With his extradition hearing commencing today at London’s Central Criminal Court, lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, fighting attempts by the United States to extradite him to face espionage charges for revealing classified information, lost their their attempt to delay the hearing to January 2021.

The Rui Pinto, Jonathan Taylor and Julian Assange cases show that extradition is a critical threat to whistleblowers and the journalists who depend on them.

As a number of governments are accused of using the cover of COVID-19 to try to prevent critical media reports, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said journalists need protection.

While the 2018 murders of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, shot dead at home, shocked Slovakia and terminated a government, the man accused of directing it was acquitted by a panel of judges on September 3rd.

Refusing to pay for content that users post on its site in Australia, Facebook said it could bar the practice as media companies demanded to be compensated for the content.

An Australian parliamentary committee set up to inquire the legitimacy of recent police raids on a journalist has said reporters should not have immunity from secrecy offenses.

With COVID-19's second wave engulfing a number of European Union the bloc has responded with a record 1.8 trillion euros ($2.13 billion) in aid, but warned against fraud and corruption.

As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange London continues to wait in jail for a COVID-19 delayed trial that could see him extradited to the United States to face espionage charges, his partner, Stella Moris, launched a CrowdJustice campaign to help fund his defense.

Roberto Macías, the Spanish whistleblower who revealed one of the biggest labor corruption scandals in Spanish history and whose subsequent two-year prison sentence is on hold while he appeals his conviction, has invoked a provision in the European Union's new Whistleblower Directive. The new law doesn't come into effect until the end of 2021.

After an Australian court ruled a journalist can't protect a source in a murder and terrorism case, a government plan to bar the media from reporting corruption allegations during election campaigns has been pulled back abruptly.

In another blow to press freedom in Australia, a Queensland court ruled that an unidentified TV journalist can't protect a source who gave information in a murder case and terrorism raids.

NSA whistleblower Reality Winner, convicted in 2018 of leaking a top-secret report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, tested positive for COVID-19 in the Texas Federal prison where she's serving a five-year term.