Washington, Nov 16: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was behind a massive dump of classified US documents in 2010, has been charged in the United States, WikiLeaks said on Thursday night.
Prosecutors revealed the existence of the sealed indictment inadvertently in a court filing in an unrelated case, WikiLeaks said.
The exact nature of the charges against Assange was not immediately known.
Washington, Feb 6: The US has expressed concern over the current situation of religious freedom in India and raised the issue with Indian officials, a senior State Department official has said.
The remarks came in the wake of widespread protests held across India against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The senior State Department official, on condition of anonymity, said that he has met with officials in India about what is taking place in the nation and expressed concern.
"We are concerned about what's taking place in India. I have met with the Indian foreign minister. I've met with the Indian ambassador (to express my concern)," the official, who was recently in India, told reporters on Wednesday.
The US has also "expressed desire first to try to help and work through some of these issues", the official said as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a 27-nation International Religious Freedom Alliance.
"To me, the initial step we try to do in most places is say what can we do to be of help you work through an issue to where there's not religious persecution. That's the first step, is just saying can we work with you on this," the official said.
India maintains that the Indian Constitution guarantees fundamental rights to all its citizens, including its minority communities.
It is widely acknowledged that India is a vibrant democracy where the Constitution provides protection of religious freedom, and where democratic governance and rule of law further promote and protect fundamental rights, a senior official of the Ministry of External Affairs has said.
According to the CAA, members of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian communities who have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan till December 31, 2014 following religious persecution there will get Indian citizenship.
The Indian government has been emphasising that the new law will not deny any citizenship rights, but has been brought to protect the oppressed minorities of neighbouring countries and give them citizenship.
Defending the CAA, Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month said that the law is not about taking away citizenship, it is about giving citizenship.
"We must all know that any person of any religion from any country of the world who believes in India and its Constitution can apply for Indian citizenship through due process. There's no problem in that," he said.
Six months since the new coronavirus outbreak, the pandemic is still far from over, the World Health Organization said Monday, warning that "the worst is yet to come".
Reaching the half-year milestone just as the death toll surpassed 500,000 and the number of confirmed infections topped 10 million, the WHO said it was a moment to recommit to the fight to save lives.
"Six months ago, none of us could have imagined how our world -- and our lives -- would be thrown into turmoil by this new virus," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.
"We all want this to be over. We all want to get on with our lives. But the hard reality is this is not even close to being over.
"Although many countries have made some progress, globally the pandemic is actually speeding up.
"We're all in this together, and we're all in this for the long haul.
"We will need even greater stores of resilience, patience, humility and generosity in the months ahead.
"We have already lost so much -- but we cannot lose hope."
Tedros also said that the pandemic had brought out the best and worst humanity, citing acts of kindness and solidarity, but also misinformation and the politicisation of the virus.
In an atmosphere of global political division and fractures on a national level, "the worst is yet to come. I'm sorry to say that," he said.
"With this kind of environment and condition, we fear the worst."
Geneva, Jul 2: The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated the overall number of coronavirus cases globally at 10,357,662, with 508,055 people having died from the disease.
The UN health agency said in the situation report published on late Wednesday that 163,939 new cases had been recorded in the past day, while further 4,188 patients had died.
Americas continue to lead the count with over 5.2 million cases, followed by Europe with more than 2.7 million.
The WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11.
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