Your Thursday Evening Briefing

Julian Assange, Astro Twins, Nipsey Hussle View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Thursday, April 11, 2019 [NYTimes.com »]( [Your Thursday Evening Briefing]( By REMY TUMIN AND MARCUS PAYADUE Good evening. Here’s the latest. Peter Nicholls/Reuters 1. The long, strange self-imposed exile of Julian Assange has come to an end. The WikiLeaks founder [is in custody in London]( after Ecuador dropped his asylum protections. After seven years in the embassy’s tiny offices, [relations with his hosts had frayed badly]( including disputes over his behavior, cat and personal hygiene. Mr. Assange left the embassy in a police van, above. He faces an extradition warrant filed by the U.S., which unsealed an indictment of one count of conspiracy to hack a computer, related to his role in the 2010 release of classified U.S. documents. The charge is narrow, to the relief of press freedom advocates. _____ Reuters 2. Sudan’s leader, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, was forced out in a coup driven by months of mass protests over decades of authoritarian rule. In the West, he was seen as [a heartless warmonger and coddler of terrorists](. Mr. al-Bashir, 75, is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges including genocide in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Darfur region. Protesters’ jubilation, above in Khartoum, was tempered by worries about the military’s assumption of control for what it called [a two-year transition period](. Sudan’s defense secretary said the government had been dissolved and the Constitution suspended. _____ Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters 3. Brexit forever. Or at least for six more months. On the eve of Britain’s (re-)scheduled departure from the European Union, European leaders extended the deadline to the end of October. Above, anti-Brexit protesters outside Parliament on Thursday. The path ahead still resembles a minefield, our London bureau reports. The choices facing the British Parliament haven’t changed. And the thing exhausted [British lawmakers want most is a vacation](. Businesses, especially small ones, [pleaded with politicians]( to come to an agreement. _____ Mary Altaffer/Associated Press 4. The National Enquirer may have a new owner. Ron Burkle, a friend of Bill Clinton and major Democratic donor, is in [talks to buy the tabloid from American Media Inc](. Friendly toward President Trump, The Enquirer came under scrutiny for its role in aiding Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. Mr. Burkle, who specializes in buying distressed companies, made his initial fortune buying and selling supermarkets in California. _____ Rozette Rago for The New York Times 5. “He saw hope. He saw a community that even through its flaws taught him to always keep going.” President Barack Obama was one of scores of celebrities and fans who [paid tribute to Nipsey Huss]( at a memorial service on Thursday. Mr. Obama sent a letter that was read aloud at Staples Center, an arena that holds 21,000 people. Hip-hop luminaries including Snoop Dogg, YG and others spoke at the memorial, and closed with a musical tribute from Stevie Wonder. A procession of the coffin through south Los Angeles is to follow. One of our reporters went to high school with Nipsey, and wrote about [what the rapper meant to the Los Angeles community](. “We saw ourselves in Nipsey, because, in many ways, he was part of us,” he writes. _____ William Widmer for The New York Times 6. A deputy sheriff’s son was charged in connection with fires at [three predominantly black churches in Louisiana](. In a news conference announcing the arrest of Holden Matthews, 21, authorities emphasized that they had not concluded their investigation into what prompted the attacks, but said that Mr. Matthews played music in a genre sometimes associated with white supremacists — “black metal,” meaning darker than thresh or death metal. The fires occurred over a 10-day period starting on March 26 in St. Landry Parish, north of Lafayette, destroying churches, including Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas, above, that had been around for more than a century and had been the spiritual homes of generations of black families. _____ Robert Markowitz/NASA 7. Yesterday we brought you news from a black hole 55 million light-years away. Today’s space news is a little closer to home. Researchers with what’s known as the NASA Twins Study [released their first detailed findings]( of the effects of space travel on the human body. They used biological data the astronaut Scott Kelly, right, gathered while in space for nearly a year, and the same data his twin Mark, left, collected in the same period on Earth. Above, the brothers in 2015 before Mr. Kelly left for space. The results were disturbing. Mr. Kelly returned with extra genetic mutations and blunted scores on cognition tests. [Here are some takeaways](. And if your head is still spinning over the image of the black hole, our reporter broke it down on a [Reddit AMA today](. _____ Ariel Davis 8. Your digital footprint. Your physical footprint. Even your genetic makeup. As companies and governments gain new powers to follow people across the internet and around the world, The Times is embarking on a monthslong project to explore the technology and where it’s taking us. [Take our survey](. “It seems like a good moment to pause and consider the choices we’ve already made, and the ones that lie ahead,” the editor of our editorial pages explains in [an introduction](. [Our publisher, A.G. Sulzberger,]( says The Times is examining its own data collection, too. _____ Todd Hido 9. What will America look like in 2024? It’s a question we asked of 15 playwrights as inspiration to develop [original works for T Magazine’s culture issue]( including Paul Rudnick, Terrence McNally, Naomi Iizuka and Lynn Nottage. Alongside six of the plays you’ll find video versions with actors including Nathan Lane, Kerry Washington and John Lithgow. “If you want to change minds, write a great editorial for the Op-Ed page,” Mr. McNally told our reporter. “But if you want to get people to feel differently, reach them through the theater.” _____ Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times 10. Finally, a very good dog. At running. Since Monday, a dog named [Cactus]( has been running alongside humans in the Marathon des Sables, a 140.7-mile race across the Sahara. He completed the full 23 miles of Tuesday’s stage as well as Wednesday’s 47.4 miles. In the early mornings, Cactus makes his rounds at the runners’ tents before trotting to the front of the starting line to take off with the (human) pack. He seems to take affection wherever it is offered. “I know he’s having the greatest time,” wrote an inn owner from Cactus’s village. Have a very good night. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. 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