In a wide-ranging interview with the Politico news website, President Trump said "decaying" European countries had failed to control migration or take decisive action to end Ukraine's war with Russia, accusing them of letting Kyiv fight "until they drop". We hear from a German parliamentarian and envoy.
Also in the programme: A revolutionary gene therapy has successfully treated patients with previously incurable blood cancers; and we look at the life of pioneering zoologist and elephant conservationist Iain Douglas-Hamilton.
(Photo: U.S. President Donald Trump attends a roundtable discussion on the day he announced an aid package for farmers, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 8, 2025. Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)
Venezuela dominates the headlines, but very little attention is paid to what life is like inside the country.
In September, the Trump administration began a series of strikes targeting what U.S. officials call "narcoterrorists" in small vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
Those strikes are ongoing and have killed more than 80 people. Then, in October, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
She's been in hiding since last year, when Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in an election widely seen as fraudulent.
Machado is expected to receive her award on Wednesday, in Oslo. And if she does, she might not be let back into her country.
Machado, who supports the Trump administration’s campaign in the region, says the end of the Maduro regime is imminent.
While the world is focused on Oslo and María Corina Machado's Nobel Peace Prize. We wanted to get the view from inside her country. We speak with a journalist in Venezuela about what daily life is like.
For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at considerthis@npr.org.
This episode was produced by Karen Zamora & Matt Ozug with audio engineering by Ted Mebane. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.
In an era of World War II revisionism, it’s worth remembering what really led to Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 84 years ago on Dec. 7, 1941.
Victor Davis Hanson breaks down the real context behind the attack, why Japan miscalculated so badly, the myths that still distort this history, and how Pearl Harbor became the beginning of Japan’s greatest strategic blunder on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”
“Why did they attack? They said that they did not want to attack. They were in the process of negotiating a peace settlement. They said that we had cut off their oil exports. And we had because we had no other mechanism to convince them to get out of China, it was not their territory, to get out of Korea, to get out of Southeast Asia, and to not absorb the Dutch East Indies.
“They had refused on all of those accounts and said, yet, we will find a peaceful solution, as they planned the attack. The attack happened at seven in the morning, deliberately, on a Sunday morning when people were either at church or still asleep from Saturday night partying. And they came out of the rising sun. Two waves. And they destroyed four battleships and injured, or just—I don't wanna say injured, they were inanimate objects. But they disabled four that sunk to the shallow bottom of Pearl Harbor.”
P.M. Edition for Dec. 9. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared a “code red” last week to prioritize the company’s ChatGPT chatbot after a competitive threat from Google. WSJ reporter Sam Schechner explains what drove that decision and the implications it could have for ChatGPT, the world’s dominant chatbot. Plus, what investors expect as the Federal Reserve kicks off its last meeting of the year ahead of tomorrow’s rate decision. And why is it so hard to get a clear picture of the economic health of U.S. consumers? WSJ’s Telis Demos says one reason is the rise of a lending alternative: private credit. Alex Ossola hosts.
The mayor of a city in the state of Michoacan, Mexico launched a full-frontal assault on organized crime in his community. Last month he was assassinated by a lone gunman. His death has lead to a protests across Mexico and calls for more to be done to combat drug cartels and corruption.
In a world first, millions of Australian children and teenagers are prevented from accessing social media accounts. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told adolescents to make the most of the situation by taking up a new sport or reading a book, instead of scrolling on their phones. Under the legislation, companies could face heavy fines if they don't take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from opening social media accounts. Social media firms have argued the ban would be ineffective, difficult to implement, and could isolate vulnerable teenagers.
Also: tens of thousands flee their homes in border areas of Cambodia and Thailand after a resumption of fighting. An investigation finds at least 1700 civilians have been killed in airstrikes by Sudan's armed forces since the start of the civil war. South Korean police raid headquarters of the e-commerce giant Coupang. And a British man who was paralysed permanently 9 years ago, attempts a world record for sit-skiing to the South Pole.
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Traders are picking up bitcoin put options at $20,000, hoping for potential moonshot payoffs if BTC swings wild. The deep out-of-the-money put options are lighting up for June 2026 expiries on Deribit, with the $20,000 strike put becoming the second most popular option. Will you buy this lottery ticket? CoinDesk's Jennifer Sanasie hosts "CoinDesk Daily."
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The Thai military said there were clashes in five border provinces, and three of its soldiers had been killed since hostilities resumed. Cambodia says Thai attacks have killed seven civilians. We explain why this has happened.
Also on the programme: in Australia, the law banning children under 16 years from social media has come into effect - one of the most dramatic moves so far by a government against the tech companies that own the platforms. And the revolutionary new cancer treatment, which uses DNA editing, to save the lives of patients with previously incurable blood cancers.
(Picture: Thai soldiers on patrol at the border with Cambodia. Credit: Reuters)
The US is prioritising asylum applications from white farmers in South Africa where it says there’s a 'genocide' against them, despite the claims being widely discredited. A BBC Africa Eye team spoke to some white Afrikaner farmers and black farmers to gain insight about the situation.
Also, a conversation on vaginal wellness. We find out some of the most common products and practices that experts say could be harmful.
Presenter : Nkechi Ogbonna
Producers: Bella Twine, Keikantse Shumba and Priya Sippy
Technical Producer: Davis Mwasaru
Senior Producer: Charles Gitonga
Editors: Samuel Murunga and Maryam Abdalla
