"I think I'm going out of my mind," Julian Assange told John Pilger at Belmarsh Prison. "No you're not," Pilger responded. "Look how you frighten them, how powerful you are."

I set out at dawn. Her Majesty's Prison Belmarsh is in the flat hinterland of south east London, a ribbon of walls and wire with no horizon. At what is called the visitors centre, I surrendered my passport, wallet, credit cards, medical cards, money, phone, keys, comb, pen, paper.

I need two pairs of glasses. I had to choose which pair stayed behind. I left my reading glasses. From here on, I couldn't read, just as Julian couldn't read for the first few weeks of his incarceration. His glasses were sent to him, but inexplicably took months to arrive.

There are large TV screens in the visitors centre. The TV is always on, it seems, and the volume turned up. Game shows, commercials for cars and pizzas and funeral packages, even TED talks, they seem perfect for a prison: like visual valium.

I joined a queue of sad, anxious people, mostly poor women and children, and grandmothers. At the first desk, I was fingerprinted, if that is still the word for biometric testing.

"Both hands, press down!" I was told. A file on me appeared on the screen.

The indictment arrived amid an ongoing political crunch in the country, where doubt has been cast on the prime minister's potential immunity as he is negotiating a coalition with adversarial politician Benny Gantz.

The Israeli attorney general has officially submitted his indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the PM being given 30 days for an immunity appeal.

The lengthy 77-page document charges the sitting head of the Israeli government with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate corruption cases - the first time that a prime minister has faced criminal charges while still in power.

Even if Benjamin Netanyahu leaves Israel's political arena, peace is nowhere near, believes a Palestinian expert. Not only because Israel hasn't produced a visionary but also because Palestinians are too mired into their own political mess that they cannot concentrate on solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has 30 days to ask for immunity from the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, that would protect him from facing a trial.

The premier is accused of accepting illegal gifts from a rich donor and buying himself positive press in exchange for tax evasion - allegations that Netanyahu denies.

In an age where people around the world want to avoid war and to focus instead on the climate chaos that threatens future life on earth, NATO is an anachronism. It now accounts for about three-quarters of military spending and weapons dealing around the globe.

The three smartest words that Donald Trump uttered during his presidential campaign are "NATO is obsolete." His adversary, Hillary Clinton, retorted that NATO was "the strongest military alliance in the history of the world." Now that Trump has been in power, the White House parrots the same worn line that NATO is "the most successful Alliance in history, guaranteeing the security, prosperity, and freedom of its members." But Trump was right the first time around: Rather than being a strong alliance with a clear purpose, this 70-year-old organization that is meeting in London on December 4 is a stale military holdover from the Cold War days that should have gracefully retired many years ago.

NATO was originally founded by the United States and 11 other Western nations as an attempt to curb the rise of communism in 1949. Six years later, Communist nations founded the Warsaw Pact and through these two multilateral institutions, the entire globe became a Cold War battleground. When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the Warsaw Pact disbanded but NATO expanded, growing from its original 12 members to 29 member countries. North Macedonia, set to join next year, will bring the number to 30. NATO has also expanded well beyond the North Atlantic, adding a partnership with Colombia in 2017. Donald Trump recently suggested that Brazil could one day become a full member.

More than 300 of President Donald Trump's political ads have taken down by Google and its video platform YouTube, mostly over the summer, according to a report by 60 minutes.

The CBS reporters were unable to find specific reasons for the mass takedowns of Trump ads, a common problem with social media companies, which are often reluctant to explain precisely why a ban or other act of censorship has happened. "We found very little transparency in the transparency report," concluded 60 Minutes.

CBS reporters investigated the removal of pro-Trump ads after YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki highlighted the company's decision to ban some of the President's ads during an interview.

Via CBS News:

60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Wojcicki, "Have you taken down any of President Trump's ads at all?" YouTube's CEO responded, "There are ads of President Trump that were not approved to run on Google or YouTube." When pressed for an example, Wojcicki added, "Well, they're available in our transparency report."

In response to concerns raised after the 2016 election cycle, Google and YouTube, like Facebook, keep a searchable archive of political ads that have run on the site.

60 Minutes reviewed the archive to learn more about President Trump's problematic political ads. We found that over 300 video ads were taken down by Google and YouTube, mostly over the summer, for violating company policy. But the archive doesn't detail what policy was violated. Was it copyright violation? A lie or extreme inaccuracy? Faulty grammar? Bad punctuation? It's unclear. The ads determined to be offending are not available to be screened. We found very little transparency in the transparency report.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday accused Cuba and Venezuela of attempting to hijack democratic protests in Latin America, vowing that Washington would support countries trying to prevent unrest in the region from turning into riots.

Amid recent demonstrations in a number of countries in the region, Pompeo stepped up allegations that Cuba and Venezuela had helped stir up unrest but offered few specifics to back his comments.

Pompeo cited recent political protests in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador and said that Colombia had closed its border to Venezuela out of concern that protesters from the neighboring country would enter. Pompeo told an audience at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky:

"We in the Trump administration will continue to support countries trying to prevent Cuba and Venezuela from hijacking those protests and we'll work with legitimate (governments) to prevent protests from morphing into riots and violence that don't reflect the democratic will of the people."

Tehran has said the US should offer compensation to ordinary citizens whose lives have been damaged during the violent protests openly backed by Washington.

Iranians have filed more than 360 lawsuits seeking compensation from the US for the damages caused by the widespread rioting and looting during anti-government protests, as well as for other "crimes committed by the US against our nation," judiciary spokesperson, Gholam Hossein Esmaeili, told reporters on Tuesday.

Esmaeili accused Washington of inciting and supporting the unrest, stressing that American actions directly hurt ordinary Iranian citizens. The courts have awarded over $130 billion in damages to be paid by the US, he said, adding that the Iranian government must now work towards compelling Washington to pay up.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli previously said that between 130,000 and 200,000 people participated in the riots across the country, during which 731 banks, 70 gas stations and more than 300 private vehicles were vandalized or burned. A number of protesters and security personnel were killed in the ensuing clashes.

FBI lawyer Lisa Page cast herself as the victim of the bullying president in her first-ever media interview. She also said anti-Donald Trump texts she exchanged with agent Peter Strzok during their adulterous affair weren't wrong.

"The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He's demeaning me and my career. It's sickening," Page told Molly Jong-Fast of the Daily Beast, in an interview that appeared over the weekend.

"It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back," said Page, adding that the "demeaning fake orgasm" Trump performed during a Minnesota rally in October was the last straw. The president was parodying a popular play called 'Lovebirds,' based on her texts with Strzok.

President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill mandating Russian-made software for any electronic device sold in the country. Big tech companies have opposed the legislation and petitioned the Kremlin against it.

The idea of having Russian applications pre-installed on any smartphone, computer or smart TV sold in Russia to make them more attractive for the locals and give customers a broader choice was welcomed by several Russian internet giants. However, the legislation provoked quite a stir from a number of foreign companies, some of which even came together to send Putin a letter, outright asking him to veto the controversial bill.

It appears that Putin was not persuaded by the plea, made by a major association that includes such giants as Google, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Dell, IBM, LG and others, though it warned that making Russian software mandatory might lead to a "decrease in business activity in the consumer electronics and software markets" and eventually to their "monopolization."

The French president was disrespectful when he called NATO brain-dead, Donald Trump said ahead of a special gathering of the alliance. A man whose nation is in economic trouble just can't do such nasty things, he explained.

The US president on Tuesday managed to praise NATO as a great organization, criticize its European members for taking advantage of Washington's generosity, and berate France's Emmanuel Macron for being disrespectful to the organization.

Trump told journalists in London amid a meeting with NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

"NATO serves a great purpose. It got to be unfair for the United States because the United States paid a disproportionate amount. I heard that President Macron said that it was brain dead. I think it was very insulting to a lot of different forces, including the man that does a very good job in running NATO."

The 'man running NATO' agreed, saying Macron's criticism was not based on facts. "That's not the case. Actually NATO is active, NATO is agile, NATO is adapting," Stoltenberg said.