Julian Assange is arrested. Plus: Some 900 million voters in India head to the polls, Uber’s billion-dollar losses, what a year in outer space does to the body, and more
(Henry Nicholls / Reuters)
Julian Assange was arrested in London, after nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Assange, the founder of the radical-transparency group WikiLeaks, burst onto the scene in 2010 when his organization released a trove of files documenting abuses by American forces. More recently, in 2016, WikiLeaks published emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been hacked by Russian actors (WikiLeaks has been a major character in the Special Counsel’s investigation). Assange’s arrest by British authorities could pave the way for him to be extradited and prosecuted in the U. S.—but James Ball, who worked with Assange at WikiLeaks, argues that this poses serious free-speech and free-press concerns.
