WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has reportedly been granted bail by a London judge. When Assange turned himself in last week, he was initially denied bail.

Assange’s bail has been set at £240,000. However, there are additional conditions: Heather Brooke reports live from the courtroom via Twitter that Assange has to wear an electronic tag, surrender his passport, obey curfews from 10am-2pm and 10pm-2am, and report to the local police station at 6pm every day.

(via MSNBC, Heather Brooke)

Following MasterCard‘s controversial decision to pull the plug on WikiLeaks‘ funding over alleged illegal activity, despite the fact that WikiLeaks or its founder Julian Assange have yet to be found guilty of any crime, some Internet vigilantes affiliated with Anonymous have taken matters into their own hands, bringing down MasterCard.com with a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in the U.K., according to reports by the Associated Press, NPR, and the BBC.

While Assange has been in the news for his connection to “Cablegate,” WikiLeaks’ controversial data dump of close to a thousand leaked U.S. diplomatic cables (WikiLeaks says it has a total of more than 250,000 in its possession), he was arrested in connection with rape charges filed against him in Sweden, which led to an Interpol Red Notice for Assange’s arrest. (The details of these charges are themselves a subject of controversy.)

NPR reports:

Assange, who has been in hiding since his controversial website released secret U.S. diplomatic cables, was due at Westminster Magistrate’s Court later Tuesday. He is expected to fight attempts to extradite him to Sweden, where prosecutors are seeking to question him about allegations of sexual assault.

If Assange challenges extradition, he likely will be remanded into custody or released on bail until another judge rules on whether to extradite him, a spokeswoman for the extradition department said on customary condition of anonymity.

Update: New info below.

Embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, for whom the UK has just issued an arrest warrant, says that he has a plan if he’s arrested or killed: A so-called “poison pill” file of damaging secrets — possibly covering BP and Guantanamo Bay, among other subjects — which his lawyer likened to “a thermo-nuclear device in the information age.”

Daily Mail:

Julian Assange has distributed to fellow hackers an encrypted ‘poison pill’ of damaging secrets, thought to include details on BP and Guantanamo Bay.

He believes the file is his ‘insurance’ in case he is killed, arrested or the whistleblowing website is removed permanently from the internet.

…

Mr Assange’s British lawyer, Mark Stephens, warned today that WikiLeaks was holding further secret material which he dubbed a ‘thermo-nuclear device’ to be released if the organisation needed to protect itself.

He said many of the papers being retained contained ‘material of equal importance to news-gathering’ as those already published.

(Daily Mail via Mediaite)

Just days after Julian Assange-led whistleblower organization WikiLeaks released an unprecedented number of confidential US embassy cables, causing a geopolitical dustup and charges of treason from the American right, international police group Interpol has issued a so-called “red notice” on Assange in connection with the rape charges brought against him in Sweden, closed, and later reopened earlier this year.

A red notice is not an international arrest warrant, but rather an order allowing national warrants like those issued by Sweden “to be circulated worldwide with the request that the wanted person be arrested with a view to extradition,” in Interpol’s words.

Assange’s lawyer alleges that the timing of this seems mighty suspicious:

In late August, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was accused of rape and a warrant was issued for his arrest in Sweden, but it was quickly withdrawn; however, Swedish prosecutors have announced their intent to reopen the investigation, saying that there is “reason to assume that a crime that falls under public prosecution has been committed.”

A warrant has been issued for the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, on suspicion of rape and molestation. Swedish authorities are calling for him to contact the police for questioning. Assange’s first comment on the accusations (seen above) linked to the Swedish tabloid Expressen, who apparently broke the story. Later tweets denied the accusations and with the implication that they were part of an effort to damage Wikileaks itself.

WikiLeaks got another warning from the Pentagon yesterday and wrote a snarky Tweet in response; meanwhile, silver-maned founder Julian Assange is no longer so silver or so maned. (Compare old — above left to new — above right.)

(via Mediaite; Gawker)

Australian indymedia collective TheJuiceMedia has put together a quite funny and clever rap video satirizing the media and military responses to WikiLeaks‘ recent leak of tens of thousands of classified “military field reports” about the war in Afghanistan. While it might seem like a slog at a full six minutes, which is a little long, it holds together nicely.

While jaded reporters and angry-faced generals are the obvious targets here, we quite like the video’s take on the ridiculously blond WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange (above left) and most of all on conspiracy theorist “Terence Moonseed,” who knows WikiLeaks is obviously a CIA ploy and who manages to compare it and Assange to Draco Malfoy, a Decepticon, and Saruman in the space of about 15 seconds. It’s all there in the hourglass.

In what’s being called “one of the biggest leaks in US military history,” whistleblower site WikiLeaks today posted tens of thousands of classified “military field reports” about the Afghan war. According to the New York Times, the Times, the Guardian, and the German newspaper Der Spiegel were “given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.”

Based on that access and reporting, which WikiLeaks was not involved in, the New York Times has published a series of articles today which are too lengthy to go through here in detail but, broadly speaking, conclude that the Afghan war is not going as well as official reports might lead the public to believe. And the White House isn’t happy:

>>>Get the full scoop at Mediaite.