Venezuela announces more military exercises in standoff with US

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CARACAS - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday announced new military exercises in a tense standoff with the United States, a day after opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maduro has yet to comment on the prize going to Machado, who spoke to US President Donald Trump after receiving the honour and dedicated it to him and to "the suffering people of Venezuela."

Maduro has said a US naval deployment of warships in the Caribbean off his country's coast was ultimately designed to oust him.

The United States says the deployment is meant to fight drug trafficking, and US warplanes have destroyed several speed boats it said were taking drugs from Venezuela toward the United States.

Maduro said on the social media platform Telegram that the new exercises were being carried out in a corridor running from the Caribbean to the Orinoco River and to the border with Brazil.

"We have been active since midnight," he wrote.

He said Venezuela had the "right to peace" in the face of what he called a military escalation by the United States. Machado supports the US military deployment.

Trump, who has insisted he deserved the peace prize for what he called his work ending eight wars, confirmed Friday evening that Machado had called him.

Machado was awarded the prize for her promoting democracy in Venezuela, where Maduro is widely accused of running a harsh, autocratic leftist regime.

"The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called today, called me and said, 'I'm accepting this in honour of you, because you really deserved it,'" the president said.

"A very nice thing to do. I didn't, I didn't say, 'Then give it to me,' though I think she might have. She was very nice," Trump joked.