The United States has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, where President Donald Trump has been threatening military action for the last several months.

Members of the Trump administration confirmed reports that the US coastguard led an operation to commandeer the vessel on Wednesday afternoon.

But few details have been released about the circumstances of the seizure.

“We’ve just seized a tanker off the coast of Venezuela – large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually,” Trump said during an event at the White House. “And other things are happening. So you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people.”

When faced with questions about the tanker at a round table with business leaders, Trump encouraged reporters to “follow the tanker” to find out more.

He also declined to identify the vessel’s owner. But, he added, “I assume we’re going to keep the oil.”

The Venezuelan government responded to the seizure, accusing the US of carrying out a “blatant theft”, which it described as an “act of international piracy, publicly announced by the President of the United States”.

Venezuela would “defend its sovereignty, natural resources, and national dignity with absolute determination”, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that it would also denounce the US before international bodies.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media that the tanker had been seized for transporting “sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran”.

“For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” she wrote.

Her post was accompanied by a video that showed US soldiers rappelling onto the tanker from military helicopters. Bondi explained that the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security cooperated with the coastguard on the operation.

The takeover of the oil tanker is likely to further inflame tensions with Venezuela, as Trump continues with his campaign of “maximum pressure” against the South American country.

[Aljazeera]

The International Olympic Committee says it will announce eligibility criteria for transgender athletes early next year, after months of deliberation as it seeks to find a consensus on how to protect the female category.

The issue has been a source of controversy, with no universal rule in place for the participation of transgender athletes at the Olympic Games.

The IOC, under its new President Kirsty Coventry, did a U-turn in June, deciding to take the lead in setting eligibility criteria for Olympic participation, having previously handed responsibility to the individual sports federations, leading to a confusing patchwork of different approaches.

In September, Coventry set up the “Protection of the Female Category” working group, made up of experts as well as representatives of international federations, to look into how best to protect the female category in sports.

“We will find ways to find a consensus that has all aspects covered,” Coventry told a press conference on Wednesday following an IOC executive board meeting. “Maybe it is not the easiest thing to do, but we will try our best, so when we talk about the female category, we are protecting the female category.”

Coventry said a decision would come in the first months of 2026.

“We want to make sure we have spoken to all stakeholders, taken adequate time to cross the Ts and dot the Is,” she said.

“The group is working extremely well. I don’t want to try to constrain the working group by saying they need to have a specific deadline, but I am hopeful in the next couple of months and definitely within the first quarter of next year we will have a clear decision and way forward, which I think we are all looking forward to,” said Coventry, a former Olympic swimming champion.

Before Coventry’s decision in June, the IOC had long refused to apply any universal rule on transgender participation for the Games, instructing international federations in 2021 to come up with their own guidelines. Under current rules, still in force, transgender athletes are eligible to take part in the Olympics.

Only a handful of openly transgender athletes have taken part in the Games. New Zealand’s Laurel Hubbard became the first openly transgender athlete to compete in a different gender category to that assigned at birth when the weightlifter took part in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Currently, some international federations have rules in place, but others have not yet reached that stage.

US President Donald Trump has banned transgender athletes from competing in sports in schools in the United States, which civil society groups say infringes on the rights of trans people, as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Trump, who signed the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” order in February, has said he would not allow transgender athletes to compete at the LA Games.

[Aljazeera]

Storm Byron is threatening to heap new miseries on Palestinians in Gaza, with families making distress calls from flooded tents and hundreds of others fleeing their shelters in search of dry ground as the fierce winter storm lashes heavy rains on the besieged territory.

Officials warned Wednesday that the storm was forecast to bring flash floods, strong winds and hail until Friday, conditions expected to wreak havoc in a territory in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in tents, temporary structures, or damaged buildings after two years of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Humanitarian workers said Israeli restrictions on the entry of tents, tools to repair water and sewage systems have left Gaza poorly equipped to respond to the storm, and called on the international community to pressure the Netanyahu government to urgently allow in supplies.

In the southern city of Rafah, the Palestinian Civil Defence said its teams had already received distress calls from displacement camps, with families reporting “flooded tents and families trapped inside by heavy rains”.

“Despite limited resources and a lack of necessary equipment, our teams are working tirelessly to reach those in need and provide assistance,” the rescue agency said on Telegram.

Footage posted on social media and verified by Al Jazeera showed Palestinians shovelling a ditch around tents in a desperate attempt to create barriers that would prevent them from flooding.

Nearly 850,000 people sheltering in 761 displacement sites face the highest risk of flooding, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Flooding has previously been recorded at more than 200 of the highest-risk sites, affecting more than 140,000 people, the office said.

Previous storms had contaminated displacement sites with sewage and solid waste, swept away families’ tents and driven them out of makeshift shelters.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said that UN  agencies and local authorities were warning that any significant rainfall could have devastating consequences for Gaza’s population, with the displacement camps built on barren, open terrain that would be highly susceptible to flooding.

The tents available to people were typically flimsy, unreinforced and often torn, he said, offering negligible protection from heavy rains, which were likely to seriously damage whatever possessions families had left.

Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs network, said Israeli restrictions on the entry of aid and equipment had left Gaza ill-equipped to deal with the storm.

He said only 40,000 tents, out of a needed 300,000, had been allowed in, while tools that would likely be needed to repair sewage systems and water networks were also restricted.

Flooding would bring a serious risk of sewage and solid waste contaminating drinking water or food supplies, raising the risk of diseases in the densely populated Strip, where 2.2 million people are crammed into just 43 percent of the territory, while the remaining 57 percent remains under Israeli military control.

“If Israel were to allow the entrance of supplies, things would be different. But for now, it has done all it can to make life more complicated for Palestinians,” Shawa said.

Oxfam humanitarian response adviser Chris McIntosh agreed, telling Al Jazeera that the people of Gaza were bracing for a “very tragic situation”.

“Persistent bureaucracy prevented us from bringing in adequate dwellings for people in Gaza,” McIntosh said. “The Israelis have not permitted tents to enter Gaza for many months. The only thing they’re allowing at this point is some tarpaulin, which isn’t going to do much for people who need proper shelter.”

He said Palestinians were being forced to live in “deplorable conditions”, with well more than 50 percent of the population living in tents.

He anticipated many would attempt to find dry ground inside bombed-out buildings that were at heightened risk of collapse amid the forecast heavy rains and winds.

[Aljazeera]