Machado gives Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Will Chalk, and at 4.30 GMT on Friday 16th January, these are our main stories. The Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has given her Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump, but there's no sign she's secured his backing to lead her country after talks at the White House. Mr Trump has threatened to send soldiers to put down protests in Democrat-run Minnesota over the presence of thousands of federal immigration officers. The Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is visiting China, hoping to improve strained relations. Also in this podcast, a first-hand account of the violence faced by demonstrators in Iran, far from the big cities.
And scientists say a new map has unmasked the landscape beneath kilometres of Antarctic ice.
So it's really important to know this everywhere so that those models of how sea level is going to change in the future can be more accurate.
So it's been a big day for the two women vying to be central in the future of Venezuela. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has met Donald Trump at the White House. In October, she gained international prominence by being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her long fight for democracy in her country. Back in 2023, she won the opposition primary by a landslide, but was barred from running in the presidential election. Many thought that following the recent American military operation to seize President Nicolás Maduro, she would be the obvious candidate to replace him. But so far, Mr Trump has failed to officially endorse her, saying she wasn't respected enough to lead the country.
The White House has said the meeting went very well. This is what Ms Machado said after the meeting, surrounded by supporters and press.
I presented the President of the United States the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, and I told him this. Listen to this. Two hundred years ago, General Lafayette gave Simon Bolivar a medal with George Washington's face on it. It was given by General Lafayette as a sign of the brotherhood between the United States, people of the United States, and the people of Venezuela in their fight for freedom against tyranny.
Well, the Nobel Peace Prize, and presumably the medal that goes with it, is something Donald Trump has made no secret that he wants badly. And he has expressed his gratitude in a social media post, saying the move was a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, the acting leader, Delcy Rodriguez, has been walking a diplomatic tightrope. She's trying to meet Trump's demands without alienating Maduro loyalists who control Venezuela's security forces and feared paramilitaries. And while this was all going on in Washington, she was delivering her State of the Union address in Caracas. She told Parliament Venezuela was engaging with the US.
There is a stain on relations between the United States and Venezuela and we said that we would resolve it diplomatically, face to face, as Bolivar taught us, and not be afraid. Let us not be afraid of diplomacy.
Our Central America correspondent, Will Grant, is in the Cuban capital, Havana, where tributes are being paid to 32 of the country's soldiers and security personnel who were killed in Venezuela during the US capture of Nicolas Maduro. I asked Will what Ms Machado had been hoping to achieve in her discussions with the US president. Maria Corina Machado was, if you like, the opposition politician behind the winner of the election last year, Edmundo Gonzalez. So she is staking a very serious claim to playing a major role in any future government in Venezuela, arguably, of course, to head the government, to be the president following elections. So It's not surprising that she has met with Donald Trump, even if he was initially quite dismissive of her possibilities of being president.
It's going to be interesting to see how that personal relationship begins to fare now that Nicolas Maduro has been removed from power and whether or not this peace offering, if you like, of the Nobel Peace Prize medal is sufficient to smooth over any differences they might have.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:31
2
What did Maria Corina Machado discuss with President Trump?
6:31–7:44
3
What are the implications of Trump's military threats in Minnesota?
7:44–9:02
4
How are families in Iran affected by recent protests?
9:02–10:40
5
What new discoveries have scientists made beneath Antarctica's ice?
10:40–13:14
6
What is the significance of Machado's Nobel Peace Prize medal?
13:14–17:26
7
What trends are emerging in the non-alcoholic drinks industry?
17:26–20:07
8
What did researchers discover about naturally mummified cheetahs?
20:07–32:48