The elusive founder of WikiLeaks, who is at the center of a potential US national security sensation, has surfaced from almost a month in hiding to say he does not fear for his safety but is on alert.
Julian Assange, a renowned Australian hacker who founded the electronic whistleblowers’ platform WikiLeaks, vanished when a young US intelligence analyst in Baghdad was arrested.
The analyst, Bradley Manning, had bragged he had sent 260,000 incendiary US State Department cables on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. He reportedly “confessed” to a Californian hacker on a chatline that he wanted “people to see the truth.”
The prospect of the cache of classified intelligence on the US conduct of the two wars being put online is a nightmare for Washington. The sensitivity of the information has generated media reports that Assange is the target of a US manhunt.
“[US] public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable,” Assange said in Brussels. “Politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe ... but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period.”
Assange appeared in public in Brussels for the first time in almost a month to speak at a seminar on freedom of information at the European Parliament.
“We need support and protection. We have that. More is always helpful. But we believe that the situation is stable and under control. There’s no need to be worried. There’s a need always to be on the alert,” he said.
Prominent US whistleblowers and lawyers have advised Assange to stay out of the US and to be ultra-careful about his appearances.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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