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Julian Assange’s wife takes hope as Biden says U.S. considering dropping charges against WikiLeaks founder
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London – The wife of Julian Assange said Thursday that her husband’s legal case “could be moving in the right direction” after President Biden indicated that the U.S. could drop charges against the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder. It came as supporters in several cities rallied to demand the release of Assange on the fifth anniversary of his incarceration in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison.
Asked by a reporter on Wednesday as he walked outside the White House about a request from Australia to drop the decade-long U.S. push to prosecute Assange for publishing classified American documents, Mr. Biden replied: “We’re considering it.”
The proposal would see Assange, an Australian citizen, return home rather than be sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges.
U.S. officials have not provided any further detail, but Stella Assange said the comments were “a good sign.”
“It looks like things could be moving in the right direction,” she told CBS News partner network BBC News, calling the indictment of her husband “a Trump legacy,” and adding that in her mind, “really Joe Biden should have dropped it from day one.”
Leon Neal/Getty
Assange has been indicted on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of classified U.S. documents almost 15 years ago. American prosecutors allege that Assange, 52, encouraged and helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks published, putting lives at risk.
Australia argues there is a disconnect between the U.S. treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.
Assange’s supporters say he is a journalist protected by the First Amendment who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Assange has been in prison since 2019, and he spent seven years before that holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy to avoid being sent to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault.
The relationship between Assange and his Ecuadorian hosts eventually soured, and he was evicted from the embassy in April 2019. British police immediately arrested and imprisoned him in Belmarsh for breaching bail in 2012.
The U.K. government signed an extradition order in 2022, but a British court ruled last month that Assange can’t be sent to the United States unless U.S. authorities guarantee he won’t get the death penalty and provide other assurances. A further court hearing in the case is scheduled for May 20.
The court said Assange “has a real prospect of success on 3 of the 9 grounds of appeal” he has argued against his extradition. Specifically, the court demanded that U.S. justice officials confirm he will be “permitted to rely on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (which protects free speech), that he is not prejudiced at trial (including sentence) by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen and that the death penalty is not imposed.”
Assange was too ill to attend his most recent hearings. Stella Assange has said her husband’s health continues to deteriorate in prison and she fears he’ll die behind bars.
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“Dangerous heat” expected to spread up West Coast, break records, according to forecasters
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Temperatures are expected to soar along the U.S. West Coast on Friday and Saturday, the National Weather Service said, warning that “dangerous heat” will likely spread up the West Coast as it intensifies.
Forecasters said temperatures will be 15-30 degrees above average for much of the West Coast Friday, and “numerous record-breaking temperatures can be expected through the next few days,” the weather service said.
Heat watches and warnings are in place across multiple states, including large swaths of California, as well as parts of Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Washington.
In parts of California and southern Oregon, temperatures could blast into the triple digits, the weather service said. California is expected to experience some of the worst effects of the heat wave on Saturday, forecasters said, with temperatures likely to reach into the 110s.
“Locally higher temperatures into the 120s are possible in the typical hot spots of the Desert Southwest,” it said.
The Los Angeles National Weather Service said on Thursday night that a “Red Flag Warning” was in effect until late Friday night due to “hot, dry and windy conditions.” The warning signifies increased risk of fire danger. The weather service warned residents to use caution with open flames as the dry conditions could fuel the spread of fire.
The heat wave coincides with the Thompson wildfire, which engulfed Butte Country in Northern California this week and forced thousands to flee their homes. Evacuation orders were downgraded to warnings on Thursday.
Over the weekend, the heat wave is expected to shift east to the mid-Atlantic and the Southeast.
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Antisemitism in Europe drives some Jews to seek safety in Israel despite ongoing war in Gaza
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Ashdod, southern Israel — There will be a decisive second round of voting in France Sunday after the far-right National Rally Party, led by Marine Le Pen, won big against centrist President Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the national election exactly one week earlier.
Le Pen’s party has a history of racism, antisemitism and islamophobia dating back decades. Some prominent Jewish figures in France — which is largely considered to have the biggest Jewish population in Europe — say there’s been more antisemitism lately not only from the far-right, but also from the left.
Tension has mounted across Europe since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with massive rallies, most of them pro-Palestinian, held in major cities across the continent.
BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP/Getty
Harrowing images from Gaza have fueled outrage and, in some alarming cases, antisemitism has been seen and heard. In one of the most worrying examples, some people even celebrated on the streets of London on the day that Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people in their unprecedented terrorist attack on Israel.
Nearly 40% of antisemitic incidents in the world last year took place in Europe, and there was a spike after that Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. In Germany, they nearly doubled. In the U.K., they more than doubled. And in France, they nearly quadrupled.
Those incidents and the underlying hatred behind them have prompted some Jewish families to move not further away from the war, but toward it — to Israel.
Requests from French Jews to relocate to Israel have soared by 430% since October.
Among those who have already made that move are Sarah Zohar and her family, who lived a comfortable life in France — until her children were attacked while walking to sports practice.
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They packed their bags and moved to the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, remarkably only about 15 miles from the Gaza Strip, which Hamas ruled for almost 20 years and from which it launched its attack in October.
“I feel safer here,” Zohar told CBS News, but she doesn’t pretend it’s been an easy transition for her family.
“I have a child, 12 years old, and he’s told me, ‘I don’t want to go to Israel, because I don’t want people to come to my house and kill me with a knife and take my head off,” she said. “I told him: ‘You have nothing to be afraid. We have an army to defend us.'”
About 2,000 miles away, back in Paris, Rabbi Tom Cohen said Jews were remembering the antisemitism of World War II, and for some, it felt like “we didn’t get past it, and it is still here — it just has changed form, like many viruses change and mutate.”
CBS News met Guila and Eitan Elbazis as they moved into their new home in Ashdod after leaving their lives in London.
They showed off their new bomb shelter room.
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“Hopefully, please, God, there won’t be any rockets, but as you can see, this door is bulletproof, and it locks up,” Giulia said.
As the Elbazis start a family, they decided they’d rather contend with the threat of Hamas and Hezbollah on their doorstep than with hatred on the streets of London.
“I think there’s a general sense of fear and anxiety and lack of comfort in London,” Eitan said.
“Like I have to hide who I am to be safe,” agreed Giulia.
They said they felt safer in Israel, “hands down. Without even thinking about it.”
“We have institutions here to defend us,” said Eitan.
Giulia added that while Israel is a country at war, “this is home,” and for them, it’s a home where they don’t have to hide who they are.
CBS News
Keir Starmer becomes new U.K. prime minister after Labour Party’s landslide victory
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