Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz.

And I'm Jeff Bennett. On the news hour tonight, the CIA director visits the acting president of Venezuela,

while the nation's opposition leader visits the U.S. and pushes for a transition to a democratic government.

There are things that Delci Rodriguez or any of the members of the criminal structure will

never be able to provide. Trust, rule of law, reconciliation, citizen participation and support, never.

New restrictions are placed on Elon Musk's artificial intelligence program that was able to generate

explicit images, but serious concerns remain.

And how Iran's uprising met a brutal crackdown, and how a pledge of U.S. help seems to have gone unfulfilled. Welcome to the News Hour.

Venezuela opposition leader Maria Karina Machado told an audience in Washington, D.C. today

that she's confident democracy will return to her nation.

Almost two weeks after the U.S. arrest of now former president Nicolas Maduro, Machado

revealed little of her own plans. As Nick Schiffrin reports, that hasn't stopped the Trump

White House from engaging with the rest of the Maduro regime it left in place.

Today, the first image of what U.S. officials billed as a historic meeting, CIA director

John Ratcliffe, greeting interim Venezuelan president, Delci Rodriguez.

That handshake, and Ratcliffe's trip to Caracas would have been unthinkable just weeks

ago.

Especially to visit U.S. sanctioned nationalist politician Rodriguez, handpicked successor

to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

But a U.S. official says the meeting was a sign of an improved U.S.-Venezuela

relationship.

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