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Julian Assange has been released from a British prison and is expected to plead guilty to violating US espionage law, in a deal that would allow him to return home to his native Australia.

Assange, 52, agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to filings in the US district court for the Northern Mariana Islands.

Wikileaks posted on social media a video of its founder boarding a flight at London's Stansted airport on Monday evening and Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese confirmed he had left the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jun/25/julian-assange-may-be-on-his-way-to-freedom-but-this-is-not-a-clear-victory-for-freedom-of-the-press

The release from a UK prison of Julian Assange is a victory for him and his many supporters around the world, but not necessarily a clear win for the principle underlying his defence, the freedom of the press.

The charges Assange is anticipated to plead guilty to as part of a US deal, and for which he will be sentenced to time served, are drawn from the 1917 Espionage Act, for "conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information related to the national defense of the United States".

So although the WikiLeaks founder is expected to walk free from the US district court in Saipan after Wednesday's hearing, the Espionage Act will still hang over the heads of journalists reporting on national security issues, not just in the US. Assange himself is an Australian, not a US citizen.

Live: Father of Julian Assange hints at son's return to Australia after prison release - ABC News:

Nothing is certain until it happens and there's a lot we still don't know about how Julian Assange's case will proceed.

A lot of our understanding at this stage is coming from the court documents, which state that he'll appear before a judge in Saipan at 9am local time tomorrow.

An email from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the judge in the Northern Mariana Islands states that Assange is expected to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information, and that he'll be sentenced for that offence.

American media outlets are reporting that the plea deal would need to be approved by the judge, and WikiLeaks has described the agreement as having "not yet been formally finalised."

But Assange's departure from the UK is a massive development in the case, and the court document says the DOJ expects he'll return to Australia "at the conclusion of the proceedings".

DannyB writes:

Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames

Elon Musk had recently announced that Starship's fourth flight test could be just days away.

[...] SpaceX has yet to provide an update on the explosion, which took place at its Boca Chica Starbase facilities in southern Texas. The footage shows SpaceX's engine test pad going up in flame.

The footage started a little after 4:12 pm local time. Roughly 14 seconds after ignition, the Raptor engine shut off. As the vapor surrounding the test tower dissipated, a fire appeared to start underneath the engine. These flames traveled upwards, causing a second explosion to engulf the entire tower.

In a tweet accompanying a clip from the footage, NASASpaceflight wrote, "The raptor testing stand at McGregor experienced an anomaly a few moments ago. The vapors from the anomaly caused a secondary explosion on the test stand."

A short video is here.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

xz-utils are compromised and inject malicious code

= Debian:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2024/msg00057.html
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2024-3094

Debian Security Advisory DSA-5649-1
[SECURITY] [DSA 5649-1] xz-utils security update

Package : xz-utils
CVE ID : CVE-2024-3094

Andres Freund discovered that the upstream source tarballs for xz-utils,
the XZ-format compression utilities, are compromised and inject
malicious code, at build time, into the resulting liblzma5 library.

Right now no Debian stable versions are known to be affected.
Compromised packages were part of the Debian testing, unstable and
experimental distributions, with versions ranging from 5.5.1alpha-0.1
(uploaded on 2024-02-01), up to and including 5.6.1-1. The package has
been reverted to use the upstream 5.4.5 code, which we have versioned
5.6.1+really5.4.5-1.

Users running Debian testing and unstable are urged to update the
xz-utils packages.

For the detailed security status of xz-utils please refer to
its security tracker page at:
https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/xz-utils

Further information about Debian Security Advisories, how to apply
these updates to your system and frequently asked questions can be
found at: https://www.debian.org/security/

Mailing list: debian-security-announce@lists.debian.org