WORLD Radio News - WORLD Radio News: 1-1-26 (1/3)

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

The latest headlines in three minutes from WORLD updated three times throughout the day.Sign-up for the daily Sift email at thesift.org.Support sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth at wng.org/donate.

With World Radio News, I'm Mark Millinger. The House Oversight Committee will hold hearings on the massive Minnesota daycare fraud beginning next week. Among those invited to testify, Minnesota Governor Tim Walls and Attorney General Keith Ellison. The Trump administration says fake daycare schemes run by Somali immigrants defrauded U.S. taxpayers out of millions of dollars. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt says several federal investigations. are underway. People will be in handcuffs as a result of the fraud that Governor Walls has allowed to occur for many, many years. Levitt, talking to Fox and Friends, Walls denies turning a blind eye to the fraud, insisting he's spent years trying to crack down on it. He's also accusing

President Trump of politicizing the issue. The House Judiciary Committee chose New Year's Eve to release the video and transcript of Jack Smith's testimony. Smith is the former special counsel who brought federal charges that led to indictments of President Trump for conspiring to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results and illegally hanging on to classified documents. Smith dropped both cases after Trump's re-election, citing Justice Department policy against the indictment of a sitting president. But in his closed-door testimony in December,

Smith said he had enough evidence to convict Trump. The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine. But the basis for those charges, rests entirely with President Trump and his actions. Smith also pushed back on Republicans who questioned whether the prosecutions were politically motivated. The U.S. military has blown three more suspected drug boats out of the water. Previous strikes in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea have been aimed pressuring Venezuela and its leader, Nicolas Maduro, to stop trafficking drugs.

The Trump administration's also turning up the heat in another way, announcing new sanctions on Venezuela, Day, Oklahoma Republican Senator Mark Wayne Wollin. We were trying to do is give Maduro an opportunity to leave. The new sanctions target four companies and four oil tankers that the White House says are part of a shadow fleet fueling Maduro's narco-terror regime. It is day one of 2026, and party goers all over the world turned out to turn the page. Crowds gathered at the River Thames in London for a countdown and fireworks show, Here in the United States, this new year has a special significance.

This year, of course, marks the 250th anniversary of America's founding. Patriotic events are planned throughout the year, including a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this July 4th. For World Radio, I'm Mark Mellinger. For more sound journalism grounded in facts and biblical truth, visit worldradio.news.