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PARIS (AP) — France’s navy, working with intelligence provided by the United Kingdom, on Thursday intercepted an oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea that traveled from Russia, in a mission targeting the sanctioned Russian shadow fleet, officials said. French maritime authorities for the Mediterranean said the ship, the Grinch, is suspected of operating with a false flag. The French navy is escorting the ship to anchorage for more checks, the statement said. The tanker departed from the city of Murmansk in northwestern Russia, it said.

Germany turned away a Russian-linked oil tanker from entering its territorial waters in the Baltic Sea this week, marking the first known instance of a European country blocking a vessel in Moscow's shadow fleet, Bloomberg reported Jan. 16. The Aframax-class tanker, identified by the name Arcusat, abruptly changed course earlier this week as it neared German waters, instead rerouting north toward Russia's Arctic coast,… … Shipping records indicate the tanker was delivered last year from a Chinese shipyard, though databases disagree on the flag it is sailing under, with some listing Tanzania and others Cameroon. The vessel also reportedly appeared...

The United States and Venezuela announced Friday they are pursuing the possibility of reestablishing diplomatic relations, coming a week after a U.S. military operation that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and extradited him to face drug-trafficking charges in New York.A U.S. delegation, including diplomats and security personnel, visited Venezuela to evaluate the potential reopening of the American Embassy in Caracas, the State Department said in a statement sent to media outlets. The department did not immediately return a request for comment.The embassy has been shuttered since 2019, when ties were severed during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term...

he oil tanker Marinera, seized by the United States, had been chartered by a private trader under the flag of Guyana.It changed its flag to Russian while in the Atlantic, already being escorted by a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, Caliber.Az reports, citing REN TV.The U.S. Coast Guard began pursuing the tanker off the coast of Venezuela after failing to obtain confirmation from Guyanese authorities that the ship was sailing under their flag.U.S. officials demanded that the captain proceed to a U.S. port, but he refused and steered the vessel into the Atlantic. En route, the tanker requested temporary registration under...

U.S. forces are attempting to board the Russian-flagged Marinera oil tanker in the North Atlantic Sea, sources told Fox News. The news, first reported by Reuters, comes after The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Russia had sent a submarine and other naval assets to escort the tanker. The vessel, previously operating under the name Bella 1, has spent more than two weeks attempting to slip past U.S. enforcement efforts targeting sanctioned oil shipments near Venezuela, the outlet reported. U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, said on X that it "remains...

Emergency workers in Trinidad and Tobago are racing to clean up a massive oil spill after a mystery vessel ran aground near the Caribbean island, casting a pall over Carnival tourism. The spill was "not under control" as of Sunday, said Prime Minister Keith Rowley, who added that the country is grappling with a national emergency. The mystery vessel capsized Wednesday in waters off the Caribbean island, having made no emergency calls, with no sign of crew, and no clear sign of ownership.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to make an announcement from his home in Florida on Monday alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan. The event is planned for 4:30 p.m. ET, but further details have not been released about what the president will say. The move comes after the Coast Guard seized a second sanctioned oil tanker in international waters off the Venezuelan coast on Saturday and announced it was pursuing a third on Sunday. “The United States will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco-terrorism in...

Donald Trump just sent Nicolas Maduro a Christmas message, of a sort. And that message is not many happy returns of the day. Earlier today, the US Navy boarded a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil in international waters. Unlike the first seizure, Marc Caputo reports for Axios, this ship had no specific sanctions applied to it [see update below]. This escalates the standoff over Maduro's illegal regime and the oil revenue he desperately needs to cling to power:The U.S. military early Saturday boarded a tanker that is not under U.S. sanctions as it shipped Venezuelan oil in hopes of escaping a...

This is the dramatic moment that US commandos stormed a Venezuelan oil tanker in a breathtaking airborne takedown amid ratcheting tensions in the Caribbean. Footage released by the Trump administration on Wednesday showed American forces swooping on the tanker in helicopters and rappelling down ropes. Troops with guns drawn darted up stairs to the bridge to take control of the vessel off the coast of Venezuela. Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a statement on X: 'Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a...

Moment U.S. forces seized massive oil tanker off Venezuela “As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela,” Trump said. “Large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized actually.”

The U.S. has seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, three officials told Reuters on Wednesday, a move that raised oil prices and is likely to further inflame tensions between Washington and Caracas. President Donald Trump has ordered a massive U.S. military build-up in the region, including an aircraft carrier, fighter jets and tens of thousands of troops. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the operation was led by the U.S. Coast Guard. They did not name the tanker, which country's flag it was flying or exactly where the interdiction took place. Oil futures rose...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States believes that a U.S. strike in Syria has killed Mohsin al-Fadhli, the leader of a group of al Qaeda militants known as Khorasan, a U.S. official told Reuters on Wednesday.

Kevin Jiang was a 26-year-old Yale graduate student, an Army veteran, and, his friends say, a man of faith who volunteered with the homeless. He seemed to have no enemies, and no one could figure out why someone may have targeted him on Feb. 6, 2021, when he was shot in the street not far from his fiancée's apartment in New Haven, Connecticut. Jiang had been driving down the street when his car was struck from behind, and when he got out, possibly to exchange information with the other driver police say, that driver opened fire, shooting him eight times....

"Today, as a result of a storm in the Black Sea, two tankers, Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, sank," Russia's federal sea and inland water transport agency, Rosmorrechflot, wrote in a statement.

Ansarallah, the Shiite jihadist terror organization commonly known as the Houthis, published a video on Thursday that it claimed showed its members boarding the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion and planting bombs while chanting, “Allahu akbar.” The Houthis, who control the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and launched a terrorist campaign to disrupt commercial shipping in the Red Sea late in 2023, attacked the Sounion on August 21, reportedly using projectiles and a private attack at sea. The attack necessitated the evacuation of the ship’s crew, leaving the oil tanker and its cargo of 150,000 tons of crude oil abandoned, a floating...

A Houthi missile shot and ignited an oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden, forcing a crew on the commercial ship into life boats. The attack appears to have caused the most serious damage to any of the ships hit by Houthi missiles since the Israel-Hamas war started.

A US destroyer intercepted a hijacked Israeli-managed oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden earlier today, freed the crew, and took the Houthi pirates into custody. My colleague Jeff Charles covered the piracy in this post, High Seas Drama: Another Israeli Tanker Seized by Unidentified Attackers Near Yemen.Shortly after dawn local time, the Central Park, a small Liberian-flagged oil and chemical tanker managed by an Israeli company registered in London, sent a distress call saying it was being boarded by armed men. The USS Mason, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, was operating in the area. According to reports, the Mason directed...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Attackers seized a tanker linked to Israel off the coast of Aden, Yemen, on Sunday, authorities said. While no group immediately claimed responsibility, it comes as at least two other maritime attacks in recent days have been linked to the Israel-Hamas war...."...The vessel is carrying a full cargo of phosphoric acid.”

"There is an effort... to employ security details composed of both Marines and Navy sailors on commercial tankers transiting in and near the Strait of Hormuz as an added layer of defense for these vulnerable ships," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. An invitation is needed to do so because the ships are private vessels, but "we are undergoing preparations to execute should final agreements be in place to do that," the official said. The United States is boosting its forces operating in the region, announcing last month that it would deploy a destroyer, F-35 and F-16 warplanes,...

Oil tanker Niovi, sailing under Panamanian flag, captured by Iran in Strait of Hormuz Iranian forces captured a foreign vessel on Wednesday, the second ship to be harassed and seized by the Middle Eastern country in a week, the U.S. Navy said. The Niovi, a commercial oil tanker flying the Panama flag, was passing through the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman when it was overtaken by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN)