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Brazilian footballers speak of ‘terror’ in Ukraine flight
AFP
A group of Brazilian footballers and their families arrived in Sao Paulo on Tuesday after a two-day odyssey to escape war-torn Ukraine, where they play their club football.
The contingent of 13 Brazilians from Shakhtar Donetsk were among dozens of people that crammed into a train and then a bus for a journey to Romania that lasted more than 30 hours.
From there, they were able to board flights back to their homeland.
“The hardest thing was everything we saw on the road: people dying, people that had nothing to do with this situation,” said Pedrinho, a 23-year-old forward, upon his arrival in Sao Paulo.
“I took my four-month-old daughter with me and all I wanted was for her to be ok. Images of terror, destroyed cities: these are the things that remain in my head.
“What I most want now is to be with my family, with my parents. I said goodbye to them every time we spoke because I did not know if it would be the last time we would talk.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Shakhtar’s Brazilians and a pair of players from Dynamo Kyiv — Uruguayan Carlos de Pena and Vitinho of Brazil — took shelter in a hotel with their families while asking Brazil’s government to help them leave the country.
Before the war began there were around 500 Brazilians in Ukraine. That is down to around 100 now, according to the Brazilian embassy in Kyiv.
“Everything blew up from one day to another. Thursday morning we were at home when we started hearing the sound of the bombs, the planes, and that’s when the nightmare began,” De Pena told AFP as he waited in Sao Paulo for an onward flight to Montevideo.
“It wasn’t easy coordinating the transport because there were many desperate people, many people fleeing, Russian troops closing in on the capital.”
Now he remembers the feelings of “fear, sadness and not knowing whether we will go back.”
Brazilian Marlon Santos, 26, admitted it was “difficult to stay calm.”
After three days in the hotel, the players embarked on a 17-hour train journey and then 15-hour bus ride with the help of European football’s governing body UEFA to reach Romania.
“It was very dark when we left, we didn’t know what we would come across,” said Maycon, 24, a Shakhtar player who left with his wife, two children and parents.
“I just asked for calm so that my children did not feel what we were feeling,” said Maycon’s wife Lyarah Vojnovic Barberan.
But the relief at now being in a safe haven is tempered by the concern for Ukrainian teammates left behind.
“We have great friends there, I’m sorry for them and really hope everything gets resolved,” said Maycon.
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Trump files $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times
U.S. President Donald Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against The New York Times, which denounced the legal move on Tuesday as an attempt to silence the press.
In this new stage of his presidency, the 79-year-old Republican leader has escalated his long-standing hostility toward traditional media, repeatedly attacking critical journalists, limiting their access, or taking them to court.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Florida, seeks $15 billion in damages, along with additional punitive compensation “in an amount to be determined at trial.”
The New York Times had reported last week that Trump threatened legal action over articles concerning a birthday letter allegedly sent by him to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The letter featured a typed message inside the outline of a nude woman. Trump denies that the accompanying signature is his.
“For too long, The New York Times has been allowed to lie, defame, and slander me freely — and that ends NOW!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
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Maduro warns Venezuela would enter armed struggle if attacked by foreign forces
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stated on Friday that if his country were attacked, it would enter a phase of armed struggle, amid his claims of “threats” from the United States, which is conducting a military deployment in Caribbean waters near Venezuela’s coast under the pretext of combating drug trafficking.
Maduro emphasized that Venezuela is currently in the non-armed phase, which he described as political, communicational, and institutional, but added that if the country were somehow aggressed, it would move to a planned, organized armed struggle involving the entire population, whether the threat is local, regional, or national.
“We would enter a stage of armed struggle, in defense of peace, territorial integrity, sovereignty, and our people,” Maduro said during an event activating citizen militias, broadcast on state channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV).
He also noted that Venezuela is currently in a phase of readiness and preparation to defend the country and will proceed to the deployment of defensive capacities, including training and retraining of the entire Venezuelan population.
Maduro described the Venezuelan people as pacifist yet warrior-like, asserting that “no one will enslave us, neither today nor ever.”
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USCIS gains law enforcement powers: Agents now authorized to investigate and arrest immigration violators
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), traditionally responsible for handling naturalizations, visas, residence permits, and work authorizations, is now expanding its role to include law enforcement powers, according to a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Under the new directive, specially designated USCIS agents are now authorized to investigate, arrest, and bring to justice individuals who violate U.S. immigration laws. Previously, USCIS primarily managed administrative and bureaucratic processes, while enforcement responsibilities were handled by agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Illegal immigration has been a central issue under President Donald Trump’s administration, with DHS reporting that over 300,000 migrants have been arrested in the first six months of his presidency. However, the number of people who have crossed U.S. borders illegally in recent years remains controversial, with experts estimating between 8 to 10 million individuals.
The policy shift also comes amid heightened legal battles over immigration enforcement. Recently, a federal judge blocked the deportation of minors to Guatemala, who were moments away from boarding a flight. Trump’s aggressive measures, including large-scale raids in cities like Los Angeles, have faced multiple judicial challenges, some upheld and others overturned at various federal levels, including the Supreme Court.
According to the DHS statement, the expanded authority allows USCIS to “manage investigations from start to finish rather than referring cases to ICE,” aiming to reduce backlogs and combat fraud within the immigration system.
USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow will have the power to appoint and train special agents under the order signed by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, ensuring that the agency can effectively execute its newly granted enforcement responsibilities.
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