International
Ukraine continues to hit targets within Russia, which maintains the initiative at the front
Ukraine continues to hit targets within the Russian Federation and managed to damage several fuel tanks in the Rostov region last night with a drone attack, but the Russian forces maintain the initiative on the battlefield and continue to gain ground on the eastern front.
According to the Russian authorities, the attack has caused a fire in the aforementioned infrastructures in the southern Russian city of Azov.
Anonymous sources from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have claimed the attack in statements to several Ukrainian media. According to these sources, the attacked infrastructures belong to two different oil product companies. One of them has up to 22 fuel tanks.
According to Russian Telegram channels, Azov’s neighbors heard explosions near the port and the train station, where oil facilities are located. Those same Telegram channels have published a video of a large column of fire and smoke rising towards the sky of the city of Azov.
In recent months, Kiev has attacked numerous refineries and other oil infrastructures within the Russian Federation with its own-made drones, in an attempt to decimate the Russian war economy and deprive the Russian Army fighting in Ukraine of some of the fuel it needs.
The United States has publicly expressed its disagreement with these attacks for fear of Russian reprisals and that they will destabilize the international oil market.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Staff has reported that the axis of the Pokrovsk front, in the eastern region of Donetsk, remains the hottest area in the entire contact zone due to constant Russian attacks.
In the middle of the day, “the Russian occupants” had tried to “15 times improve their positions” in the direction of the city of Pokrovsk, which is still in the hands of Ukraine.
According to the influential Ukrainian Telegram channel DeepState, which reports daily on the course of the war, Russian forces advanced in the last few hours along with the towns of Umanske, Arjangelske and Sokol, all of them in the Donetsk region.
In their report on Tuesday’s war, British military intelligence talks about the “probable” conquest by Russian troops of the town of Novooleksandrivka, 20 kilometers north of the occupied Avdivka (Donetsk).
“The area has experienced intense fighting throughout 2024 and Russia has gradually advanced since the capture of Avdivka in February 2024,” the British report reads.
According to London’s military intelligence, the capture of Novooleksandrivka brings Russia closer to a vital road for the supply of Ukrainian forces in the east.
The Russian authorities have been reporting in recent days and weeks of the improvement of positions and the seizure of several villages by their troops.
Ukraine lost the initiative at the front in September last year after having exhausted its counter-offensive with modest advances that in some cases have been reversed by Russia.
After almost half a year with hardly any supplies from the United States, Kiev began to receive new military aid from Washington financed with the expected package of more than 60 billion dollars approved by Congress in April, the ratification of which was delayed for more than six months due to the resistance of a part of the Republican Party.
Despite the arrival of new weapons and quantities of ammunition for artillery vital to correct the dramatic disadvantage that Ukraine suffered in this chapter for months, Kiev has not been able for the moment to stop enemy advances or recover the initiative.
For his part, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, expressed his concern about the deterioration of the situation in Ukraine after two and a half years of conflict and particularly denounced the situation in Kharkov, where the recent Russian land offensive “has destroyed entire communities.”
Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine, is located in the east of the country, close to the Russian-occupied regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, in the Donbas.
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.”
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