Wiki-Charged:Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who made his name posting secret documents online, has been charged with conspiracy to hack into a US military computer.

 Interestingly, Assange was not charged with espionage, which the government had considered. In  pressing the hacking charge, the Justice Department is skirting the issue of freedom of the press.  They’ve charged him for how they believe he got his information, not for publishing it.

  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called Wikileaks a “hostile non-state intelligence service.” The Justice Department will attempt to bring him to the US for trial.

 Assange was arrested in London yesterday when the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum after nearly seven years living in their London embassy. They said his behavior had become erratic, obnoxious, and a little crazy. They say his last act as a guest was to smear feces on the walls.

  Assange is accused of helping Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst then known as Bradley Manning, to break into a defense computer and release a trove of secret documents. In 2010 Assange published the collection of unflattering files that documentedkillings of civilians and journalists and the abuse of detainees by the United States and its allies. 

  Assange is not charged in connection with the theft of emails from the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, also released on Wikileaks.

  In his campaign speeches President Trump encouraged Wikileaks to dig into Clinton — “Wikileaks, if you’re listening,” he said.

  Yesterday he told reporters, “I know nothing about Wikileaks. It’s not my thing.”

Black Metal: The 21-year-old son of a Louisiana sheriff’s deputy has been arrested and charged with the burning of three black churches in recent weeks.   The suspect, Holden Matthews, is a described as a fan of a Norwegian music genre called Black Metal, the followers of which believe in burning churches, vandalizing, and killing. So far there’s no determination on whether the church burnings were racially motivated.

Course Correction:The Navy has dropped criminal charges against two officers who were in charge of the destroyer Fitzgerald when it collided with a cargo ship in the China Sea in June 2017. The chief of naval operations said, “This decision is in the best interest of the Navy.” What that means is that a criminal trial would have displayed how the Fitzgerald was ordered on a high-priority mission with an undertrained and understaffed crew and a radar system that didn’t work.

The Roundup:The City of Chicago has sued actor Jussie Smollett for the cost of investigating his false claim that he was the target of a hate crime. — Sudan’s dictator-president Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been ousted in a military coup after 30 years of iron-fisted rule. — Disney has announced it’s launching a streaming entertainment service to compete with Netflix. It’s called “Disney Plus.” The second choice for a name was “More Disney Than You Can Stand.”  — SpaceX, the private space exploration company, successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the second time last night. It is the most powerful rocket in operation today, this time carrying a new satellite to be put in orbit. — Chances were diming yesterday for former presidential candidate and pizza executive Herman Cain to be approved for a seat on the Federal Reserve board. Three Republican senators said they would not vote for him. Cain has been accused of being a sexual harasser and knowing nothing about monetary policy. 

Alexa Knows:Not only the device, but employees of Amazon are listening when you speak to your smart speaker, Alexa, Bloomberg Newsreports. Teams of Amazon employees are listening to what users say to Alexa, purportedly to improve the device’s understanding of speech. You can imagine that words are not the only things they hear.

Second Cousin:Archeologists say they’ve found remains of a previously unknown human species that lived in what is now the Philippines about 50,000 years ago. The discovery provides more evidence that there were several versions of humans, or near humans, as mankind evolved. The creature recently discovered had a small jaw with tiny teeth. It was able to walk upright but had feet still made for climbing.

Deep Space:NASA this week released the first pictures of a black hole, the galactic gravitational pit that’s so powerful it even sucks in light waves. Astronomers explain that ablack hole is a region where the fabric of space and time have collapsed, forming a single point with infinite density. That point has such strong gravity that nothing escapes it.

  Eight radio telescopes around the world worked together to get the picture that looks like a glowing bagel with a black center.

  Of course it was only minutes after NASA released the pictures that someone posted a meme with President Trump at the bottom of the black hole.

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