International
JUST IN: Wikileaks founder freed after five years in prison

After a years-long legal saga, Wikileaks says that founder, Julian Assange has left the UK after reaching a deal with US authorities that will see him plead guilty to criminal charges and go free.
Mr Assange, 52, was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information.
For years, the US has argued that the Wikileaks files – which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – endangered lives.
He spent the last five years in a British prison, from where he was fighting extradition to the US.
Mr Assange also faced separate charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, which he denied.
He spent seven years hiding in Ecuador’s London embassy, claiming the Swedish case would lead him to be sent to the US.
Swedish authorities dropped the case in 2019 and said that too much time had passed since the original complaint, but UK authorities later took him into custody. He was tried for not surrendering to the courts to be extradited to Sweden.
According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Mr Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK.
Assange will return to Australia, according to a letter from the justice department.
On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Wikileaks said that Mr Assange left Belmarsh prison on Monday after 1,901 days in a small cell.
He was then “released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK” to return to Australia, the statement added.
Video shared online by Wikileaks appear to show Mr Assange, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, being driven to Stansted before boarding an aircraft.
His wife, Stella Assange, tweeted thanks to his supporters “who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true”.
She later told the BBC’s Today programme that the days running up to the US deal had been “touch-and-go” and “non-stop”, and that she was feeling “a whirlwind of emotions”.
The deal – which will see him plead guilty to one charge of the Espionage Act – is expected to be finalised in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, 26 June.
The remote Pacific islands, a US commonwealth, are much closer to Australia than US federal courts in Hawaii or the continental US.
Stella said she was very limited in what she could say about the deal ahead of her husband’s court appearance. “I don’t want to jeopardise anything”, she said.
“The important thing here is that the deal involved time served – that if he signed it, he would be able to walk free. He will be a free man once it has been signed off by a judge.”
She said the priority for her husband is to “get healthy again”, be in touch with nature, and for the family to have “time and privacy”.
Stella also confirmed that the couple’s two children are in Australia with her, but she has not yet told them that he is to be freed, only that they were going to visit family and that there was “a big surprise” waiting for them.
“We’ve been very careful because obviously no one can stop a five and a seven-year-old from, you know, shouting it from the rooftops at any given moment,” she said.
Agence France Press quoted a spokesperson for Australia’s government as saying that the case had “dragged on for too long”.
His attorney, Richard Miller, declined to comment when contacted by CBS. The BBC has also contacted his US-based lawyer.
Mr Assangee and his lawyers had long claimed that the case against him was politically motivated.
In April, US President Joe Biden said that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the presecution against Assange.
In a victory the following month, the UK High Court ruled that Mr Assange could bring a new appeal against extradition to the US, allowing him to challenge US assurances over how his prospective trial would be conducted and whether his right to free speech would be infringed.
After the ruling, Stella told reporters and supporters that the Biden administration “should distance itself from this shameful prosecution”.

US prosecutors had originally wanted to try the Wikileaks founder on 18 counts – mostly under the Espionage Act – over the release of confidential US military records and diplomatic messages related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Wikileaks, which Mr Assange founded in 2006, claims to have published over 10 million documents in what the US government later described as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States”.
In 2010, the website published a video from a US military helicopter which showed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters news reporters, being killed in Baghdad.
One of Mr Assange’s most well-known collaborators, US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison before then-president Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.
Even amid long-running legal battles, Mr Assange has rarely been seen in public and for years has reportedly suffered from poor health, including a small stroke in prison in 2021.
Courtesy: BBC
International
U.K.–India set to boost bilateral trade by over $34 billion a year
The FTA, which slashes duties on goods including textiles, alcohol and automobiles, was signed Thursday in the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his UK counterpart, Keir Starmer.

•Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his UK counterpart, Keir Starmer.
U.K. and India’s bilateral trade is set to get a more than $34 billion annual boost over the long term following their free trade agreement, with the countries’ leaders calling it a “historic” deal.
CNBC reported that the FTA, which slashes duties on goods including textiles, alcohol and automobiles, was signed on Thursday in the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his UK counterpart, Keir Starmer.
Both sides had finalized the trade pact in May after three years of intense negotiations — marked by thorny issues such as visas, tariff reduction and tax breaks.
Talks gained momentum and both governments accelerated to seal the deal as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats sent the world in disarray.
The agreement between the world’s fifth and sixth largest economies is expected to boost their bilateral trade by 25.5 billion pounds per year by 2040.
Trade in goods and services stood at over 40 billion pounds in 2024.
The deal offers “huge benefits to both of our countries,” boosting wages, raising living standards and bringing down prices for consumers, Starmer said.
India’s Modi lauded the agreement as “a blueprint for our shared prosperity,” highlighting how Indian goods including textiles, jewelry, agricultural products and engineering items would benefit from a better access to the U.K. market.
International
Russian missing plane found in Forest – No Survivors
Amur’s regional governor Vasily Orlov said five children were among those on board and declared three days of mourning.

Russian officials say 48 people were killed when an Angara Airlines plane went down in a dense forest in the far-eastern Amur region.
The Antonov An-24 plane, carrying 42 passengers and six crew, had left Blagoveshchensk close to the Chinese border and vanished from radar screens as it approached Tynda airport, officials said.
A Russian civil aviation helicopter then spotted burning fuselage from the plane on a remote hillside about 16km (10 miles) from Tynda.
Amur’s regional governor Vasily Orlov said five children were among those on board and declared three days of mourning.
Orlov said that according to preliminary data, there were 43 passengers, including five children, and six crew members on board the plane operated by a Siberian airline.
International
EU ready to hit US with 21-billion-euro tariff list
He said the goal should be “zero tariffs” and an open market among Canada, the United States, Mexico and Europe.

MILAN (Reuters) -The European Union has already prepared a list of tariffs worth 21 billion euros ($24.52 billion) on U.S. goods if the two sides fail to reach a trade deal, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in a newspaper interview on Monday.
President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to impose a 30% tariff on imports from Mexico and the EU starting on Aug. 1, after weeks of negotiations with major U.S. trading partners failed to reach a comprehensive deal.
Tajani also told daily Il Messaggero that to help the euro zone economy the European Central Bank should consider a new “quantitative easing” bond-buying-programme, and more interest rate cuts.
The European Union said on Sunday it would extend its suspension of countermeasures to U.S. tariffs until early August and continue to press for a negotiated settlement.
Tajani said the 21-billion-euro package of tariffs the EU has already prepared could be followed by a second set if a deal with the U.S proves impossible.
He added, however, that he was confident that progress could be made in negotiations.
“Tariffs hurt every one, starting with the United States,” he said. “If stock markets fall that puts at risk the pensions and the savings of the Americans.”
He said the goal should be “zero tariffs” and an open market among Canada, the United States, Mexico and Europe.
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