News
NBC News, April 27, 2022 – 6:00 pm to 6:56 pm (ET)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russia-releases-us-marine-vet-part-prisoner-exchange-rcna26214
Russia has released former Marine Trevor Reed in a prisoner exchange with the U.S., his family and officials said Wednesday.
“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is safely on his way back to the United States,” Joey, Paula, and Taylor Reed said in a statement. They added Reed will “tell his own story” when he is ready before asking for privacy to address “the myriad of health issues brought on by the squalid conditions he was subjected to in his Russian gulag.”
The dramatic exchange between Russia and the U.S. unfolded Wednesday, trading Reed, who was jailed in Moscow, for convicted Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2010.
CNN, – April 27, 2022
Lawyers for the New York State Attorney General’s Office said they are nearly finished with their civil investigation into the Trump Organization, after taking steps to unravel the real estate company’s assets that they described as being as complex as a “Russian nesting doll.”
They still want to search two cell phones belonging to former President Donald Trump and the laptop and desktop of his longtime executive assistant Rhona Graff, but investigators told a judge this week they’re moving quickly.
“The process is near the end,” Kevin Wallace, senior enforcement counsel at the New York State Attorney General’s Office, said Monday.
A third-party firm hired to search the Trump Organization’s files had identified 151 custodians, or people or entities, that might have documents sought by the attorney general’s office, but Wallace said they are focusing on the “most important outstanding pieces of information” because the clock is ticking for it to file a lawsuit.
PBS NewsHour – April 27, 2022 (10:13)
CNN, April 27, 2022 – 1:00 pm to 1:35 pm (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/26/opinions/twitter-trump-musk-politics-filipovic/index.html
CNN, April 27, 2022 – 9:57 am to 12:16 pm (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/26/opinions/twitter-trump-musk-politics-filipovic/index.html
CNN, April 27, 2022 – 9:53 am to 1:19 pm (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/26/opinions/twitter-trump-musk-politics-filipovic/index.html
Elon Musk just threw a wrench in the next US presidential election – to the benefit of Donald Trump.
With the man thought to be the world’s richest buying Twitter, the platform is likely in for some big shifts. Among them: changes to the terms of service that would allow currently banned users to return. That could include the former President.
Trump was permanently suspended after the January 6 riots; the company said it worried his tweets increased “the risk of further incitement of violence.” But Musk is a self-styled free speech absolutist, who has criticized many of Twitter’s efforts to reign in trolling and abuse on the platform. “If in doubt, let the speech exist,” Musk told the audience at a recent TED conference. “If it’s a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist.”
Already, there is wide speculation that a Musk-owned social media platform will welcome Trump back. For his part, Trump says he wouldn’t return, but it’s hard to imagine that a man with such itchy Twitter fingers would be able to stay away for long.
April 27, 2022 – 2:00 pm to 4:22 pm (ET)
CNN, April 27, 2022 – 2:00 pm to 4:11 pm (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/energy/russia-europe-gas-supply/index.html
CNN, April 27, 2022 – 3:00 pm to 3:39 pm (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/energy/russia-europe-gas-supply/index.html
Russia has started to turn off the supply of natural gas to Europe, making good on a threat to halt deliveries to “unfriendly” countries that refuse to make payments in rubles.
On Wednesday, state energy giant Gazprom said it had suspended natural gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland after they rejected President Vladimir Putin’s ultimatum to pay in rubles, rather than euros — part of a broader effort to prop up Russia’s currency as its economy buckles under the weight of Western sanctions.
The move marks a significant escalation in the economic conflict between Russia and the West, and the most serious response yet by Moscow to several rounds of European sanctions announced since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the suspension was tantamount to “blackmail.” She said that EU member states met for emergency talks Wednesday, and that some have already started sending gas to Poland and Bulgaria.
A series of unexplained explosions have occurred in parts of Transnistria, a breakaway territory within Moldova that has housed Russian troops for decades, sparking fears that Moscow’s war could soon stretch beyond Ukraine and create a new theater of conflict in eastern Europe.
Two radio towers in the territory were damaged by explosions in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Transnistrian Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a statement. On Monday, a series of explosions had been heard in Transnistria’s capital Tiraspol, near the Ministry of State Security building, according to Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti.
Ukraine described the blasts as a planned provocation by Russian security services. Ukraine has also blamed Russia for firing cruise missiles Tuesday at a bridge across the estuary of the Dniester River, suggesting Moscow is attempting to cut off the southwestern corner of Ukraine that borders Moldova.
The explosions, and a drip feed of comments by Russian officials regarding the region – including a senior Russian commander saying that the army’s plan to capture southern Ukraine would open up a land corridor stretching to Transnistria – have raised intense concern in Moldova that the disputed territory within its borders is included in Russian President Vladimir’s war strategy.
