Ousted Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro appears to have slimmed down during his time behind bars — and even flashed a smile and peace sign in new photos from his New York City prison.
Page F5From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 31 August 2026
US signs oil deal with Venezuela days after releasing jail photos of a smiling Maduro.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers on Venezuela, because the numbers are the whole story here, hon.
In one week, two facts entered the record. First: Nicolas Maduro appears in new jail photographs, visibly slimmer, flashing a smile and a peace sign. Second: the United States and Venezuela struck an oil deal, part of what one paper called Trump's unusual oil deal in Venezuela, reported in the same stretch of days as the Navy's own supply chain difficulties came to light.…
…(cont) Reconciling those two entries against each other produces a gap. On one side of the ledger: a head of state, jailed, photographed smiling for the cameras like a man aware the cameras are part of the deal. On the other side: a signed agreement for his country's oil, negotiated with a government he nominally still, on paper, is a part of, or was, or is being separated from — the filing is not entirely clear on that point, and this desk does not resolve ambiguity it cannot audit.
What is auditable is the sequence. Jail photos first. Oil deal second. Not a coincidence requiring explanation — a timeline requiring only arithmetic. When a country's oil becomes available for a deal at the exact moment its president becomes available for a photograph, the two availabilities tend to share a cause.
The Navy, meanwhile, is short on supply chain capacity, according to the same reporting that carried the oil deal. That is worth noting for the file: the country making an oil deal with a jailed leader's government is also the country whose Navy cannot currently keep its own supply lines running smoothly. One agency's shortage and another agency's acquisition, filed in the same week, under the same administration, are not accused of connection here. They are simply observed to be filed together.
This desk does not have access to the terms of the oil deal, its price per barrel, its duration, or its counterparties beyond what has been reported. What this desk does have is a calendar, and on that calendar, the smile comes before the signature. Whose column that kind of arithmetic tends to benefit is a separate filing, one this desk expects to run later, once the terms are public enough to audit.
“They lock the guy up, snap a happy photo, and sign the oil papers in the same news cycle — that's not diplomacy, that's a hostage situation with a barrel price attached.”
“This is a humanitarian opening, not a transaction — the timing with the jail photos is coincidental, and even if it weren't, securing energy access while a regime stabilizes is just good policy, which, yes, is also what a transaction looks like, but that's not what I meant.”
The receipts
The U.S. and Venezuela have entered into an oil deal. And, NPR spent two years tracking heat-related deaths and found that people in the U.S. are dying from heat more than the official counts show.
Plus, a groundbreaking new space telescope.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.