WikiLeaks’ Assange to Make First Public Appearance Since Release in Strasbourg

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waves as he arrives in Canberra, Australia, June 26, 2024. (Reuters)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waves as he arrives in Canberra, Australia, June 26, 2024. (Reuters)
TT

WikiLeaks’ Assange to Make First Public Appearance Since Release in Strasbourg

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waves as he arrives in Canberra, Australia, June 26, 2024. (Reuters)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange waves as he arrives in Canberra, Australia, June 26, 2024. (Reuters)

WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange is set to make his first public appearance since being freed from a British jail when he gives evidence to the Council of Europe next month, his organization said on Wednesday.

Assange, 53, returned to Australia in June after a deal was struck for his release which saw him plead guilty to violating US espionage law, ending a 14-year British legal odyssey.

His wife Stella, who he married while in a top security London jail, said he would need some time to regain his health and sanity after his long incarceration, as well as to be with their two children who he had never seen outside of a prison.

He will now speak in public for the first time when he gives evidence to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg on Oct 1.

It comes after a PACE report into his case which concluded he was a political prisoner and called for Britain to hold an inquiry into whether he had been exposed to inhuman treatment.

"It will be an exceptional break from his recovery as (the Council of Europe) invited Julian to provide testimony for the ... Committee’s report into his case and its wider implications," Stella Assange said on X.



China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
TT

China Says its Astronauts Complete Record-breaking Spacewalk

File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS
File Photo: Astronaut Liu Yang waves as she is out of a return capsule of the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft, following a six-month mission on China's space station, at the Dongfeng landing site in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China December 4, 2022. China Daily via REUTERS

Two Chinese astronauts this week completed a world-record spacewalk of more than nine hours, according to a statement from China's Manned Space Agency, marking another milestone for Beijing's rapidly expanding space program.

The spacewalk, carried out by Cai Xuzhe and Song Lingdong outside the Tiangong space station in low-Earth orbit on Tuesday, was at least four minutes longer than the last record set by NASA astronauts James Voss and Susan Helms in 2001, according to Reuters.

The two astronauts of China's Shenzhou-19 mission donned their Feitian spacesuits to carry out an array of tasks on the station's exterior, including the installation of space-debris protection devices, China's space agency said.

"They successfully completed all the planned tasks and felt very excited about it," Wu Hao, a staffer from the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, told China Central Television, a state broadcaster.

The former Soviet Union in 1965 became the first nation to carry out a spacewalk. Since then, Russia and the United States have conducted hundreds of such missions, primarily outside the International Space Station for tasks ranging from solar panel installations to materials research.

The first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut occurred in 2008.

China's spacewalking milestone this week comes amid a flurry of other recent cosmic achievements that have boosted Beijing's competitive footing with the United States.

China landed its first rover on Mars in 2021 and earlier this year became the first country to retrieve rock samples from the moon's treacherous far side in its Chang'e-6 mission.

Beijing is targeting 2030 to land its first astronauts on the moon to become the second country after the US to put humans there. Beijing has courted roughly a dozen countries for its International Lunar Research Station program, an effort to build a moon base on the moon's south pole.

That program rivals NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the moon for the first time since the final Apollo mission of 1972.