Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy confirms he has no time for rules or process. America’s allies must find new ways to guarantee their own interests

Occasionally, history generates smooth changes from one era to another. More commonly, such shifts occur only gradually and untidily. And sometimes, as the former Downing Street foreign policy adviser John Bew puts it in the New Statesman, history unfolds “in a series of flashes and bangs”. In Caracas last weekend, Donald Trump’s forces did this in spectacular style. In the process, the US brushed aside more of what remains of the so-called rules-based order with which it tried to shape the west after 1945.

The capture of Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro has precedents in US policy. But discerning a wider new pattern from the kidnapping is not easy, especially at this early stage. As our columnist Aditya Chakrabortty has argued this week, the abduction can be seen as a assertion of American power, but also as little more than a chaotic asset grab.

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© Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

A wave of humiliating sexualised imagery must prompt regulators and politicians to step up

An online trend involving asking Grok, the Elon Musk-owned chatbot, to undress photographs of women and girls and show them wearing bikinis has rightly sparked outrage in the UK and internationally. Earlier this week Liz Kendall, the science and technology secretary, described the proliferation of the digitally altered pictures, some of which are overtly sexualised or violent, as “unacceptable in decent society”. What happens next will depend on whether she and her colleagues are prepared to follow through on such remarks. The government’s generally enthusiastic approach to AI, and the growing role they see for it in public services, do not inspire confidence in their ability to confront such threats.

In addition to the deluge of bikini images, the Internet Watch Foundation, a charity, has evidence that Grok Imagine (an AI tool that generates images and videos from prompts) has been used to create illegal child sexual abuse images. Yet while X says that it removes such material, there is no sign of safeguards being tightened in response to bikini images that are cruel and violating even where they do not break the law.

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© Photograph: Photographer: Bjoern Steinz/Björn Steinz/Panos Pictures

© Photograph: Photographer: Bjoern Steinz/Björn Steinz/Panos Pictures

© Photograph: Photographer: Bjoern Steinz/Björn Steinz/Panos Pictures

Cea Weaver has over a decade of experience in New York politics — which doesn't make sense as to why she burst into tears Wednesday when asked about her long history of remarks about the “violence” and “racism” of private property.

On Wednesday, the US military and Coast Guard members took control of two oil-carting vessels that broke the US' blockade of Venezuela.