U.S. federal judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who presided over the criminal case against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, died Wednesday at the age of 92, and his pending cases will pass to another judge.
Alvin K. Hellerstein died Wednesday at 92 of natural causes after nearly three decades presiding over high-profile matters. He had led the penal process against President Maduro and Cilia Flores since the two were kidnapped on January 3 during a U.S. military incursion into Venezuelan territory.
Ed Friedland, administrative director of the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York, confirmed the death.
Hellerstein held the role for nearly three decades. He was appointed in 1998 by then U.S President Bill Clinton to the Southern District of New York, considered one of the most significant federal tribunals in United States.
BDE: Longtime Manhattan federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein, an Orthodox Jew appointed by President Clinton in 1998, has died at 92, according to a court spokesperson. He was overseeing the prosecution of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. pic.twitter.com/w0nHyrcwc2
The federal case against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has a new judge. Analisa Torres will preside over the Southern District of New York proceedings after the death of Alvin K. Hellerstein, court records confirmed Wednesday.
The tribunal posted a document covering the reassignment of matters “previously assigned to judges no longer serving due to retirement or death.” The notice names Torres as the magistrate now handling the file.
The court’s standard procedure produced the transition. A docket left by a deceased judge passes to a colleague, assigned without public choice. The reassignment document makes no special provision for the President Maduro file, treating it like every other pending matter.
Analisa Torres was born in New York in 1959. She reached the federal bench in 2013 by appointment of President Barack Obama, and she has since presided over a wide range of civil, criminal, and regulatory matters.
Her path runs deep in the law. Descended from a family of Puerto Rican judges, she graduated with honors from Harvard, earned her doctorate at Columbia Law School, and worked in private firms before entering the courts. Before her federal appointment she sat for almost a decade on the New York State Supreme Court. Earlier she served on the city’s civil and criminal benches.
The trial against the Venezuelan President and his wife remains set for June 14, 2027. The judge’s death did not alter that date, and the schedule already fixed by the court holds.
On October 15, President Maduro and Flores appeared at a judicial hearing in New York after prosecutors tightened the accusations against them. The two listened to the arguments and pleaded “not guilty” to the new charges of alleged conspiracy to commit torture brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office.
That same day Hellerstein accepted a request presented by both the prosecution and the defense to postpone the start of the trial by two weeks. The extra time allows both sides to present pretrial motions.
The next hearing was programmed for December 17. On that date the defense will argue its motions to dismiss the case. The outcome of those arguments could reshape the proceeding before it reaches a jury. President Maduro’s lawyers affirmed that sovereign immunity shields the President from prosecution in a foreign court.
Hellerstein’s career extended far beyond this single file. Over nearly three decades on the federal bench he supervised a wide variety of matters, including the litigation tied to the September 11 attacks.
That new judge will inherit the pretrial motions, the pending defense requests, and the responsibility of presiding over a trial that involves a sitting head of State and his spouse.
Venezuelan authorities have characterized the detention of President Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores as a kidnapping carried out during a military incursion into sovereign territory. The December 17 hearing stands as the next concrete step in a process scheduled to stretch into mid 2027.
Two community health workers trying to spread awareness of Ebola in the eastern Congo were attacked by a machete-wielding mob on Friday, further demonstrating the difficulty of controlling the deadly disease among hostile and suspicious rural residents as the total number of cases surpassed 10,000.
An unidentified minor wounded a Serbian policeman guarding the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade with a knife before being shot dead during the early morning hours of Wednesday in what Interior Minister Ivica Dacic described to international outlets as a suspected terrorist attack.
During those days, Ukrainian forces acted "a little more cautiously," but were not ordered to refrain from responding to Russian strikes, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Indian national reportedly detained by immigration authorities after alleged fraud; case against accused gunman in Bondi Beach terror attack adjourned until February
A food delivery driver was attacked in the early hours of Wednesday in Limassol.
The 22-year-old driver told the police that at around 3am, when riding a bicycle on Ayia Phylaxeos street to deliver an order, he was approached by four individuals on two black motorcycles.
One of the individuals punched the driver’s helmet.
The perpetrators then snatched the driver’s wallet and fled in an unknown direction.
The criminal case against Naveed Akram for his alleged role in the Bondi terror attack faces more delays after an “unprecedented” investigation by the joint counter-terrorism team.
The matter will not return to court until 24 February after it was adjourned on Wednesday before Sydney’s Downing Centre local court. Prosecutors expect to be ready to certify the charges against Akram, who is yet to enter a plea, by that date.
A fire broke out in the area of the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant after air defenses were engaged, according to Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova Plus.
Cassidy Hutchinson had implicated Donald Trump in US Capitol attack during testimony before House committee
The justice department on Tuesday failed to secure a grand jury indictment against a former White House staffer who provided dramatic but disputed testimony against Donald Trump before a House committee investigating the 6 January 2021 US Capitol insurrection, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A grand jury in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request to return an indictment charging Cassidy Hutchinson, said the people, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case. It’s the latest setback in the justice department’s efforts to charge perceived adversaries of the Republican president.
The investigation of Cassidy Hutchinson was directed to the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which normally focuses on issues like police violence and election integrity.
Fighter jets, including F-16s, Mirage aircraft, and MiG-29s, play a significant role in intercepting Russian jet-powered drones, according to the General Staff.
Four public access defibrillators were delivered to the municipalities of Nicosia, Strovolos and Latsia-Yeri by the Rotary Club, as the HeartSafe Cyprus initiative was officially launched on Tuesday.
Rotary Club president Michalis Kyprianou said the initiative rests on the principle that “every human life has the same value”.
The head of the WHO office in Cyprus, Dr Irshad Shaikh, said the project was “about empowering people with the confidence, knowledge and skills to save lives”.
The WHO says cardiovascular diseases kill about 10,000 people every day in its European region and account for 42.5 per cent of all deaths there.
Polys Polykarpou, head of resuscitation services at the health ministry, said success would be judged by the number of people ready to act as well as the number of devices installed.
The programme forms part of the EU Safe Hearts Plan, which provides for more than 20 new defibrillators a year in Cyprus over five years.
More than 420,000 leaked emails have reopened a controversy over illegal donations to Germany’s Alternative for Germany party, while newly examined correspondence reveals previously undisclosed disagreements within its leadership. The revelations could also influence the continuing debate over the party’s constitutional status.
Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) is facing renewed scrutiny after hackers published a substantial archive of internal correspondence, exposing details of party finances, political strategy and disputes among senior officials.
The material, released on 19 October 2026, comprises approximately 421,000 emails and nearly 50,000 accompanying documents, amounting to some 281 gigabytes of data. The files cover more than a decade of party activity, including correspondence involving co-leader Alice Weidel, former chairman Alexander Gauland and other senior figures.
The identity of those responsible remains unknown.
The documents are being examined by several investigative teams, including ZDF, Der Spiegel and Austria’s Der Standard, with technical assistance from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
The Swiss donations controversy returns
The most consequential findings so far concern Weidel’s knowledge of illegal campaign donations received during Germany’s 2017 federal election.
At the time, approximately €132,000 was transferred through Swiss companies into accounts belonging to the AfD’s Bodensee district organisation. The payments were designated for Weidel’s election campaign, particularly its social media activities.
When the transactions became public in 2018, Weidel maintained that she had not known about the money until September 2017 and described the donations as unsolicited.
In an email dated 10 July 2017, attributed to Weidel, she told her district treasurer that campaign donations had been promised and requested that the party’s bank account be checked twice weekly.
She also asked to receive confirmation of incoming payments so that campaign expenditure could be planned.
Four days later, the first payment arrived from Switzerland.
Further correspondence indicates that Weidel arranged a separate campaign account and obtained authority to direct expenditure from donations earmarked for her election activities.
The leaked correspondence also reportedly includes invoices relating to the purchase of approximately 25,000 Facebook followers for Weidel’s campaign. The extent to which those accounts were automated, and their influence on voters, has not been established.
The AfD was previously ordered to pay approximately €396,000 for accepting the unlawful donations. Criminal proceedings involving Weidel and other district officials were discontinued in September 2021 because prosecutors found insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Weidel’s spokesman has rejected suggestions that she misrepresented events. He maintains that she had discussed possible contributions with several potential supporters but had neither anticipated specific amounts nor expected the payments from the Swiss companies concerned.
The new material does not establish that Weidel knew the identity of the ultimate donor or participated in concealing the source of the funds.
Emails reveal divisions over the party’s radical wing
Another development concerns Weidel’s earlier relationship with Björn Höcke, the influential leader of the AfD’s Thuringia organisation.
According to correspondence examined by WELT, Weidel expressed serious reservations between 2015 and 2017 about the influence of nationalist and extremist elements within the party.
She warned colleagues that associations with the anti-Islam Pegida movement and the far-right National Democratic Party risked alienating mainstream conservative voters, particularly in western Germany.
Her private concerns contrast with her subsequent accommodation of Höcke’s influence within the AfD.
The correspondence provides evidence of the internal disagreements that accompanied the party’s transformation from an initially Eurosceptic political movement into one centred increasingly on immigration, national identity and opposition to Germany’s established parties.
The revelations are particularly relevant because Weidel now promotes proposals for substantial changes to Germany’s relationship with the European Union.
As EU Today previously reported, she has advocated withdrawing Germany from the euro and the Schengen passport-free travel area.
Could the material influence an AfD ban?
The leak arrives amid continuing legal and political arguments over whether the AfD threatens Germany’s constitutional democratic order.
In May 2025, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the party as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation. However, a Cologne court issued an injunction in February 2026, preventing that classification from taking effect pending a final judicial decision.
The court acknowledged evidence of anti-constitutional tendencies within the AfD but found that the material presented was insufficient at that stage to establish that they characterised the party as a whole.
The leaked emails could potentially become relevant to future assessments.
Germany’s Interior Ministry has confirmed that domestic intelligence authorities can, in principle, consider available information when evaluating possible threats to the constitutional order.
Nevertheless, whether unlawfully obtained correspondence could be admitted as evidence, and what weight it would carry, would require separate legal examination.
A party ban can be imposed only by the Federal Constitutional Court. The present disclosures do not themselves establish the legal conditions necessary for such a decision.
Questions over authenticity and data protection
The scale of the archive introduces further complications.
The material reportedly contains bank statements, membership records, personal correspondence and other confidential information involving thousands of individuals.
Journalists have verified portions of the correspondence by comparing messages with independently retained originals. Handelsblatt’s examination, for example, identified previously exchanged emails whose contents matched records held by its own reporters.
However, verification of individual communications does not establish the authenticity of every document in the archive. Fabricated messages have also circulated online.
In an official statement on 21 October, the AfD described the breach as criminal data theft and said it would not authenticate individual documents for journalists.
The party has also reported the incident to the authorities.
For Germany’s political institutions, the affair now presents several distinct questions: whether historical campaign finance arrangements were accurately disclosed, what the correspondence reveals about the party’s internal decision-making, and whether any of the documents provide evidence relevant to ongoing constitutional scrutiny.
Those questions remain open as investigators and journalists continue examining the archive.
Ukraine used strike drones in an attack that took several hours near the city of Khrustalnyi, according to Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova Plus.
Reports mentioned numerous explosions across the city and thick smoke rising from several locations. Some residents told ASTRA that they had not heard air raid sirens despite the ongoing attack.
MOSCOW, Oct 25 (Reuters) – The Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday that its drones had struck a cargo vessel bound for the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk in an overnight attack and another...
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