A defiant Julian Assange told a London court Thursday he will fight extradition to the United States to face charges of conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer, arguing that his work as WikiLeaks founder has benefited the public.
Speaking by video link from Belmarsh Prison in southeast London, Assange said: “I do not wish to surrender myself for extradition for doing journalism that has won many awards and protected many people.”
His formal refusal to be extradited marks the start of what is expected to be a bruising legal battle over whether he will be brought to trial in the United States.
Read more at ABC News.
{Matzav.com}

Democrats intensified their pressure on President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday as U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Attorney General William Barr of committing a crime by lying to lawmakers and a key committee chairman threatened to hold Barr in contempt of Congress.
Shortly after Barr refused to appear before House Judiciary Committee, Pelosi accused him of lying to lawmakers about interactions with Mueller after the special counsel ended a 22-month investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election to boost Trump’s candidacy.
“That’s a crime,” Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, told reporters, referring to Barr’s congressional testimony.

The head of Gaza-based Islamic Jihad (PIJ) on Thursday threatened rocket attacks on the Israeli homefront if the IDF conducted targeted killings of Palestinian terror operatives.
In an interview with the Arabic-language news outlet Dar al-Hayat, PIJ Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhaleh said, “I clearly state that we will respond with force and attack major cities, if any harm is done to [members of] the resistance or premeditated assassinations are carried out against them, regardless of their organizational roles.”
The comment came after the IDF blamed Iran-backed Islamic Jihad for the firing of a rocket on Monday that landed in the Mediterranean Sea off the southern Israeli coast. The IDF specifically named a senior Islamic Jihad commander, Bahaa Abu-Ala’ta.

The repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate will result in 7 million more people without health insurance by 2021, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That number is far lower than the agency’s 2017 estimate that 13 million people would be uninsured by 2027, which came as Congress was debating the GOP tax bill.
The legislation, which was signed into law in December 2017, eliminated the financial penalty for Americans who don’t purchase insurance.
Read more at The Hill.
{Matzav.com}

Rep. Ilhan Omar blamed the US for the political turmoil in Venezuela, saying we “helped lead the devastation” through the use of sanctions.
“A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela and we have sort of set the stage for where we are arriving today,” the Minnesota congresswoman said during an interview Wednesday with Democracy Now!. “This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States.”

President Trump sits down with Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge for a wide-ranging interview in the White House.
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Facebook said on Thursday it has permanently banned several far-right and anti-Semitic figures and organizations, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, for being “dangerous,” a sign that the social network is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups.
Facebook had removed the accounts, fan pages, and groups affiliated with these individuals after it reevaluated the content that they had posted previously, or had reexamined their activities outside of Facebook, the company said. The removal also pertains to at least one of the organizations run by these people, Jones’ Infowars.

A delegation of U.N. ambassadors from around the world, led by Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon, took part in the 2019 March of the Living on Thursday.
The delegation, which includes envoys from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe, did the nearly two-mile march from the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz to Birkenau on Yom HaShoah as a tribute to all victims of the Holocaust and a call for an end to anti-Semitism.
The ambassadors were also joined by Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Isaac Herzog; and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, Rabbi Israel Lau.
The march included more than 10,000 Jewish and non-Jewish youth from 40 countries and dozens of Holocaust survivors and other dignitaries from around the globe.

The leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and accepted his invitation to visit Israel.
During their phone conversation, Tshisekedi congratulated Netanyahu on his recent election victory, and the two leaders discussed ways to deepen relations and advance bilateral cooperation, the Prime Minister’s Office said.
Tshisekedi, who won his country’s own elections in late 2018 and assumed power earlier this year, is facing a deadly Ebola outbreak, with a record 27 new cases recently confirmed in a single day recently.

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As they do every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israelis across the country stood at silent attention on Thursday morning as sirens wailed.
On Wednesday evening, as Holocaust Remembrance Day began, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin were on hand at the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to lay a wreath in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II.
At Yad Vashem, six torches were lit by six Holocaust survivors.