Hello and welcome to NewsHour.
It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London.
I'm Tim Franks.
And we're devoting the programme to this head spinning start to 2026,
not just
because there are still so many unanswered questions out of the astonishing US raid into Venezuela.
That and President Trump announcing, oh, by the way, we will be running Venezuela now.
But also
because Donald Trump is raising the prospect that this could be just the start of his ambitions.
to remake at least some of the world in the service of US interests.
Later in the program, I'll be asking a Republican congressman about some of that.
Let's start though with one of the three big moments out of today.
And that was the arraignment in court in New York of the man and his wife,
whom US special forces snatched when they swooped into Caracas early on Saturday morning.
The then president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Celia Flores.
They've been charged with weapons and drug offences,
and supporters and opponents of the former president were waiting outside the court.
Also outside the court was our correspondent Neda Tulfik.
She gave me a sense of what was happening inside the court,
what the scene was, and how the defendants looked.