Global Express | September 23, 2026 Trump Meets Venezuela's Interim President in First Face-to-Face Since Maduro Seized

1. Trump Meets Venezuela's Interim President in First Face-to-Face Since Maduro Seized

Source: BBC

US President Donald Trump has held talks with Venezuela's interim President Delcy Rodríguez at the UN General Assembly — their first face-to-face meeting since the White House backed her to take over the South American country's government. The pair met a few kilometres from the New York jail where Maduro is awaiting trial on drug trafficking and other charges.

Rodríguez said they discussed "advancing a cooperation agenda in strategic areas such as energy, mining, and security". US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles also attended the meeting.

Rodríguez's government has signed an agreement allowing the US to control more than 65 billion barrels of its oil — more than a fifth of the country's reserves — granting a US-led company 100-year concessions over 17 oilfields. Trump has called it "the biggest oil deal in world history". Rodríguez, formerly Maduro's vice-president, was sanctioned by the US in 2018 but the measures were lifted in April this year; she was sworn in as interim president by Venezuela's National Assembly days after the US raid, with the White House's blessing.

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2. South Sudan's Kiir Dissolves Government Ahead of First National Elections

Source: Al Jazeera

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir has dissolved the country's transitional unity government and appointed a caretaker administration as the country prepares for its first-ever national elections. The decree on Tuesday ended a power-sharing arrangement set up under a 2018 peace deal that halted years of civil war, raising concerns that Kiir could now wield unchecked power.

The decree, read out by the national broadcaster, said all vice-presidents, ministers and local administrators have been removed, and that the national and state assemblies have been dissolved. The judiciary and security institutions remain in place, while Kiir will stay in office "during the election period until the next elected president assumes office". The decree came a day after parliament approved changes to the National Elections Act that let Kiir stay in power during the election period and removed all vice-presidents appointed under the 2018 deal.

The changes mean South Sudan can move towards elections scheduled for December 22 without first completing a permanent constitution or census. The main opposition alliance has rejected the changes. Elections were initially expected in 2022 but have been postponed twice. The 2018 agreement followed five years of civil war that killed about 400,000 people and displaced millions, according to the United Nations.

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3. France Rebukes World Over Gaza as Canada, UK Back Palestinian State

Source: Al Jazeera

France, Canada and the United Kingdom have called for Palestinian sovereignty at the UN General Assembly. French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the world's failure to act against Israel's restrictions on aid to Gaza as shameful. He noted that France recognised a Palestinian state a year ago, asking: "What credibility do we have if we continue to remain inactive in the face of Gaza?"

Israeli forces killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza City on Tuesday despite a "ceasefire" brokered by the United States in October, according to the report. More than 73,900 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, including 1,399 since the "ceasefire" took effect.

Macron, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Canadian Prime Minister Mike Carney and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud chaired a meeting on Palestinian statehood. Burnham warned that failing to deliver a two-state solution would further corrode trust in politics, describing Israel's E1 settlement project as "a deliberate attempt to block a two-state solution". Carney announced Canada would give 100 million Canadian dollars ($71m) in aid to Palestinians, 80 percent of it for direct humanitarian aid.

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4. UN Chief Guterres Delivers Final General Assembly Address

Source: The Guardian

In his final address to the UN General Assembly, outgoing Secretary-General António Guterres said the world's fault lines have turned from cracks into canyons, and that superpowers have shown they alone cannot guarantee security or solve the world's problems. The speech was laced with despair but also glimpses of defiant hope.

He said that over the past decade "wars erupted with devastating consequences and dragged on with despicable cruelty. Civilians were targeted. Human rights trampled. Hunger weaponised. Humanitarians killed. International law cast aside." Without naming Israel, he said what followed the Hamas attack of October 2023 "was an onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I have witnessed in all my years as secretary general".

Guterres rounded on energy companies for "treating the world as an open sewer", called Africa's omission from a permanent UN Security Council seat "stunning", and called for a new compact to regulate AI. He warned that "superpowers" must recognise "their power isn't so super", and announced the UN had achieved gender parity for the first time in history across all senior leadership, headquarters and professional staff.

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5. Nasdaq Hits All-Time High as AI Frenzy Gathers Pace

Source: Al Jazeera

Wall Street's Nasdaq has hit an all-time high, shrugging off concerns about AI safety risks, sky-high tech valuations and the energy shock caused by the United States' war on Iran. The Nasdaq Composite, dominated by tech giants, rose 0.45 percent on Tuesday, taking its gains this year to more than 17 percent. The Nasdaq 100 jumped 0.82 percent, while the S&P 500 closed essentially flat.

Monolithic Power Systems and Canadian e-commerce company Shopify led the gains, surging 8.1 percent and 7.1 percent respectively. Memory chip maker Micron rose 5 percent, Nvidia gained 0.7 percent and Apple edged up 0.2 percent. Meta — which soared 11.4 percent on Monday on excitement over its new AI assistant Muse — dropped 0.63 percent.

Major Asian markets opened higher on Wednesday, with Japan's Nikkei 225 up about 1.4 percent. Oil prices were largely flat on Tuesday, with Brent crude futures at $99.18 a barrel. Trump told reporters on Tuesday that US officials held a "very good" meeting with their Iranian counterparts on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, with another round to follow in the "very near future".

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6. New York City Reaches Record $131m DoorDash Settlement

Source: Al Jazeera

New York City has finalised a more than $131m settlement with DoorDash over allegations that the delivery company underpaid its workers — the largest settlement for delivery workers in any US city, set to affect 260,000 workers. Of the total, $115m will go directly to workers, while $16m will go towards civil penalties and other costs. The Mamdani administration announced the settlement on Tuesday.

A nearly 70-page consent order found that the San Francisco-based delivery giant failed to pay some workers the minimum required by law between December 2023 and June 2026, with some underpayments expected to continue through November. DoorDash confirmed that roughly $6.6m in payments never reached its delivery drivers and that there were more than $5.7m in late payments.

"When a worker earns a wage, they deserve to be paid that wage — not tomorrow, not after a lawsuit, but on time and in full," Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. Under the settlement, underpaid workers will receive 200 percent of what they were originally owed — a worker owed $1,000 who received nothing will get $3,000. The city's minimum-pay rule for app-based delivery workers dates back to 2023 under Mamdani's predecessor, Eric Adams.

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7. UK Charges First Suspect Over Rwanda Genocide

Source: BBC

A 65-year-old doctor has appeared in court, becoming the first person in the UK to be charged over the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Dr Vincent Brown, formerly Dr Vincent Bajinya, who is in custody, confirmed his name and address from the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court. He was charged following a seven-year British investigation into the killings.

He faces a charge of conduct ancillary to genocide and six offences of conduct ancillary to murder as a crime against humanity. The case was passed to the Old Bailey for a hearing on 9 October. The charges relate to an alleged slaughter in the Rugenge district of Kigali between 6 April and 13 April 1994. Brown is accused of "killing, directing or encouraging" the deaths of members of the Tutsi ethnic group, and of intending to destroy the group "as a whole or in part".

The 1994 killings in Rwanda lasted 100 days, during which Hutu extremists carried out a campaign of slaughter against Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus; an estimated 800,000 were killed. Brown's barrister said his client denied the allegations and was intent on going before a jury to clear "the stains of these appalling allegations". Inquiries continue into other alleged genocide offences in Rwanda.

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8. El Niño Turns the Atacama Desert into a Sea of Bloom

Source: Euronews

The Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, has changed appearance after heavy rains in northern Chile: vast stretches of normally parched land have been carpeted with violet and white blossoms in a natural phenomenon known as the "flowering desert".

Under the Atacama's soil, seeds and bulbs from around 200 different species lie dormant for long periods, waiting for the right conditions to germinate. Rainfall linked to the El Niño climate phenomenon has allowed many of them to bloom, drawing large numbers of visitors. Rainfall has been particularly heavy this season; in some areas it exceeded 180 millimetres, an amount that "had never been recorded before", said César Pizarro, Atacama biodiversity manager at Chile's National Forestry Corporation (Conaf).

According to Conaf's forecasts, the spectacle will peak in October, with around 15,000 hectares possibly blanketed in flowers. The current El Niño episode could be the most intense since comparable records began four decades ago. The rains that hit Chile in July also had serious consequences: at least 13 people were killed and around 4,000 homes were destroyed or suffered major damage.

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9. OpenAI Forms Panel of Mathematicians to Address Research Disputes

Source: The Verge

After turning a string of spectacular mathematical results into a reputational crisis, OpenAI is consulting human mathematicians to find a less disastrous path forward. On Monday the company announced a new independent panel of mathematicians tasked with advising it and other AI companies on their interactions with mathematical research and the wider mathematics community, including how new results are presented and released.

The nine-member group was described by researchers as stacked with "celebrities" in the field, drawn from institutions including Stanford, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge, with multiple Fields Medals and MacArthur "genius grants" among them. It will be hosted by the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey. Called the Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AGMAI), it will operate independently, with the freedom to offer advice OpenAI has not requested, comment publicly and make its advice public; members will not be paid.

Many mathematicians, however, said they were left with questions about what the group will actually do, how much influence it will have and whether OpenAI will listen. Simon Machado of ETH Zurich called the whole thing "shrouded in mystery"; Francesco Fournier-Facio of Heriot-Watt University described it as "an ivory tower". Member Martin Hairer wrote in response that the group is "genuinely independent of OpenAI and any other of the so-called 'frontier' AI labs".

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10. Five Takeaways From Trump's UN Speech: Cuba, Iran, Greenland and 'Super Intelligence'

Source: BBC

US President Donald Trump took to the UN podium again on Tuesday, promoting his administration's policies before world leaders and issuing sharp threats to some countries. The long speech ranged across the Iran war, artificial intelligence, Cuba and the role of the US military; the BBC's reporters picked out five especially striking moments.

He accused the UN of pursuing a far-left agenda while readily using the global platform to tout his record and cast himself as a peacemaker. He turned on Cuba, calling it "a totally failed state" and saying his administration has been pushing for "fundamentally changing the situation in Cuba"; Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, responded angrily on X, accusing Trump of spreading "lies".

On Iran, Trump offered a stark choice: reach a deal with Washington and rebuild the country, or face being quickly "totally annihilated", again predicting that a deal to end the war would likely come after November's midterm elections. He also praised a new deal with Greenland under which the US will build two military bases on the Arctic territory, saying it would "greatly strengthen" NATO. He also gave AI a new name — "Super Intelligence" — saying the word "artificial" "sounds fake".

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