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In your briefing today:

• The US has seized an oil tanker off Venezuela, in a big escalation of its conflict with that country’s government.

• The move came as the country’s opposition leader dramatically appeared in Oslo, after months in hiding.

• There’s an explanation of what’s going on between the US and Venezuela in today’s briefing.

• NHS Fife has run up a whopping legal bill in its tribunal battle with nurse Sandie Peggie

• Scotland’s clubs take to the European stage tonight, with two of the three teams eying the possibility of progress.

📣 The US has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, Donald Trump has said, in a dramatic escalation of its campaign against the country’s government.

The Trump administration accuses Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro, of running drugs into the US - the US accuses Maduro himself of being head of a drugs cartel.

As dramatic video footage of US military boarding the tanker was released, Venezuela denounced the US action, accusing it of “international piracy”. (BBC)

• The daughter of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado accepted the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on her mother’s behalf last night, after she failed to reach Oslo in time. (Independent)

• Machado herself later appeared on the balcony of a hotel in central Oslo in the small hours of the night, before greeting supporters outside, having slipped out of her homeland by boat. (Guardian)

• The US and Venezuela: what’s it all about? The conflict explained, below ⬇️

📣 One of Scotland’s leading education academics has branded Scottish Government education statistics as “deeply flawed”.

Professor Lindsay Paterson says attainment figures are a “fiction” that rely on teachers’ “hunches”, after education secretary Jenny Gilruth hailed primary school attainment as the highest on record. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

📣 If you’ve tried to find a flu jab appointment in recent days, you may already have suspected this to be the case: now it’s confirmed chemists are running low on both appointments and the flu jabs themselves, as “superflu” numbers surge across the UK. (Mail)

• The reality facing England’s busiest A&E unit as the flu wave hits (BBC)

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AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 SNP Justice Secretary Angela Constance is facing calls to resign - or be sacked by John Swinney - over claims she misled MSPs about an expert’s advice on grooming gangs. (Daily Record)

• Damning documents reveal Constance misled MSPs (Express)

📣 NHS Fife has now run up legal fees of more than £400,000 defending the employment tribunal brought by Sandie Peggie and her supporters. (The Herald has the exclusive)

• The former chair of the UK’s equality watchdog has questioned the tribunal’s findings, calling its judgement “unusual and surprising”. Baroness Falkner said the ruling appeared “not to be compatible” with a previous Supreme Court ruling on gender. (BBC)

📣 Scotland’s looser rules on assisted dying could lead to “death tourism”, a cross party group of MSPs have warned. (Guardian)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 US plans for the reconstruction of Ukraine, and the return of Russia to the global economy, have sparked a furious row between the US and its traditional allies in Europe. The documents plan to tap $200 billion of frozen Russian assets for projects in Ukraine, including a massive new data centre. (🎁 The WSJ has the exclusive - gift link)

📣 People traffickers are using Tiktok videos of innocent young British women to entice asylum seekers to the UK. (The Mail has the exclusive)

📣 Campaigners have started legal action to halt the trial of puberty-blocking drugs on more than 200 children. (Mail)

📣 Why do so many people break the 20mph speed limit? An interesting long read by Evan Davis reveals “it’s more complicated than you think”: there’s a lot of psychology at play (BBC)

📣 It was the first time we got a glimpse of a Galaxy Far, Far Away: the original artwork for the first Star Wars poster, nearly 50 years old, was sold at auction yesterday for $3.875 million. (AP)

SPORT

⚽️ Three English sides were in the Champions League last night: result of the night was Manchester City putting in a dominant performance at the Bernabeu to beat Real Madrid 2-1. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

• Newcastle found it tougher away to Beyer Leverkusen, conceding a late equaliser to end it at 2-2 (Report & 🎥 highlights)

• Arsenal brushed Club Brugge aside 3-0 with Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli scoring special goals. (Report & 🎥 highlights)

⚽️ Scottish clubs take to the European stage tonight in the Europa League and Conference League.

• Celtic take on Roma tonight at Celtic Park - it’s another big, early test for new coach Wilfried Nancy, who says he’s not listening to the pundits who’ve taken aim at his tactics board and green trainers. (Daily Record)

• Rangers are essentially out of Europe now: their hosts tonight, Ferencvaros of Budapest, are gunning for a top-eight finish under the leadership of former Celtic striker Robbie Keane. (BBC)

• Aberdeen still have hope in the Conference League, with Stuart Armstrong urging his side to “rip up the script” and reach the knockout stages with a big win against Strasbourg at Pittodrie. (Aberdeen Live)

IDEAS
The US and Venezuela: what’s going on?

🗣️ The dramatic seizure by US forces of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast is only the latest piece of drama in the seas off the South American country. But is also, undoubtedly, an escalation of tensions between it and the US.

The Trump Administration has been ramping up military operations in the region since September in a mission now called “Operation Southern Spear”. The US President says it’s intended to stop narcotics entering the US, and killing Americans.

Until now, most attention has focussed on US Navy attacks on smaller craft, accused of running drugs: the US has hit 23 vessels, killing 84 people, according to the BBC (some outlets say more have died).

The US Navy’s operations have sparked accusations of piracy from the Venezuelan government, and disquiet among allies: the UK was said to have stopped sharing intelligence with the US that could be used to inform the attacks, although Hesgeth and Yvette Cooper denied that. Other countries were reported to have done the same, in largely symbolic moves.

The US says the goal of Southern Spear is simple: stop drug running between South America and the US. The country’s new security strategy, covered in depth in yesterday’s newsletter, offers the rationale for that, talking of renewing the “Monroe Doctrine” that would see the US police the Americas.

An oddity of the operation, however, is that it’s using an entire task force, including an aircraft carrier, to sink some small boats. The disparity in costs makes it almost inevitable the operation won’t last long in its current form.

Peter W. Singer, a strategist writing for the Defense One website, spells it out: he estimates there’s $40 billion of military hardware, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour to run (the carrier costs $333,000 an hour), filing missiles that cost more than $100,000 each, to sink those small craft that - at most - cost a few thousand.

“The cost of the speedboats destroyed is less than the cost of operating the Ford off Venezuela for a single day,” points out Singer. “Each of the drones used to kill the boat crews cost roughly 66,000 times as much as each crewman was reportedly paid.

“All this illustrates a disparity that has bedevilled America in every conflict we have fought in the modern age, that we have put ourselves in the ‘awful arithmetic’ position of having to spend orders of magnitude more than our foes.”

Those figures might force Trump into a decision, suggests Singer: either call all those costly forces home and declare a victory in this “war”, or “decide to turn it into an actual one”.

Turning it into an actual war is what some are speculating Trump may choose to do. US Defence Secretary Pete Hesgeth has referred to the drug runners as “narco-terrorists” - a term which Trump has also used in reference to the Venezuelan government.

The government is headed by Nicolás Maduro, who the US alleges is himself head of a drug cartel called “Cartel de los Soles”. The US is offering a $50 million bounty for the capture of Maduro.

The New York Times (🎁 gift link) reports the US could expand its attacks to include targets in Venezuela, rather than just at sea. It could also target Maduro and seize control of the country’s vast oil fields (which mainly supply Russia these days: the US used to buy around 80% of the nation’s output).

Trump has a few options, then, and is choosing to keep them open.

👍 That’s your Early Line for the day

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