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It's "shameful in every respect" that the UK wants to extradite Julian Assange to the US, the nation where top officials had purported plans to snatch or even assassinate him, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks told RT.
"We are dealing here with a nation where individuals on the top level ... at the CIA and the White House, contemplated kidnapping or killing Julian Assange," Kristinn Hrafnsson said, referring to a Yahoo News report detailing the CIA's hunt after Assange under then-Director Mike Pompeo."The High Court in London just came to a decision - on UN Human Rights Day - that it is OK to extradite an individual to a country which contemplated killing that individual. That is shameful in every respect."Hrafnsson spoke to RT after a ruling of the UK's High Court overturned a January refusal to extradite Assange to the US issued by a magistrates' court. The new decision said the judge should have informed the US before making a ruling about her concerns that Assange could be subjected to abusive conditions in a US prison.
During the appeal hearings, lawyers representing the US government offered diplomatic assurances to the contrary - though supporters of Assange say the words of the Americans should not be trusted.
"Those assurances are not worth the paper they are written on," Hrafnsson said.
If the magistrates' court now reverses its earlier decision, Assange's defense team will file an appeal, the WikiLeaks representative said. It may take months more before it is decided whether the publisher will be sent to the US to stand trial on espionage charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 175 years.
Considering the years that Assange spent under surveillance and restriction of movement, including more than two years in the top-security Belmarsh Prison, his friends and family are worried for his health, and he should be released, Hrafnsson said.
"I will keep my hopes realistic, but this is the right thing to do. He should be out on bail. He should be with his family, with Stella [Moris] and their two boys, celebrating Christmas with them."
Major incidents included heavy damage to an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, where two people are confirmed dead and dozens of workers were reportedly trapped inside the building, and the destruction of a nursing home in Arkansas, where at least two people were killed and five were hurt, according to reports.Social media offered live updates from the affected areas as well as issuing warnings to those further up the storm track:Illinois
The Amazon collapse - just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis - was being called a "mass casualty incident" by local emergency responders. At least 30 people were bused away from the scene to be reunited with family, officials said.
As many as 50 to 100 employees were believed to be inside the building, FOX 2 of St. Louis reported.
Police received word of the collapse around 8:30 p.m., police told FOX 2 early Saturday. Officials said the emergency response was expected to continue far into Saturday morning.
Missouri
In St. Charles County, Missouri, to the west of St. Louis, at least one person was killed and three injured when a tornado struck in the town of Defiance, according to FOX 2.
Arkansas
In Craighead County, Arkanas, emergency responders were dealing with a tragedy at the Monette Manor Nursing Home in Monette, FOX 16 of Little Rock reported.
At least 20 people were initially trapped inside the building after a suspected tornado struck, the report said. The damage left at least two people dead and five hurt, the report said.
The nursing home's roof was ripped off and other buildings in town also were damaged, according to FOX 16.
Survivors were being directed to a local church to reunite with loved ones, the station reported.
Another fatality was reported at a Dollar General store in Leachville, according to The Weather Channel.
Kentucky
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear warned the commonwealth's residents Saturday that the tornado death toll there will exceed 70 after a candle factory in Mayfield with around 110 people inside was flattened.
He said a single tornado ripped across the state for more than 200 miles.
Earlier, the governor declared a state of emergency after major tornado damage was reported in the western part of the state.
Beshear called it the "most devastating tornado event in our state's history."
"It is indescribable," he continued. "The level of devastation is unlike anything I have ever seen."
"Loss of life is expected," in western Kentucky, the Kentucky State Police wrote on Twitter.
Southwest Kentucky saw "twin tornadoes" strike around 2:20 a.m. near Bowling Green, WDRB reported.
"People that weren't even official first responders been up all night trying to help their friends and neighbors and family," Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., told "Fox & Friends Weekend." "Just a devastating thing to go through the community and just something that you hope you never have to witness."
In Madisonville, Kentucky, a freight-train derailment was reported shortly after midnight, related to severe weather. No injuries were immediately reported, a spokeswoman for rail company CSX Corp. told Fox News.
Tennessee
At least two people were confirmed dead in Obion County, Tennessee, after dangerous storms tore through the area, FOX 17 of Nashville reported. No details were immediately available on how the deaths occurred.
"If someone wished to kill a significant portion of the world's population over the next few years, the systems being put in place right now would enable it." Dr. Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer Vice President
Question- Does the Covid-19 vaccine damage the immune system?"And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard is coming; and now is already in the world." 1 John 4:2-3
In such times, the capacity for logical and disciplined thought, born of necessity during difficult times, begins to fade. When communities lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism, the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale, whether individual or macrosocial, until they give rise to "bad" times.
When a few generations' worth of "good-time" insouciance and increasing hysterics results in a societal deficit regarding psychological skill and moral criticism, this paves the way for pathological plotters, spellbinders, even more primitive impostors, and their organized systems of social and moral destruction to act and merge into the processes of the origination of evil. They are essential factors in its synthesis.
Comment: Is CNN a cesspool of sexual misconduct? It sure looks like it.