🧑🏽‍💻 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a free man after 14 years, butterflies make record 8-day, 2,600-mile transatlantic flight, Bezos blames Elon Musk’s rockets for spewing too much heat in the neighborhood

Ending his 14-year-old legal saga, the Wikileaks founder has finally arrived home. Julian Assange touched down in Australia’s Canberra on Wednesday evening (local time). His return became possible after a U.S. court in Saipan agreed to free him under a plea deal as Assange pleaded guilty in court.

The 52-year-old admitted that he obtained and published US military secrets. Assange was sentenced to five years and two months by the Saipan court.

However, he spent more time in prison in the UK, fighting his extradition to the US. Therefore, District Judge Ramona Manglona said Assange was free to go. For more on this development, check out today’s Must-Read.

🔥Today’s job of the day as featured on jobs.interestingengineering.com:

> Senior Data and Analytics Engineer
> Business Manager, Platform Engineering - Associate

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MUST READ

🧑🏽‍💻 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a free man after 14 years

During more than a decade-old legal saga, Assange lived in a high-security jail in the UK for five years and spent the earlier seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

He faced 18 criminal charges in the U.S., and if he were found guilty, Assange would have received a sentence of nearly 175 years in prison. However, the U.S. dropped all remaining charges apart from one charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information.

The case centered around a massive Wikileaks disclosure in 2010 when the website released a video from a US military helicopter that showed civilians being killed in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. It also published thousands of confidential documents suggesting that the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan, reported the BBC.

🦋 Painted lady butterflies brave record 8-day, 2,600-mile transatlantic flight

Painted lady butterflies were observed completing an epic 2,600-mile (4,200 km) flight across the Atlantic from West Africa to French Guiana before arriving in South America.

These remarkable butterflies flew across the Atlantic in just 5 to 8 days, propelled by favorable trade winds.

“We usually see butterflies as symbols of the fragility of beauty, but science shows us that they can perform incredible feats. There is still much to discover about their capabilities,” said Roger Vila, a researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology.

🚀 Jeff Bezos blames Elon Musk’s rockets for spewing too much heat in neighborhood

There’s a fiery feud brewing between billionaire space companies Blue Origin and SpaceX.

Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, has filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Bezos’ company is worried about the environmental impact of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket launches at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. And has requested the FAA to cap SpaceX launches of Starship Super Heavy (Ss-SH) boosters and rockets in Florida.

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IE QUIZ: THE RESULTS

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The answer is: C

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