First Thing: Assange leaves UK after striking deal with US justice department

WikiLeaks founder reportedly travelling to US plea deal hearing in Northern Mariana Islands. Plus, how fashion entered its ‘ugly’ decade

Good morning.

Julian Assange has struck a deal with the US justice department, freeing him from a UK prison, and is expected to plead guilty to breaching US espionage law in a deal that would allow him to return home to Australia.

Assange, 52, agreed to plead guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents, filings in the US district court for the Northern Mariana Islands show.

After leaving London on Monday evening, Assange was reportedly travelling to a hearing on the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, where he will be sentenced at 9am local time on Wednesday (6pm EST on Tuesday).

Will he face more jail time? Probably not. Under the deal, which must be signed off by a judge, he will probably be credited for the five years he has already served and face no further prison time.

How long was he held at Belmarsh prison? 1,901 days.

Trump given plan to stop US military aid to Kyiv unless it enters peace talks

Two top advisers to Donald Trump have handed him a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, if he wins the presidential election, which involves giving Ukraine an ultimatum: peace talks, or no more US weapons.

Under the deal, the US would also tell Moscow that if it refused to negotiate it would step up US support for Kyiv, said the retired Lt Gen Keith Kellogg, one of Trump’s national security advisers, in an interview.

It is so far the most detailed strategy outlined by Trump associates following the ex-president’s broad-brush comments that, if re-elected, he would quickly end the war. The proposition would be certain to draw opposition from European allies and from within his own party.

How would a ceasefire be worked out? It would be based on prevailing battle lines during peace talks, according to Kellogg and Fred Fleitz.

‘The grey zone’: how the IDF views some journalists in Gaza as legitimate targets

Some within the IDF appear to have considered journalists in Gaza working for outlets controlled by or affiliated with Hamas as legitimate military targets after its 7 October attacks, an investigation by the Guardian suggests.

According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 103 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in the war in Gaza. Among those listed by the CPJ, about 30% worked for media outlets affiliated with or linked to Hamas. The investigation found at least 23 individuals killed during the war who worked for al-Aqsa media network, the largest Hamas-run outlet in Gaza.

Israel’s military attributed the high journalist death toll to its heavy bombardment of Gaza, with a senior official insisting that “there is no policy of targeting media personnel”.

But when asked about the al-Aqsa network casualties, a senior IDF spokesperson told reporters behind the investigation that there was “no difference” between working for al-Aqsa and Hamas’s armed wing, comments that legal experts viewed as alarming.

What do experts say? “Even if they reported the news in a biased way, even if they did propaganda for Hamas, even if Israel fundamentally disagrees with how they report the news, [it is not direct participation in hostilities]. That is not enough,” said Janina Dill, a professor at the University of Oxford and expert in the laws of war.

In other news …

China has become the first country to collect material from the far side of the moon and return it to Earth.

EU-regulated “sustainable” funds invest in fast fashion labels, fossil fuel companies and SUV-makers, the Guardian and media partners can reveal.

Teenage girls and young women arrested by the Taliban over how they wore their hijab say they have been subjected to sexual violence and assault in jail.

The City of Sydney may scrap deals with suppliers targeted by the boycott Israel campaign, in a move the lord mayor hopes could add to pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Stat of the day: African artists ‘have visa-rejection rates as high as 40-70%’

African visitors to the UK and Europe have visa-rejection rates as high as 40-70%, according to analysis from the arts and migration research group the Lago Collective, with industry voices warning that high rejection rates for African and Asian artists are is affecting cultural diversity.

Don’t miss this: ‘As a child, I was relentlessly abused by a Catholic priest. As an adult, it almost killed me twice’

Gerard Gorman was 11 when he was sent to the Catholic boys’ boarding school in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where his childhood was stolen. The sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of a priest haunted him for decades, but then he took on the church: in 2017, it acknowledged harm and agreed to remove the priest’s headstone. Gorman told Rory Carroll about how he got there.

Climate check: Rising sea levels will disrupt millions of Americans’ lives by 2050, study finds

Hundreds of US homes, schools and government buildings will face repeated flooding by 2050 due to rising sea levels, a study has found, disrupting the lives of millions of Americans. Nearly 3 million people live in the 703 US coastal communities home to critical infrastructure at risk of monthly flooding by 2050.

Last Thing: Don’t dab that stain! We’re in fashion’s ugly decade

There’s a new look in town, and it’s not necessarily the most flattering. Out goes ultra-fast fashion, homogeneity, the “clean girl” look; in comes outfits that look like “someone’s kind of sifted through a lost property box on sports day”, according to an expert – and reportedly even clothes with sauce stains on them.

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