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The Israeli Ministry of Health reported in a statement on Tuesday that a patient died of West Nile fever, bringing the total number of deaths from the virus in the current outbreak in the country to three.

The ministry noted that the deceased patient was hospitalized at the Sheba Medical Center in central Israel.

In addition, there is an ongoing investigation into whether the virus caused the death of another patient at Beilinson Hospital, also located in central Israel.

Meanwhile, the ministry reported 10 new cases of infection with the virus, which is transmitted by mosquito bites. This brought the total number of cases since the beginning of May to 42, with 36 patients hospitalized, including five currently ventilated.

Later in the day, the Israeli health and environmental protection ministries said in a joint statement that mosquitoes infected with the virus were detected at Ben Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.

Following the detection, the Environmental Protection Ministry instructed the Israel Airports Authority to expand the monitoring and extermination system in the airport area.

Also on Tuesday, the Health Ministry reported the death of a five-week-old baby from the Jerusalem area due to Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, noting that his mother was not vaccinated against the bacterium during pregnancy.

Since January 2023, Israel has witnessed a rise in whooping cough cases, prompting intensified efforts by the ministry to combat the disease.

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President Trump and Joe Biden will face off in the first presidential debate on Thursday evening at 9 pm ET. The debate will be hosted by CNN in Atlanta.

Trump haters Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are moderating this week's presidential debate.

Of course, the debate rules are designed to protect Joe Biden. The microphones will be muted except when it is the candidate's 'turn' to speak. Campaign staff may not interact with the candidates during breaks and no props are allowed.

The bar is set so low for feeble Biden that all he has to do is show up and not keel over and he will be applauded.

The debate moderators have a history of attacking Trump and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

"First of all, it takes someone five minutes to Google Jake Tapper and Donald Trump to see that Jake Tapper has consistently compared Trump to Adolf Hitler," Karoline Leavitt said as Kasie Hunt interrupted her.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released from a British prison and on his way to a remote Pacific island on Tuesday where he will plead guilty to a conspiracy charge as part of a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, according to court documents.

The agreement will free Assange and end the years-long legal battle over the publication of a trove of classified documents.
[...]
A letter from Justice Department official Matthew McKenzie said Assange would appear in court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S.-controlled territory north of Guam, at 9 a.m. local time Wednesday (7 p.m. ET Tuesday) to plead guilty.

A plane believed to be carrying Assange landed early Tuesday in the Thai capital Bangkok to refuel. He will later arrive for what could be a final court hearing after spending five years in a British jail.

The islands are 3,400 miles north of Australia, Assange's country of citizenship, where the Justice Department expects he will return following the proceedings.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that "the case has dragged on for too long, there is nothing to be gained by his continued incarceration and we want him brought home to Australia."

Assange's mother, Christine Assange, said in a statement widely reported by Australian media: "I am grateful that my son's ordeal is finally coming to an end. This shows the importance and power of quiet diplomacy."

His wife, Stella Assange, is currently in Australia with the couple's two children, aged 5 and 7, waiting for his arrival, she told BBC Radio 4. "He will be a free man once it is signed off by a judge," she said, adding that she wasn't sure the deal would happen until the last 24 hours.

She said she was "elated."

Stella Assange, a lawyer, also told the Reuters news agency that she would seek a pardon on her husband's behalf. She said that accepting a guilty plea on an espionage charge created a "very serious concern" for journalists across the world.

U.S. charges against Assange stem from one of the largest publications of classified information in American history, which took place during President Barack Obama's first term.

Starting in late 2009, according to the government, Assange conspired with Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst, to use his WikiLeaks website to disclose tens of thousands of activity reports about the war in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of reports about the war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and assessment briefs of detainees at the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Court documents revealing Assange's plea deal were filed Monday evening in U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands. Assange was expected to appear in that court and to be sentenced to 62 months, with credit for time served in British prison, meaning he would be free to return to Australia, where he was born.

"This was an independent decision made by the Department of Justice and there was no White House involvement in the plea deal decision," National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement Monday evening.

Assange has been held in the high-security Belmarsh Prison in east London for five years, and he previously spent seven years in self-exile at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London — where he reportedly fathered two children — until his asylum was withdrawn and he was forcibly carried out of the embassy and arrested in April 2019.

Julian Assange was dragged from the Ecuadoran embassy in London on April 11, 2019. Though he has completed all prison time sentenced, he remains in solitary confinement at Britain's supermax Belmarsh Prison

A superseding indictment was returned more than five years ago, in May 2019, and a second superseding indictment was returned in June 2020.

Assange has been fighting extradition for more than a decade: first in connection with a sex crimes case in Sweden that was eventually dropped, then in connection with the case against him in the United States.

A sham from the start. The women said they never wanted to press any charges:

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In March, the High Court in London gave him permission for a full hearing on his appeal as he sought assurances that he could rely upon the First Amendment at a trial in the U.S. In May, two judges on the High Court said he could have a full hearing on whether he would be discriminated against in the U.S. because he is a foreign national. A hearing on the issue of Assange's free speech rights had been scheduled for July 9-10.

WikiLeaks also published hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee that upended the 2016 presidential race. Russian intelligence officers were subsequently indicted in connection with the hacking in 2018 in a case brought by then-special counsel Robert Mueller.

At a joint news conference with then-President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin days later, Trump contradicted the indictment and the intelligence community, saying Putin was "extremely strong and powerful in his denial" that Russians interfered in the 2016 election to help him win.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in a military prison, but Obama commuted her sentence in the final days of his presidency in 2017. Manning was subsequently held in contempt of court for nearly a year after she refused to answer questions for a grand jury; she was then released after an attempted suicide.

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Manchester Airport flights resume after power cut chaos

Flights at Manchester Airport have resumed after a power cut caused a day of chaos.

Up to 90,000 passengers were affected as flights were cancelled and scheduled arrivals diverted.

Check-in and departures at Terminal 1 and 2 have now fully re-started, the airport said in an update.

The airport urged passengers to contact their airlines

Officials said further disruption is not expected on Monday and they are working to reschedule cancelled flights and reunite passengers without their bags.

Airport managing director Chris Woodroofe said a "fault with a cable had caused a power surge that took down security systems and baggage screening".

Mr Woodroofe said: "When Terminal 1 and 2 can't depart passengers for an entire morning there is going to be an impact.

"And I'm really sorry that happened and we're now making sure as we look forward, that impact doesn't carry on into tomorrow."

He said an investigation into what happened would take place in the coming week.

'Mess'

Huge queues formed when a quarter of all flights from the airport had to be cancelled.

Passengers travelling via Terminals 1 and 2 had been told to stay away.

Aviation analytics company Cirium said that by lunchtime 66 outbound flights and 50 inbound were axed.

The disruption comes at the start of the summer holiday season at the UK's third-busiest airport, which has apologised to passengers.

Kelvin Knaver, of St Helens, Merseyside, had been due to fly to Amsterdam with EasyJet before his flight was cancelled.

He told BBC North West Tonight: "It's been a mess.

Pictures and video footage showed long queues of people, some waiting in near darkness.

Mr Woodroofe, external had earlier said that power had been restored but that there would be no departures at all from the two terminals for the rest of the day.

More than 100 flights had been due to depart from the UK's largest airport outside London when the problems started, and many inbound flights had to be diverted.

The airport told the BBC inbound flights had been diverted because "planes can't take off" due to limited space.

This made it harder to accept aircraft, which would be sent elsewhere, a spokesman said.

Among those affected was a flight arriving from Houston in Texas which had to go to London Heathrow while another, coming from Singapore, was forced to land at London Gatwick.

The airport's back-up power came on when the primary system went down, but the situation was complicated by mains power cutting out multiple times.

Airlines have said problems with baggage processing meant customers could only board with a cabin bag.

In a statement, Jet2 said handlers had been unable to load bags on to planes due to the outage.

An Easyjet spokesman said passengers could only board their flight with a cabin bag because of problems with the baggage system.

Passengers flying via Terminal 3 were also warned about delays.

'Chaos'

It had been "virtually impossible" to get through check-in and security, which was only feasible if you were just carrying hand luggage, he added.

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