Venezuela has condemned President Trump’s unilateral declaration, in a Saturday post on social media, that all airspace surrounding Venezuela is closed. Meanwhile, President Trump said the U.S. is poised to launch attacks inside Venezuela itself. This comes as Republican-led committees in the House and Senate say they’ll hold oversight hearings to investigate the Pentagon’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, following a Washington Post report alleging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the killing of all crew members on an alleged drug vessel, including the survivors of an initial strike. According to the Post, Secretary Hegseth ordered the killing of two people as they clung to the smoldering wreckage of their boat after the first attack, off the coast of Trinidad, on September 2. A source told the Post, “The order was to kill everybody.” Under international law, it’s a war crime to refuse to spare the lives of people who are attempting to surrender or otherwise unable to fight. Human rights groups, meanwhile, have condemned all of the Pentagon’s attacks on boats as war crimes. On Sunday, President Trump denied Hegseth gave an order to kill everyone aboard the vessel, but later in the evening, Hegseth contradicted Trump’s denial, posting a meme on social media depicting the children’s cartoon character Franklin the Turtle opening fire from a helicopter on boats below. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez called on other oil-producing states in OPEC to oppose any U.S. attack on Venezuela.

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez: “Venezuela formally denounces, before this body, that the government of the United States of America intends to take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the largest on the planet, through the use of lethal military force against the territory, the people and the institutions of the country.”

President Trump says he will pardon Honduras’s former president, who was sentenced by a U.S. court last year to 45 years in prison for directing a massive cocaine trafficking operation. Prosecutors showed how Juan Orlando Hernández, who was president from 2014 to 2022, ran Honduras as a “narco-state,” accepting millions of dollars in bribes from cocaine traffickers in exchange for protection, including deploying the Honduran National Police to safeguard cocaine loads as they were transported through Honduras. News of Trump’s looming pardon came just days ahead of Sunday’s presidential elections in Honduras, where a right-wing candidate from Juan Orlando Hernández’s party had taken a narrow lead with just under half the votes counted. Nasry Asfura is the former mayor of Tegucigalpa. He received a boost when Trump endorsed him and threatened to cut off aid to Honduras if voters elected one of his rivals, whom Trump assailed as “communists.”

The death toll from Israel’s more than two-year assault on Gaza surpassed 70,000 Palestinians over the weekend, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Al Jazeera is reporting that Israeli drones dropped a bomb near al-Farabi School Saturday morning, killing two brothers, Juma and Fadi Tamer Abu Assi. On Sunday, three more Palestinians were killed and two others injured in Israeli attacks, raising the death toll to 356 since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire went into effect on October 10. Meanwhile, Israel returned 15 more Palestinian bodies to Gaza as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal. This comes as Israeli forces claim to have killed 40 Hamas fighters in southern Gaza over the past 40 days.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces on Thursday fatally shot two Palestinian men at point-blank range after they appeared to surrender to troops. The killings were captured on video showing the two men coming out of a garage holding their hands up and lifting their shirts to show they are not carrying explosives. The troops later shot the men dead. This comes as the Wafa news agency is reporting that Israeli forces have arrested a 16-year-old child at a military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, as Israel intensifies drone operations over the Jenin refugee camp.

Israeli authorities have freed a Palestinian American boy after holding him for over nine months without trial in an Israeli military prison, where he says he was physically and psychologically tortured. Mohammed Ibrahim of Palm Bay, Florida, was just 15 years old when Israeli forces arrested him in the occupied West Bank for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli settlers’ vehicles. If convicted, he faced up to 20 years in prison. Ibrahim was released on Thanksgiving Day following a pressure campaign from more than 100 U.S. civil rights groups, as well as 27 members of Congress. He was hospitalized after his release, treated for severe weight loss and scabies that left him with a serious skin infection. His family said they had almost no direct contact with Ibrahim throughout his detention. In October, the boy told a human rights group he and other Palestinian prisoners suffered beatings, severe cold, starvation, social isolation and medical neglect.

In Syria, Israeli forces raided a village outside Damascus on Friday, killing 13 people, including two children. Six Israeli soldiers were wounded in the clashes. Israel claimed to be targeting members of Lebanon’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last December, Israel has launched frequent air raids across Syria and ground incursions in the south.

The Trump administration has stopped issuing visas for Afghan nationals and has halted decisions on all asylum applications, after a 29-year-old Afghan opened fire near the White House last Wednesday, killing a soldier with the West Virginia National Guard and leaving another in critical condition. Rahmanullah Lakanwal has been charged with first-degree murder and will likely face terrorism charges. Lakanwal previously worked in a CIA-backed Afghan Army unit known as a Zero Unit. He entered the United States in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a program that saw the U.S. evacuate thousands of Afghans who faced reprisals from the Taliban over their support of the U.S. occupation. He applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted refugee status last April, under the second Trump administration. President Trump called the attack an “act of hatred” committed by an “animal” and pledged that his administration would re-vet every Afghan granted asylum in the U.S. Meanwhile, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on Afghanistan has spoken out against collective punishment. Richard Bennett said in a statement, “The perpetrator should face accountability, but the entire Afghan community must not be punished due to the actions of one individual.”

President Trump announced that he was canceling all executive orders signed by former President Joe Biden using an autopen, which is a device that reproduces signatures. President Trump has also used autopen to sign official documents. Back in September, the White House hung a photo of Biden’s autopen signature instead of his portrait in the walkway featuring portraits of former presidents. Biden signed 162 executive orders during his presidency, though it’s unclear how many were signed using autopen. President Trump rescinded nearly 70 of Biden’s executive orders shortly after taking office, and another 19 in March.

President Trump on Wednesday blasted New York Times reporter Katie Rogers, calling her “ugly,” after she published a story raising questions about President Trump’s health, writing that he was “showing signs of fatigue.” The article also detailed an Oval Office event last month where President Trump appeared drowsy with drooping eyelids, dozing on and off for several seconds. President Trump also insulted CBS News White House correspondent Nancy Cordes on Thursday after she asked him about the suspect in Wednesday’s attack on two National Guard members in Washington, D.C. Trump snapped back at her, “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” Last month, President Trump called Bloomberg’s White House correspondent Catherine Lucey “piggy” after she questioned him about releasing the Epstein files.

In Hong Kong, officials say at least 151 people died in a fire that engulfed a high-rise apartment complex last Wednesday. The blaze is Hong Kong’s deadliest in more than 70 years, and the exact cause has yet to be determined. Eight people have been arrested on corruption charges after an investigation revealed that the netting that covered scaffolding used in renovations was not up to fire safety codes. This is Joey Yeung, whose grandmother’s home was consumed by the fire.

Joey Yeung: “All the memories have all gone, and it’s all because of those people who caused the fire. I can’t accept it. So, today I came with my father and my family to lay flowers. … I’m not asking to get anything back, but at least give some justice to the families of the deceased, to those who are still alive.”

A Babson College student was deported to Honduras while she was trying to fly from Boston to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. Nineteen-year-old Any Lucia López Belloza was told there was an issue with her boarding pass before she was detained by immigration officials and sent to Texas, and later Honduras. The day after she was arrested, a federal judge issued an emergency order prohibiting the government from removing her from the United States for 72 hours. López Belloza told The Boston Globe that she is currently staying with her grandparents in Honduras.

A judge in Georgia has dismissed the election interference case against President Trump. The ruling effectively ends the last effort to prosecute Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said that he would not pursue charges against President Trump.

More than 1,000 people have died in devastating floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand, leaving hundreds of thousands of people stranded without shelter. In Indonesia, 600 people have died and over 500,000 people are displaced on the island of Sumatra as authorities frantically search for survivors. In Thailand, at least 170 people were killed in one of the worst floods in a decade. Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, 334 people died as a result of Cyclone Ditwah, the worst natural disaster to hit the island in two decades since the devastating 2004 tsunami. On Sunday, low-lying areas of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo were flooded after heavy rains triggered mudslides across the island. Nearly 148,000 people have been displaced.

Malika Kumari: “It rained nonstop for three days. We heard about the warnings of flooding, but we didn’t expect water levels would get this high. As usual, we moved our belongings that could be moved to a higher level. But that didn’t help. Everything is under water.”

In the Philippines, tens of thousands of protesters marched in the capital Manila calling for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to resign, after a corruption scandal revealed that his government took billions in kickbacks from faulty flood control projects. Heavy losses from two recent typhoons, which killed more than 250 people, spurred public outrage. Marcos has vowed that at least 37 government officials implicated in the corruption scandal will be in jail by December, but protesters say many more officials should be in jail sooner.

David San Juan: “It’s been five months since the flood control scam erupted, and no high official has been jailed yet. After what Ombudsman Remulla said, that at least 10% of Congress is involved in the anomalies in flood control projects, a case has been filed and a warrant issued for only one person. The senators and congressmen involved have still not been jailed.”

In California, four people were killed and 11 others hospitalized after a gunman opened fire on a child’s birthday party at a banquet hall in the city of Stockton on Saturday. Police say a suspect — or suspects — remain at large. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been at least 380 mass shootings in the United States so far this year.

The Trump administration announced that it will no longer commemorate World AIDS Day, which is observed around the world today. According to an email viewed by The New York Times, the State Department last month instructed employees and grantees to “refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging.” Earlier this year, the Trump administration froze foreign funding for many public health programs dedicated to fighting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.