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      Julian Assange Pleads Guilty to Espionage, Securing His Freedom

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      The WikiLeaks founder, who entered the plea in a U.S. courtroom in Saipan in the Western Pacific, now plans to fly home to Australia.Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a felony charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act, securing his freedom under a plea deal that saw its final act play out in a remote U.S. courtroom in Saipan in the Western Pacific.He appeared in court wearing a black suit with his lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, and Kevin Rudd, the Australian ambassador to the United States. He stood briefly and offered his plea more than a decade after he obtained and published classified secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010, moving a twisted case involving several countries and U.S. presidents closer to its conclusion. It was all part of an agreement allowing him to return to his native country, Australia, after spending more than five years in British custody — most of it fighting extradition to the United States.His family and lawyers documented his journey from London to Bangkok and on to Saipan, capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, posting photos and videos online from a chartered jet. His defense team said that in the negotiations over his plea deal, Mr. Assange had refused to appear in a court on the U.S. mainland, and that he had not been allowed to fly commercial.His wife, Stella, posted an urgent fund-raising appeal on the social media platform X, seeking help in covering the $520,000 cost of the flight, which she said would have to be repaid to the Australian government. She also wrote on X that watching a video of Mr. Assange entering the courtroom made her think of “how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory deprivation and the four walls of his high-security Belmarsh prison cell.”In court, Mr. Assange responded carefully to questions from U.S. District Judge Ramona Manglona, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. He defended his actions, describing himself as a journalist seeking information from sources, a task he said he saw as legal and constitutionally protected. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Princess Anne Hospitalized With Minor Injuries

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      The younger sister of King Charles III sustained a concussion after an incident on Sunday, Buckingham Palace said.Princess Anne, the younger sister of King Charles III, was hospitalized on Sunday evening after suffering a concussion and other minor injuries in an unspecified accident, Buckingham Palace said on Monday.The palace said Anne, 73, remained in Southmead Hospital in Bristol, but was expected to “make a full and swift recovery.” A spokesman said the princess “is recovering well, is in a comfortable condition and is being kept in hospital as a precautionary measure for further observation.”The palace offered no details on the nature of the accident, which occurred while Anne was walking on the grounds of Gatcombe Park, a sprawling estate in Gloucestershire that serves as her country residence.A person familiar with the royal family said there were horses in the area where Anne was injured, and that her head wounds were consistent with having had contact with the legs or head of a horse. Anne is an accomplished equestrian who competed for Britain in the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.The palace said Anne’s injuries would force her to postpone a trip to Canada later in the week. She will also miss a state banquet for Emperor Naruhito of Japan, and his wife, Empress Masako, a palace official said, that is being hosted by King Charles and Queen Camilla on Tuesday evening.Charles has been kept closely informed, the palace added, saying that he joined the whole royal family in “sending his fondest love and well wishes to the princess for a speedy recovery.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Will Lewis Is Said to Have Used Stolen Records as Editor in U.K.

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      Years before becoming the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis assigned an article based on stolen phone records, a former reporter said.The publisher and incoming editor of The Washington Post used fraudulently obtained phone and company records in newspaper articles as journalists in London, according to a former colleague, the published account of a private investigator and an analysis of newspaper archives.Will Lewis, The Post’s publisher, assigned one of the articles in 2004 as business editor of The Sunday Times. Another was written by Robert Winnett, whom Mr. Lewis recently announced as The Post’s next executive editor.The use of deception, hacking and fraud is at the heart of a long-running British newspaper scandal, one that toppled a major tabloid in 2010 and led to years of lawsuits by celebrities who said that reporters improperly obtained their personal documents and voice mail messages.Mr. Lewis has maintained that his only involvement in the controversy was helping to root out problematic behavior after the fact, while working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.But a former Sunday Times reporter said on Friday that Mr. Lewis had personally assigned him to write an article in 2004 using phone records that the reporter understood to have been obtained through hacking.After that story broke, a British businessman who was the subject of the article said publicly that his records had been stolen. The reporter, Peter Koenig, described Mr. Lewis as a talented editor — one of the best he had worked with. But as time went on, he said Mr. Lewis changed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Aftermath of a U.K. Cyberattack: Blood Shortages and Delayed Operations

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      Several London hospitals, still reeling from a cyberattack last week, have made an urgent plea to medical students to help stem the disruption.Several London hospitals, still under significant strain more than a week after a cyberattack crippled services, have asked medical students to volunteer to help minimize disruption, as thousands of blood samples have had to be discarded and operations postponed.The ransomware attack on Synnovis, a private firm that analyzes blood tests, has crippled services at two major National Health Service hospital trusts, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ and King’s College, which described the situation as “critical.”According to a memo leaked in recent days, several London hospitals asked medical students to volunteer for 10- to 12-hour shifts. “We urgently need volunteers to step forward and support our pathology services,” said the message, which was reported earlier by the BBC. “The ripple effect of this extremely serious incident is felt across various hospital, community and mental health services in our region.”The attack also disrupted blood transfusions, and the N.H.S. appealed to the public this week for blood donors with O-negative blood types, which can be used in transfusions for any blood type, and O-positive blood types, which is the most frequently occurring blood type, saying it could not match patients’ blood at the same frequency as usual.While the N.H.S. has declined to comment on which group was suspected of carrying out the attack, Ciaran Martin, a former head of British cybersecurity, told the BBC last week that a Russian cybercriminal group known as Qilin was most likely the perpetrator. Synnovis said last week in a statement that it was working with the British government’s National Cyber Security Center to understand what had happened.Synnovis, in an email sent Monday to primary health providers, said that thousands of blood test samples would probably have to be destroyed because of the lack of connectivity to electronic health records. In a statement on Wednesday, Synnovis said that the I.T. system had been down for too long for samples taken last week to be processed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Search Underway in Greece for British TV Doctor Michael Mosley

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      Mr. Mosely, a popular science journalist, disappeared while on a walk on the Greek island of Symi. He was last seen at a bus stop on Wednesday afternoon.Greek authorities on Thursday said they were searching for Michael Mosley, a prominent British journalist and television presenter who had gone missing a day earlier while on a walk on the island of Symi.Mr. Mosley, 67, was reported missing by his wife, Clare Bailey, on Wednesday afternoon, according to Constantina Dimoglidou, a spokeswoman for the Greek police. The couple had arrived in Symi on Tuesday, planning to stay for a week.“We’re looking everywhere for him,” Ms. Dimoglidou said, adding that the local fire service and volunteers were involved in the search. The Greek fire service on Thursday said a team of six firefighters was looking for a missing foreign national on Symi, part of the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea, and said drones had been sent from the nearby island of Rhodes.Mr. Mosley told friends on Wednesday afternoon that he was going to walk about two miles from the Agios Nikolaos area back to the main town of Symi, where the couple was staying, according to Ms. Dimoglidou. He was last seen by a witness at a bus stop in Pedi, about halfway between the two locations, and did not have his cellphone on him when he disappeared, she said.It was possible, she said, that Mr. Mosley had become dizzy from the heat. Temperatures in Symi have hovered around 95 degrees Fahrenheit this week, and the weather authorities in Greece had urged vigilance over the risk of high heat.“It’s rugged terrain with high spots, so it’s possible that he fell,” Ms. Dimoglidou said. His disappearance also spurred a call for information in a local Facebook group, in which a post said that Mr. Mosley had set off at around 1:30 p.m. and never appeared at his accommodation.Mr. Mosley trained as a doctor before becoming a documentary maker and a science journalist who dispensed advice on diet, fasting and other health habits. He became famous for his myth-busting work on diet and is widely known as a proponent of intermittent fasting, writing several books on the subject. A longtime producer and presenter for the BBC, he is the host of the broadcaster’s “Just One Thing” health podcast, and was nominated in 2002 for an Emmy on “The Human Face,” a series examining the science behind beauty. More recently, he released two series with the British Channel 4 broadcaster investigating obesity in Britain and the nutrition behind the grocery shopping of everyday consumers. More

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      China Claims Britain’s MI6 Recruited Chinese Couple as Spies

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      The accusation from China came a few weeks after Britain charged three men with assisting Hong Kong’s intelligence service.China’s top security ministry accused Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency on Monday of persuading a married couple working for unnamed central Chinese government bodies to become spies for the British government, the latest in a volley of continuing espionage accusations between the two countries.In a post on its official WeChat account, China’s Ministry of State Security said MI6 British intelligence officials had lured a man with the surname Wang, who worked for a Chinese government agency with part-time consulting work that paid him a high salary during his visit to Britain as part of an exchange program.The Chinese ministry said MI6 trained Mr. Wang to become a spy and ordered him to return to China to gather intelligence. It said that his wife, who has the surname Zhou, also agreed to spy for Britain. China said the matter was under further investigation, but it is not clear whether the couple are being detained by the Chinese authorities.This is the latest in a series of back-and-forth espionage accusations between Beijing and London, a source of escalating tension between the two countries.Last month, three men in Britain were charged with gathering intelligence for Hong Kong, a former British colony now under Chinese rule, to pursue pro-democracy activists living in Britain.China has condemned these latest accusations. It said that Britain had leveled a series of “groundless and slanderous” accusations of spying and cyberattacks against Beijing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About the UK Election on July 4

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      Why does this election matter?How does Britain vote?What are the main issues?Who is running, and who is likely to win?When will we find out the results?Where can I find more information?Why does this election matter?The general election on July 4 is a pivotal moment for Britain after 14 years of government by the Conservative Party. The last full parliamentary election was in December 2019, when Boris Johnson won a landslide victory for the Conservatives, propelled by his charisma and a promise to “Get Brexit done” after the country’s decision to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum.A lot has changed since then. In July, voters will give their verdict on five tumultuous years of government that have spanned the coronavirus pandemic, the troubled implementation of Brexit, the “Partygate” scandal around Mr. Johnson’s rule-breaking during pandemic lockdowns and the disastrous six-week tenure of Prime Minister Liz Truss.The Parliament in London. Voters in each of the country’s 650 constituencies will select a candidate to represent them as a member of Parliament.Hollie Adams/ReutersPolls suggest that the center-left Labour Party is set to return to power after more than a decade in opposition, which would bring a fundamental realignment to British politics.How does Britain vote?The United Kingdom — which consists of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales — is divided into 650 constituencies.Voters in each constituency select a candidate to represent them as a member of Parliament, and the political party that wins the most seats usually forms the next government. That party’s leader also becomes prime minister.

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      Report Finds ‘Catalog of Failures’ in U.K. Contaminated Blood Scandal

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      A six-year inquiry found that the deaths of about 3,000 people and the infection of tens of thousands of others could have mostly been avoided.A “catalog of failures” by government and medical officials in Britain, most of them avoidable errors, led to blood contaminations that killed about 3,000 people and infected more than 30,000 others over two decades, according to a long-awaited report published on Monday.The report is the product of a six-year inquiry that the British government ordered in 2017 after decades of pressure from victims and their families, and it could pave the way for sizable compensation payments.The independent report puts a harsh spotlight on Britain’s state-run National Health Service, identifying “systemic, collective and individual failures” by British authorities as they dealt with the infections of tens of thousands of people by tainted blood transfusions or contaminated blood products between the 1970s and the 1990s.The authorities at the time refused to acknowledge those failings — including the lack of proper screening and testing of blood — by “hiding the truth,” the report said.“This disaster was no accident,” Brian Langstaff, a former High Court judge who led the inquiry, said at a news conference on Monday. “People put their trust in doctors and the government to keep them safe, and that trust was betrayed.”He added, “The N.H.S. and successive governments compounded the agony by refusing to accept that wrong had been done.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More