The Caribbean country continues to grapple with the cumulative effects of decades-long U.S. sanctions. China has reaffirmed its commitment to providing sustained political and economic support to Cuba, underscoring a long-standing partnership rooted in shared strategic interests and resistance to external pressure.

The pledge comes at a moment of heightened economic strain for Havana, as Cuba continues to grapple with inflation, energy shortages, and the cumulative effects of decades-long U.S. sanctions.

Beijing’s message signals not only solidarity, but a clear intention to remain engaged as a stabilizing partner in Cuba’s development and international positioning.

Chinese officials emphasized the importance of strengthening bilateral cooperation across key sectors, including trade, infrastructure, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology.

The relationship, they noted, is built on principles of sovereignty, non-interference, and mutual respect—language that has become increasingly central to China’s diplomacy with countries facing Western pressure.

C>hina has called for the immediate lifting of the blockade and sanctions on #Cuba, reaffirming its continued support and assistance to the Cuban people.

For Cuba, Chinese support represents both practical assistance and geopolitical reassurance. China is already one of Cuba’s most important economic partners, supplying investment, technology, and concessional financing at a time when access to Western capital markets remains severely constrained.

Continued engagement offers Havana an alternative pathway for development outside U.S.-dominated financial systems. The political dimension of the pledge is equally significant.

By reiterating its backing, Beijing is reinforcing Cuba’s legitimacy on the global stage and signaling opposition to unilateral sanctions as a tool of foreign policy.

This stance aligns with China’s broader efforts to position itself as a champion of multipolarity and defender of developing nations against what it describes as coercive economic practices.

The renewed commitment also reflects China’s expanding presence in Latin America and the Caribbean, where it has deepened ties through trade agreements, infrastructure projects, and diplomatic outreach.

Due to crippling sanctions the USA has illegally placed on Cuba for 64 years its population struggles to now survive.

Yesterday China sent 30,000 tons of rice to assist the Cuban people.

While Beijing maintains that its engagement is purely cooperative and non-ideological, critics in Washington view such partnerships as part of a wider strategic contest for influence in the Western Hemisphere.

For Cuba, however, the calculus is immediate rather than abstract. Reliable partners are essential as the country seeks to stabilize its economy, modernize key industries, and secure energy and food supplies. Chinese backing offers continuity at a time when uncertainty dominates global markets and geopolitical alignments are shifting.

Beijing’s pledge does not alter the fundamental challenges Cuba faces, but it reinforces a critical reality: Havana is not isolated. In an increasingly fragmented global order, alliances built on shared political outlooks and strategic necessity are gaining renewed importance.

As global power continues to diffuse away from traditional Western centers, China’s sustained engagement with Cuba stands as another marker of a world where economic and political support no longer flows from a single direction—and where smaller states are navigating new options within an evolving international landscape.

The US immigration agency whose officers have been involved in a fatal shooting in Minneapolis has said it is sending agents to help support American security operations during the Winter Olympics, which start in Italy on 6 February.

Confirmation that a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would play a role came from several US departments, after reports prompted alarm and anger in Italy.

"This is a militia that kills... of course they're not welcome in Milan," Milan Mayor Beppe Sala told Italian radio on Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, in a bid to cool tensions, told reporters "it's not like the [Nazi] SS are coming".

He was speaking on the sidelines of a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day, attended by three Jewish Italians who survived the Holocaust.

It is common for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement agencies to provide security support at major international events.

DHS stressed that "all security operations at the Olympics are directed and managed exclusively by Italian authorities".

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Tuesday that no ICE agents would appear on Italian streets, only officers from the police, the Carabinieri military police and the Guardia di Finanza financial authority.

The interior ministry said later that the US would set up an operations room at its consulate in Milan, where relevant US agencies would work during the Games.

US embassy sources in Rome had already explained to Italian media that various federal agencies had worked at previous Games in the past, although it was not clear if ICE had itself taken part.

US officials said the role of Homeland Security Investigations - which is part of ICE - would be "strictly supportive - working with the Diplomatic Security Service and Italian authorities to vet and mitigate risks from transnational criminal organisations".

It would "obviously" not conduct immigration enforcement operations outside the US, homeland security department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the BBC.

Antonio Tajani told reporters that the ICE agents who were coming were not "those with machine guns and their faces covered... they're coming because it's the department responsible for counter-terrorism".

Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Pantedosi had initially appeared unaware that US immigration officials would be coming to the Milan-Cortina Olympics and said even if they were, foreign delegations could choose their own security, saying: "I don't see what the problem is and it's very normal."

But as shock at the images emanating from Minneapolis grew, so did the outcry in Italy that officers from the same US federal agency could appear on Italian streets.

An ICE agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good on 7 January in a Minneapolis street, prompting nationwide protests.

And in the aftermath of Alex Pretti being shot by US border patrol agents - from another DHS agency - on Saturday morning, two journalists for Italian public broadcaster Rai were threatened by ICE officials as the reporters drove around the city covering the agency's actions.

The Rai TV report showed one agent warned the crew that if they kept filming the agents, their car window would be smashed.

The governor of Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana, sought to calm the situation, suggesting that ICE agents would be deployed in Italy to protect US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Political opponents of right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, such as Five Star Senator Barbara Floridia, warned that continued government silence on the issue would provide "yet more evidence of cowardice and subservience towards Donald Trump".

The interior minister has since taken a stronger stand, maintaining on Monday that "ICE will certainly not operate on Italian national territory".

The US had not communicated a list of security personnel, and security was guaranteed by the Italian state, he said.

The centre-left mayor of Milan was unimpressed.

"I believe [ICE agents] shouldn't come to Italy because they don't guarantee they conform to our democratic way of ensuring security," Beppe Sala told RTL radio.

The soft-pedal rollout of the National Defense Strategy—a Friday-night email to press as the Washington, D.C., area braced for a crippling snowstorm—has experts wondering whether there’s an implementation plan to go with it. “My real cynical take is the strategy isn't worth the paper it's written on because the president’s going to do whatever he wants and he's not going to even try to adhere to it, which might be why it was released with such little fanfare,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, a CNAS senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, which hosted a Wednesday discussion on the strategy. And while there are always some tensions or contradictions in an NDS, because they’re written by a group of people, this latest document seems to go in several directions at the same time, said Becca Wasser, a CNAS adjunct senior fellow.

New world order

The thesis of the NDS is that the rules-based international order, an American-led framework that promoted liberal democratic values and diplomacy as a means to prevent another world war, was a far-fetched fantasy. It’s a favored worldview of Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief and key NDS author. The strategy proposes to replace that framework with what the Trump administration has coined the “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine: “American military dominance” in the Western Hemisphere that denies “adversaries’ ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities” there. “What is interesting about that, though, is that, of course, it doesn't say much about what this is,” said Dustin Walker, a non-resident CNAS fellow. “What is replacing that order, what are the sort of higher-order strategic objectives that we are pursuing here?” Experts have described the new NDS as a sharp departure from previous U.S. strategy, but the document itself is thin on details of how defense posture or priorities will shift to support it. “You don't really have much of a description of how the size and shape of our military is going to change pursuant to these strategic priorities,” Walker said. “You don't really hear much about sort of procurement priorities. I think Golden Dome is literally the only specific capability area mentioned in the document. So you don't have a lot of guidance for force design and development here. There's no description of the budget or sort of investment profile that's going to be required to do this.”

China

The NDS says the U.S aims not to “strangle” or “humiliate” China, but instead to forge a detente that halts the growth of Chinese economic inroads in the Western Hemisphere and uses “dominance” to keep China in line, including by increasing defenses along the First Island Chain. “And I think you see that a lot on the China front, which is sort of stripping away any of any discussion about, essentially any normative judgment about the competition between the United States and China, and simply saying that, on pure power terms, we will deny them their ability to assert interest in military force in the region,” Walker said. And at the same time, even more than the National Security Strategy does, he added, it proposes diplomacy to ensure a “decent peace, on terms favorable to Americans but that China can also accept and live under,” in the NDS’s words. But, Wasser said, “that isn't necessarily how China might perceive it as well... And so when you have that, plus the aim of bolstering posture along the First Island Chain, there's a lot of incongruencies.”

‘Marauder force’

The NDS also has a novel approach to simultaneity, the idea that the U.S. military might have to manage conflicts in multiple regions at once. Rather than talk about the capabilities needed to respond to, say, a Russian incursion into NATO territory while China invades Taiwan, the strategy downplays the possibility by suggesting that the U.S. will stay mostly in its own hemisphere, except when it wants to quickly put down conflicts in other regions. “The strategy seems to be saying that they want to maintain the capacity for the United States to conduct these sort of sudden, short-notice, large, sharp strikes all over the world, essentially while erecting the First Island Chain-denial defense…to have a marauder capability, where, if the president has a problem with a particular country, a particular leader, a crisis emerges, whatever the case may be, we want to suddenly be able to shift a lot of forces to conduct high-tempo, short-duration operations,” Walker said. It would be interesting to see how they work out the math on that, he added, without a significant change in force design or posture, just based on the Defense Department’s shuffling of forces to simultaneously home in on Venezuela while putting pressure on Iran to end its violent clashes with protestors. “It's interesting. This document came as we were waiting for a carrier to depart the South China Sea, to get to the Persian Gulf, because we had taken one and moved it to the Caribbean,” Walker added. And it will only get more difficult if, as the strategy seems to suggest, the “you’re on your own” message to allies means a withdrawal of permanently stationed U.S. troops around the globe, which will mean fewer access points from which to launch these strikes. “We're going to lose basing access, probably because less people are going to be willing to work with us when we're using force wantonly and at the president's discretion for these marauding raids, right?” Pettyjohn said. “And we're not consulting, necessarily, in the same way and treating alliances as enduring partnership. It's a much more transactional thing, which means we're going to need more access-insensitive forces, which means long-range bombers and tankers, or you need the Navy—the surface fleet is one of the most stressed forces right now in terms of readiness.”

‘$1.5-trillion budget’

While the NDS suggests that the U.S. wants to reduce its involvement around the world, it doesn’t intend to save any money while doing it. Earlier this month, Trump announced in a social media post that he’d like to see the defense budget increase by half, to $1.5 trillion. Much of that will go to paying for Golden Dome, experts said, as that effort alone is estimated to cost around $1.1 trillion. But it may also fund this self-sustaining precision strike force that the document hints at. “Essentially, what this strategy almost sets up for me are two parallel force structures, right? Wasser said. “There's the force structure that we have, that's already budgeted for, that's already bought, that's already baked into the system, and that's optimized for the Indo-Pacific, and then there's this more flexible surge force…that sometimes is going to require a different set of capabilities.” Economic-pressure campaigns like the one underway in Venezuela are going to require different assets than the ones the U.S. has been developing for combat against China. Those might be a tough sell to Congress, she added, based on how much recent defense authorizations and appropriations have focused on competition with China. “But I thought that there wasn't really the linking of the ways and means, other than making allies do more,” Pettyjohn said. “There was no sort of context or specificity about what the U.S. is going to do…and what our force looks like as a result of this.”

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - The United States is handing over to Venezuela a tanker that it seized this month, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

The United States has been carrying out a months-long effort to seize oil tankers linked to Venezuela - carrying out seven apprehensions since late last year.

The officials, who were speaking on the condition of anonymity, identified the vessel being handed over to Venezuelan authorities as the Panama-flagged supertanker M/T Sophia. They did not say why the tanker was returned.

The U.S. Coast Guard, which leads interdiction and seizure operations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Venezuelan communications ministry, which handles all press queries for the government, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Sophia was carrying oil when it was interdicted on January 7 by the Coast Guard and U.S. military forces. At the time, the administration said the Sophia, which is under sanctions, was a "stateless, sanctioned dark fleet motor tanker."

One of the sources did not know if the Sophia still had oil on board.

Trump has focused his foreign policy in Latin America on Venezuela, initially aiming to push Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power. After failing to find a diplomatic solution, Trump ordered U.S. forces to fly into the country to grab him and his wife in a daring overnight raid on January 3.

Since then, Trump has said the U.S. plans to control Venezuela's oil resources indefinitely as it seeks to rebuild the country's dilapidated oil industry in a $100 billion plan.

Earlier this months, the Sophia and another seized tanker were seen near Puerto Rico.

Along with most tankers under Western sanctions or part of the so-called shadow fleet, many of the Venezuela-linked tankers seized were built over 20 years ago and pose hazards to shipping because they lack safety certification and adequate insurance, experts said.

That means that if they have a collision or oil spill, establishing insurance claims or liability is very difficult to impossible, shipping and insurance industry sources said.

Dubai-run GMS has applied for a U.S. license to buy and scrap ships seized by the U.S. government linked to Venezuelan oil trading.

Budget committee of German parliament rejected purchase of up to 90 MAUS mobile EW systems for Bundeswehr for 600 million euros due to irrelevance. And although such a decision may seem strange in the drone era, actually Ukraine's experience precisely pushed toward this decision. As Defence Network writes, we're talking about replacing old HUMMEL with similar means from Rohde & Schwarz company, which specializes in solutions in this direction and was considered by Germany's defense department the only one capable of implementing the project on time. Initially 40 serial and 2 prototype systems were planned for 596 million euros. However, parliamentarians stated that the project presented to them doesn't correspond to modern battlefield realities and Ukraine's received experience. So, weak protection of new vehicle and lack of trust in Rohde & Schwarz are noted, whose products recently supposedly arrived of poor quality. Overall, Bundestag budget committee determined that a larger and well-armored platform is needed with greater range. Moreover, the defense ministry won't be able to adjust the proposal, but will have to start the procurement process from scratch under updated requirements.

Defense Express notes exact MAUS configuration is not reported; one can try to estimate it by analogy to HUMMEL. The latter was created based on Fuchs APC on which equipment for suppressing various enemy signals was installed. Most likely MAUS was to be on Finnish Patria 6x6, which is being purchased within CAVS, or Piranha V on basis of which Luchs 2 reconnaissance vehicle is being created. Both variants have small basic armor, so the protection claim can be understood. Also appeared criticism overall of such EW vehicle, which will be vulnerable to enemy drone strikes if operating near front line. There's sense in this; at the same time, similar platform makes sense for covering rear objects and filling role of larger EW means, which has greater range. Perhaps German parliamentarians asked to adjust for the latter.

And interesting is that before us is the first recent refusal by Bundestag budget committee on defense procurement, which is currently happening on huge scales. Parliamentarians argue this by the fact that defense ministry still must use its funds efficiently, so not every its project should automatically be pushed through further.

The Chinese firm has been operating in the South American country for almost 30 years. On Friday, the Brazilian government invited Chinese tech company Huawei to participate in the auction for battery energy storage systems (BESS), scheduled for April, with ten-year contracts.

Brazilian Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira noted that the presence of Chinese tech-experienced multinationals is strategic for increasing competitiveness, stimulating innovation, and ensuring efficient solutions for Brazil’s electrical grid.

He stated that Brazil-China cooperation has generated significant results and can contribute to the advancement of energy storage, as well as promote academic and scientific exchange programs to train specialized professionals.

Huawei has been operating in Brazil for almost 30 years, with factories in Jundiai, Sao Paulo, Manaus, and Amazonas, consolidating its industrial and technological presence in the South American country.

Silveira also discussed BESS systems met with representatives of Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), a world leader in batteries for electric vehicles, and Sany, a manufacturer of construction machinery.

China has been Brazil’s main trading partner since 2009, strengthening economic and technological ties that are reflected in energy and education projects with significant strategic impact.

On Sept. 11, the Brazilian Education Ministry, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and Huawei launched Open Schools pilot projects in Bahia and Para.

The program included connectivity infrastructure, solar systems, teacher training in educational technology, digital devices, and digital curricula, with support from state education secretariats.

Two teacher training centers were also established in northern and northeastern Brazil, led by the Laboratory of Creativity and Innovation for Basic Education (LabCrie).

The project, aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goal 4, creates resilient education systems and expands equitable access to digital education. Rafael Herdy, Technology Coordinator for the Para State Department of Education, noted that the initiative catalyzes digital transformation.

The program will benefit 1,000 teachers and students from public schools in Jequie, Bahia, and Breves, Para, strengthening digital inclusion and technological training in underserved regions.

The Trump administration has held covert meetings with fringe separatists from Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta as a rift deepens between Washington and Ottawa.

Leaders of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group of far-right separatists who want the western province to become independent, met US state department officials in Washington three times since April last year, according to people familiar with the talks.

They are seeking another meeting next month with state and Treasury officials to ask for a $500bn credit facility to help bankroll the province if an independence referendum — yet to be called — is passed.

“The US is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” Jeff Rath, APP legal counsel, who attended the meetings, told the FT.

He claimed he had a “much stronger relationship” with the Trump administration than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

A state department spokesperson said: “The department regularly meets with civil society types. As is typical in routine meetings such as these, no commitments were made.”

A White House official said: “Administration officials meet with a number of civil society groups. No such support, or any other commitments, was conveyed.”

A person familiar with Treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s thinking said neither he nor any other Treasury officials were aware of any credit facility proposal and did not intend to engage on the issue. The person added that no senior Treasury department official had received a request for a meeting.

Spokespeople for the US Treasury and Carney’s office declined to comment.

The contacts coincide with a deterioration in relations between the US and Canada. President Donald Trump and Carney clashed last week after the Canadian premier suggested Washington was creating a “rupture” in the world order.

The US was unlikely to provide any material support to the fringe separatist movement, according to people familiar with the American position. But the conversations underline the tensions between Washington and Carney’s federal government in Ottawa.

Carlo Dade, director of international policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, described the separatist leaders as “attention seekers”. He added: “The Americans are more than happy to continue to play Canadians off each other.”

British Columbia premier David Eby described the FT’s report of the meeting as alarming because Trump is “not particularly respectful to Canada’s sovereignty”.

“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that. And that word is treason,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Thursday. 

Bessent caused a flurry of excitement among Alberta separatists last week when he described the province — the single biggest source of foreign oil in the American market — as “a natural partner for the US”. “The Albertans are very independent people,” he told rightwing podcaster Jack Posobiec.

“[There is a] rumour that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not.” The person familiar with Bessent’s thinking said the Treasury secretary neither supported nor opposed Alberta’s independence movement but views Carney as pursuing a personal agenda to the detriment of the province, highlighting his prior work on climate issues. Bessent believes Alberta could deepen its ties with the US while remaining a Canadian province, the person added. Carney grew up in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital.

The province of 5mn people has had a small independence movement for decades with its roots in Canada’s formation more than 150 years ago. Ipsos polling conducted last week found approximately three in 10 residents of both Alberta and Quebec would vote for their province to separate from Canada.

But unlike Quebec, Alberta’s independence movement has never gained any real traction. The APP is attempting to gather 177,000 signatures to bring an independence petition to the legislature by May. It declined to say how many it had secured to date. The talks will nonetheless stoke existing concerns of meddling in Canadian domestic affairs by the Trump administration and its proxies. “We’re seeing evidence of foreign interference,” said Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, pointing to social-media ad campaigns, the use of online bots and Maga influencer voices.

“It doesn’t feel organic, we are being targeted by the Maga crowd.” “Alberta is an essential partner in our federation,” said a spokesperson for Canada-US trade minister Dominic LeBlanc. “[The] government is engaged in renewing the Canada-Alberta relationship based on common objectives and respect for each other’s jurisdiction.” Rath declined to say who the APP spoke to in Washington. “We’re meeting very, very senior people leaving our meetings to go directly to the Oval Office,” he claimed.

The separatist party has adopted similar themes to the UK’s Brexit movement. It accuses Ottawa of squandering billions of dollars in oil revenue and touts conspiracies around Chinese influence, Christian persecution and the “globalists” agenda.

Rath said his group had also met officials from Quebec’s separatist movement, which lost independence referendums in 1980 and 1995. Alberta’s premier Danielle Smith, who last year lowered the threshold for a referendum, opposes independence for the province. “The overwhelming majority of Albertans are not interested in becoming a US state,” said Smith’s spokesperson.

The Alberta Forever Canada campaign, a counter-petition opposing independence, received 438,568 signatures by a December deadline last year. This article has been amended to reflect that Carlo Dade works at the University of Calgary, not the Canada West Foundation