Saipan Island:
Julian Assange is en route to a courtroom on the Pacific island of Saipan where he is expected to plead guilty to a single criminal charge in a plea deal that will see him walk free and return home to Australia.
- Saipan Island is located in the Western Pacific Ocean.
- It is the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands (NMI), a US commonwealth in the western Pacific which beginsroughly 70 km (44 miles) north of Guam and stretches across 14 islands.
- It was a colony of Spain, Germany and then Japan, the United States took control of the island in World War-II.
- Like territories such as Guam or Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands are part of the US without the full status of a state.
- In 1975 residents of this island voted to join the United States as a territory. The territory has a permanent delegate in the US House of Representative, although they cannot vote.
- Highest point: Mount Tapochau
- Tourism is the mainstay of the economy and it is popular with Korean and Chinese tourists.
- It is the only part of the United States that Chinese citizens can enter without a visa.
