NEWS-VIEWS-REVIEWS

Caracas (AFP) – Venezuelan riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets for a second day Thursday to break up protests by President Nicolas Maduro’s opponents, further inflaming tensions after Wednesday’s deadly unrest. The clashes erupted as police in the beleaguered oil-rich nation tried to break up thousands of marchers as they reached a vital Caracas freeway, edging back slightly as masked protesters pelted them with stones and Molotov cocktails. [Read more…]

An Egyptian American charity worker who was imprisoned in Cairo for three years and became the global face of Egypt’s brutal crackdown on civil society returned home to the United States late Thursday after the Trump administration quietly negotiated her release. President Trump and his aides worked for several weeks with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi to secure the freedom of Aya Hijazi, 30, a U.S. citizen, as well as her husband, Mohamed Hassanein, who is Egyptian, and four other humanitarian workers. Trump dispatched a U.S. government aircraft to Cairo to bring Hijazi and her family to Washington. [Read more…]

US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning.

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Aaron Hernandez, the former NFL star who was found dead today after hanging himself in prison, is the subject of a documentary TV series produced by Geno McDermott’s Blackfin. The company had been in production on the series since early this year, working with writer Dan Wetzel who had covered Hernandez’s story for the past four years. [Read more…]

SEOUL, April 20 (Yonhap) — The U.S. Air Force dispatched a nuclear sniffer aircraft Thursday to the east of the Korean Peninsula amid the possibility of North Korea’s imminent nuclear test, a government source said. “The WC-135 Constant Phoenix, a special-purpose U.S. plane, made an emergency sortie today over the East Sea,” the source said, requesting anonymity. Its mission is to collect samples from the atmosphere in order to detect and identity a nuclear explosion. [Read more…]

The Murdochs have decided Bill O’Reilly’s 21-year run at Fox News will come to an end. According to sources briefed on the discussions, network executives are preparing to announce O’Reilly’s departure before he returns from an Italian vacation on April 24. Now the big questions are how the exit will look and who will replace him. [Read more…]

ATLANTA — Republicans avoided an embarrassing defeat in a House race in Atlanta’s conservative suburbs by forcing a runoff against Democrat Jon Ossoff, who captured the most votes with a groundswell of grass-roots activism and millions in donations fueled largely by antipathy to President Trump. [Read more…]