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President Donald Trump said the US Struck a facility inside Venezuela. More artists canceled performances at the Kennedy center. And we weighed the risks and benefits of red and white wine. That's some of what we'll get to on the 7. From the Washington Post, I'm Rennie Svirnofsky in for Hannah jewel. It's Tuesday, December 30th. Let's get you caught up with today's seven stories. Number one, President Trump said the U.S. destroyed a loading dock in Venezuela. For months, Trump has been putting pressure on Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. The US has built up naval forces in the region, seized oil tankers, and destroyed boats the Trump administration alleges were carrying drugs. And yesterday, Trump said that unspecified U.S. forces were responsible for an explosion at a marine loading facility inside Venezuela.
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There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs. They load the boats up with drugs. So we hit all the boats and now we hit the area. It's the implementation area. That's where they implement, and that is no longer around.
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If confirmed, the shoreline attack would be the first known US Attack inside Venezuela. Previous strikes targeted boats in the Pacific and the Caribbean. Trump presented a united front with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NETanyahu. That's number two. The president welcomed Netanyahu to his Mar a Lago estate in Florida yesterday. The meeting came as tensions between Washington and Jerusalem threatened the fragile ceasefire that the US Brokered in Gaza. But the leaders mainly had warm words for each other. Here's how Netanyahu characterized their relationship.
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I'll say it again and again and again. We've never had a friend by President Trump in the White House. It's not even close. And I think you can judge that by the, not merely by the frequency of our meetings, but by the content and the intensity. I think Israel is very blessed.
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Like other world leaders who have presented Trump with golden crowns and golf clubs, Netanyahu appealed to one of the president's desires. He announced that Trump would be one of few non Israelis to receive the state's highest cultural honor, the Israel Prize. Beyond the exchange of praise, Trump told reporters that Hamas would be provided a, quote, very short time to disarm and asserted without evidence that countries, countries other than Israel would, quote, wipe them out if the group did not comply. Number three more artists canceled performances at the Kennedy Center. Earlier this month, the board of directors at the Kennedy center announced that it would add President Trump's name to the venue. And the move has apparently been received poorly by some performers. Last week musician Chuck Red pulled out of his annual Christmas Eve jazz concert and yesterday jazz supergroup the Cookers said it had canceled both shows it was scheduled to play on New Year's Eve. Doug Varone and Dancers, a decades old performance group, also said that it had decided to cancel two performances in April. Kennedy Center President Richard Grinnell, a Trump appointee, responded to the cancellations with a post on social media. He wrote, the arts are for everyone and the left is mad about it. The Social Security Administration is ending the year in turmoil. That's number four The Social Security Administration is the sprawling federal agency that delivers retirement, disability and survivor benefits to 74 million Americans. It began the second Trump administration with a hostile takeover. Thousands of employees were fired or quit, and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath. Now the remaining workforce is struggling to deal with the amount of work. Record backlogs have delayed basic services to millions of customers, according to internal agency documents. And dozens of interviews and data shows that long, strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by key measures since Trump returned to office. Number 5 An ice storm hit parts of New York and the Northeast. For many, it hasn't been a great start to the week, weather wise. Parts of New York and central and northern New England saw roadways turned into ice rinks after an ice storm hit. And as of early this morning, more than 100,000 customers nationwide have been left without power, according to Poweroutage US this ice storm has been linked to a bomb cyclone which delivered damaging winds and a tornado to the Midwest and Ohio Valley on Sunday. And the bad weather may not be over today. The winter storm is forecast to bring strong winds, heavy snow and frigid temperatures to the Great Lakes and Northeast. Number six is not the best news for anyone who thinks red wine is healthier than white wine, because research shows it is not. For a long time, many people thought that red wine was better for you because it contains more polyphenols than white wine. These plant compounds have antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties. But it turns out the amounts of this compound in red wine are so low that you'd have to drink way too many glasses to get the health benefits. And as most of us know, there are serious health risks to drinking too much alcohol. Now, evidence suggests that any type of alcohol is unlikely to make you healthier than drinking no alcohol at all. And depending on how your holidays went, some of you may be pleased that we're bringing you this news after the festive period. And at number seven the Post ran an AI Fight Club to find out which technology performs best this year. Our tech columnist wanted to find out whether one AI chatbot was any better than the others. So he set the technology various tasks. Those included writing an apology letter, answering medical questions, suggesting changes to a rental agreement, and even editing people out of photos. Then he got human judges to mark their efforts. And there's perhaps some good news for humans. The AI only scored higher than a passing grade once. Interestingly, no one chatbot performed better at everything, which suggests you need to use a range of them to get the best results. And ChatGPT did not come out on top in any of the tests. Get all the results from the Post's AI Fight Club in our newsletter. You can find a link to that in our show Notes. All right, you are all caught up. I'm Rennie Svirnofski. We're taking a bit of time off the rest of this week, but we'll meet you back here in the new.
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