President Trump urged Europe late on Saturday to take back around 800 captured ISIS fighters from the continent, or risk the US being forced to release them. According to Trump, the fighters, captured by US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, could be released if European nations do not take them in and put them on trial, risking further IS backed attacks on the continent.

Venezuela denied a group of European Parliament deputies entry into the country on Sunday, arguing they had 'conspiratorial motives' for flying to Caracas in the throes of a political crisis.  According to a statement from the group, which consisted of members of the conservative European People's Party (PPE), all of their passports had been "seized" and they were being "expelled" in a rude matter without any explanation given. 

President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the US-Mexico border without congressional approval. Democrats vowed to challenge the move as a violation of the US Constitution, news wires reported.

The US President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order creating the “American AI Initiative” - a high-level strategy, designed to guide AI development within the country, The Verge reports. The initiative will redirect federal funding and resources towards AI research, as well as call for the creation of US-led international standards in AI, and new research into the retraining of American workers.

The United States and South Korea struck a one-year deal on the shared costs of their military alliance on Sunday, removing a potential vulnerability in an upcoming US-North Korean presidential summit later this month. Under the new agreement, South Korea will contribute about $890m a year for the US military presence, which represents an 8.2% increase from the previous five-year deal which expired at the end of 2018.

Venezuela’s state-run oil company PDVSA is telling customers of its joint ventures to deposit oil sales proceeds in an account recently opened at Russia’s Gazprombank AO, according to sources and an internal document seen by Reuters on Saturday. PDVSA’s move comes after the United States imposed tough, new financial sanctions on 28 January aimed at blocking Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro’s access to the country’s oil revenue.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that there will not be a meeting, aimed at averting higher US tariffs on Chinese goods, between him and Chinese President Xi Jinping before a 1 March deadline. The move intensifies fears the two won’t strike a deal before the end of a 90-day truce and that tariffs will jump to 25% from the current 10%.

The US military is reportedly preparing to withdraw all of its forces from Syria by the end of April, the WSJ has announced, citing former and current US officials. Unless the Trump administration changed course, the military plans to pull a significant portion of its 2,000 troops out by mid-March, with a full withdrawal coming by the end of April. However, a key concern for the US's Kurdish partners has yet to be addressed: Striking a deal to safeguard Kurdish allies from Turkish forces after the US leaves Syria. 

A brand new Donald Trump spoke to the country on Tuesday night on the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington. During his annual State of the Union speech, the world saw a man who didn't use his usually aggressive rhetoric and did not bring the Republican conference to its feet chanting “Build that wall”. On the contrary, the US president delivered an insecure, low-energy address, with a punchline that any American politician could have used: “Let's work together and compromise, so we could make America truly safe.”

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro rejected Sunday the ultimatum by EU Member States to call snap elections after opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself the Latin American country's legitimate leader. France, Germany and Spain had given Maduro until midnight on Sunday to call a presidential election, or they would recognise Guaido as the interim president. But a defiant Maduro said in an interview with Spanish television station Sexta that he would not "cave in to pressure" from those calling for his departure.