President Donald Trump made the announcement Wednesday, escalating pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s government. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the tanker, called The Skipper, had been sanctioned for illegal oil shipping. Caracas called the seizure “international piracy.” Meanwhile, a House committee closed its bipartisan inquiry into a September follow-up strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean that killed two survivors.

The ruling rejected arguments that troops are still needed there to protect federal personnel and property. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Trump administration’s efforts to deploy Guard troops – which have spanned to other cities including Chicago and Portland, Oregon – amount to trying to create “a national police force made up of state troops.” The judge put his decision on hold until Monday, which gives space for an expected appeal by the administration.

María Corina Machado appeared late last night after her daughter attended the award ceremony on her behalf. It was a risky and covert trip for Venezuela’s opposition leader and pro-democracy activist, who has been in hiding for nearly a year. Venezuelan officials vowed to consider her a fugitive if she left the country. Ms. Machado told the BBC she was seeing her family for the first time in 16 months and could finally “cry and pray” with them.

Archaeologists found the earliest evidence of intentional fire, including handaxes warped by heat and pyrite, at a 400,000-year-old archaeological site in eastern England. Their research was published yesterday in Nature. Previous evidence of the key technological milestone dated back just 50,000 years. One of the researchers called this the “most exciting” discovery of his career.