteful and rife with fraud, and the new pledge came with a stark warning for the U.N. The State Department told the organization it must cut out what the U.S. called

bureaucratic overhead and ideological creep, and said individual U.N. agencies will need to adapt, shrink, or die. To start, this $2 billion is going to be specifically directed to help 17 countries, grappling with the fallout from wars, famine, and natural disasters. That includes Haiti, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, and more, but leaves out others like Afghanistan and Yemen. Across the globe, international relief agencies are facing a funding crisis, as many other Western governments make cuts too. One former UN humanitarian aid official told the Times, quote, never has the gap between recorded need and available funding been so severe.

Yo, we need to talk about youth traveling sports teams. For some families in the U.S., youth sports have become all-consuming. Listen, a 6 a.m. youth sports tournament on a Saturday will have you starting to root against your kids' team. There are demanding schedules, weekend-long tournaments, even cross-country flights, on top of huge financial investments. The nearest I can figure, we're spending about 25 grand a year on the, you know, a little over 2 grand a month on these sports. And while sports have been shown to help kids build self-esteem and confidence, a growing body of research also shows that kids are burning out fast. Studies have shown that pressure from overbearing coaches and parents can stunts. children's emotional well-being, and that overtraining young athletes is leading to injuries.

Demanding coaches and parents screaming on the sidelines aren't new, obviously, but the pressure has only ramped up as a growing number of kids' sports leagues are now being run as for-profit businesses. In response to the new intensity, there's now a broad movement to increase training for coaches, so they're more informed on mental health issues. In the last few years, one expert told the times, seven states have begun requiring coaches to receive mental health training. And some leagues are taking it into their own hands, bringing in consultants to talk to parents about their role in the potential burnout. One former MLB player who gives these talks told the times, quote, you have a lot of parents who are sports fans who want to watch youth sports the same way

they watch pro sports. He said parents need to take a step back and help turn down the pressure. And finally, years ago, two mountain climbers, who are twin brothers, set out to climb the highest peak in every state. Once that was done, they started looking at the highest peak in every country. But they had questions about the data. The more mountains they climbed, the more they wondered if the peaks had been measured correctly. So they started a project to check called, Country high points. And in a recent paper, their work established new high points in five countries. To make their measurements, they, along with a few other collaborators, climb with not just food, water, and first aid, but also advanced surveying equipment. Basically, more accurate versions of the GPS installed in smartphones. Where the Find My Phone dot can be accurate down to a few feet, this equipment measures down to the inch. It probably helps that the two brothers are more. mechanical engineers. Their project has now helped fill in or correct the topographical record

in Gambia, Uzbekistan, Togo, Guinea-Bissau, and more. They told the times, quote, our goal in all this is to find the truth. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.