International
Russia announces the creation of a center for the design and production of assault drones
The Minister of Defense of Russia, Sergey Shoigu, announced today the creation of a center for the design and production of assault drones, an aspect in which Ukraine has done a lot of damage to the Russian rear.
“The center will unite the different companies, laboratories and design departments that are dedicated to the development and production of advanced weapons,” Shoigu said during a visit to a military polygon in the Moscow region.
Shoigu was able to supervise the operation of drones with a payload of between 10 and 200 kilograms, and whose parts are all domestically manufactured, which facilitates their rapid mass production.
Specifically, the specialists presented to the minister a universal quadcopter that can carry different types of ammunition and operate in conditions of almost zero visibility, and whose easy handling only requires two weeks of instruction for its operators.
To begin with, the company is willing to produce 30 of those units per month in case it receives the approval of the Ministry of Defense.
Precisely, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has been insisting for many months on the need to accelerate the production of unmanned devices for use in the military campaign in Ukraine, where Moscow has mostly used Shahed imported from Iran.
Russian air defenses shot down fifty enemy drones in eight Russian regions during the early hours of the morning, including the one surrounding the capital, Moscow, according to a military statement.
Half of those drones were targeted at the border region of Belgorod, the hardest hit since the beginning of the war and where two other people died.
The governors of the Smolensk, Briansk and Kaluga regions reported that the Ukrainian attacks caused fires in a fuel tank and energy infrastructure.
Since the first year of the war, Ukraine has managed to hit different military and energy targets in the annexed Crimean peninsula, other occupied territories and the regions of the European part of Russia with self-produced aerial and naval drones.
For their part, Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted two Russian missiles and three Russian drones on Friday night, while they recorded a total of seven missile attacks, according to Air Force commander Mikola Oleschuk.
The air defenses destroyed two X-59 and X-69 guided air missiles, as well as three reconnaissance drones, two Orlan-10 and a Supercam, Oleschuk said through his Telegram channel.
In addition, according to the Air Force commander, the launches of three Iskander-M ballistic missiles, two S-300 and S-400 guided missiles from the Russian border region of Belgorod, in addition to the two intercepted missiles, which departed from the Black Sea, were recorded.
The Attorney General’s Office of Ukraine reported this Saturday that since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022 the number of children killed by the conflict has risen to 545 minutes that 1,289 have been injured with varying degrees of severity.
According to a publication of the prosecutor’s office on its Telegram channel, the majority of dead or injured children are concentrated in regions crossed by the war front such as Donetsk (east), Kharkov (northeast) and Kerson, but also in the capital region of Kiev, among others.
Only yesterday, Friday, an eight-year-old boy and a 14-year-old teenager were killed as a result of the bombing of the town of Sinelnikovo, in the Dnipropetrovsk region (center), while a six-year-old boy was seriously injured.
In addition, in the Mikoláiv region (south), a 14-year-old teenager was injured in the bombing of the town of Solonchaki, the prosecutor’s office recalled.
NATO Defense Ministers agreed yesterday in Brussels that they are willing to provide more military support, including anti-aircraft defenses, to Ukraine, at the end of an emergency meeting requested by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski.
In recent weeks, Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have intensified and according to Zelenski, some have not been able to be repelled due to a lack of anti-aircraft ammunition.
Ukrainian security services sources said that the drone attacks launched tonight against eight Russian regions achieved their goal of causing damage to that country’s energy infrastructure.
Russia accused Ukraine of deliberately targeting its journalists after the death on Friday of the war correspondent of the Russian channel ‘Izvestia’, Semion Yeremin, who died while making a report in the Ukrainian region of Zaporiyia.
“As for the fact that the Ukrainian Army deliberately makes Russian journalists its target, this is so,” Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, told that television channel.
International
Thousands rally nationwide against Trump’s threat to U.S. democracy
Thousands of protesters gathered on Saturday (April 19, 2025) in major cities like New York and Washington, as well as in small communities across the United States, in a second wave of demonstrations against President Donald Trump. The crowds denounced what they view as growing threats to the country’s democratic ideals.
In New York City, demonstrators of all ages rallied in front of the Public Library near Trump Tower, holding signs accusing the president of undermining democratic institutions and judicial independence.
Many protesters also criticized Trump’s hardline immigration policies, including mass deportations and raids targeting undocumented migrants.
“Democracy is in grave danger,” said Kathy Valyi, 73, the daughter of Holocaust survivors. She told AFP that the stories her parents shared about Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1930s Germany “are happening here now.”
In Washington, demonstrators voiced concern over what they see as Trump’s disregard for long-standing constitutional norms, such as the right to due process.
International
ACLU seeks emergency court order to stop venezuelan deportations under Wartime Law
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Friday asked two federal judges to block the U.S. government under President Donald Trump from deporting any Venezuelan nationals detained in North Texas under a rarely used 18th-century wartime law, arguing that immigration officials appear to be moving forward with deportations despite Supreme Court-imposed limitations.
The ACLU has already filed lawsuits to stop the deportation of two Venezuelan men held at the Bluebonnet Detention Center, challenging the application of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The organization is now seeking a broader court order that would prevent the deportation of any immigrant in the region under that law.
In an emergency filing early Friday, the ACLU warned that immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan detainees of being members of the Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang. These accusations, the ACLU argues, are being used to justify deportations under the wartime statute.
The Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times in U.S. history — most notably during World War II to detain Japanese-American civilians in internment camps. The Trump administration has claimed the law allows them to swiftly remove individuals identified as gang members, regardless of their immigration status.
The ACLU, together with Democracy Forward, filed legal actions aiming to suspend all deportations carried out under the law. Although the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed deportations to resume, it unanimously ruled that they could only proceed if detainees are given a chance to present their cases in court and are granted “a reasonable amount of time” to challenge their pending removal.
International
Dominican ‘False Hero’ Arrested for Faking Role in Nightclub Collapse That Killed 231
A man identified as Rafael Rosario Mota falsely claimed to have rescued 12 people from the collapse of the Jet Set nightclub in Santo Domingo—a tragedy that left 231 people dead—but he was never at the scene.
Intelligence agents in the Dominican Republic arrested the 32-year-old man for pretending to be a hero who saved lives during the catastrophic incident, authorities announced.
Rosario Mota had been charging for media interviews in which he falsely claimed to have pulled survivors from the rubble after the nightclub’s roof collapsed in the early hours of April 8, during a concert by merengue singer Rubby Pérez, who was among those killed.
“He was never at the scene of the tragedy,” the police stated. The arrest took place just after he finished another interview on a digital platform, where he repeated his fabricated story in exchange for money as part of a “media tour” filled with manipulated information and invented testimonies.
“False hero!” read a message shared on the police force’s Instagram account alongside a short video of the suspect, in which he apologized: “I did it because I was paid. I ask forgiveness from the public and the authorities.”
Thousands rally nationwide against Trump’s threat to U.S. democracy
ACLU seeks emergency court order to stop venezuelan deportations under Wartime Law
UN complaint filed against Costa Rica over detention of migrant children
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
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Extension of the state of emergency approved in southern Chile
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