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The U.S. government’s attempts to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain on charges of espionage took another legal twist Monday, as judges ruled that he must be given the right to a full appeal against the order — based on freedom of speech. Henry Ridgwell has more from London.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by a Canadian-born former Guantanamo detainee who was seeking to wipe away his war crimes convictions, including for killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

Omar Khadr had waived his right to appeal when he pleaded guilty in 2010 to charges that included murder. But his lawyers argued that a subsequent ruling by the federal appeals court in Washington called into question whether Khadr could have been charged with the crimes in the first place.

A divided three-judge panel ruled that, despite the appellate ruling, Khadr gave up his right to appeal.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson did not take part in the Supreme Court’s consideration of Khadr’s appeal because both had dealt with the case while they served as appeals court judges. Jackson explained her recusal from Monday’s order; Kavanaugh did not.

Khadr had been sentenced to eight years in prison plus the time he already had spent in custody, including several years at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he was released in May 2015 pending his appeal of the guilty plea.

A Canadian judge ruled in 2019 that his war crimes sentence had expired.

Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. troops following a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American special forces medic, U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer. Khadr, who was suspected of throwing the grenade that killed Speer, was taken to Guantanamo and ultimately charged with war crimes by a military commission.
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Baltimore — The container ship that caused the deadly collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was refloated at high tide Monday and began slowly moving back to port, guided by several tugboats.

Removing the Dali from the wreckage marked a significant step in ongoing cleanup and recovery efforts. Nearly two months have passed since the ship lost power and crashed into one of the bridge’s supporting columns, killing six construction workers and halting most maritime traffic through Baltimore’s busy port.

The vessel appeared to start moving shortly after 6 a.m. It started and stopped a few times before slowly and steadily backing away from the collapse site, where it had been grounded since the March 26 disaster.

Pieces of the bridge’s steel trusses still protruded from its damaged bow, which remained covered in mangled concrete from the collapsed roadway.

With the hulking cargo ship finally removed from the mouth of Baltimore’s harbor, a newly opened void appeared in the city’s skyline. The altered waterscape also highlighted the progress made on the cleanup effort; crews have already removed hundreds of tons of mangled steel that once were visible jutting up from the water’s surface.

The bodies of all six construction workers have been recovered from the underwater wreckage in recent weeks. All the victims were Latino immigrants who came to the U.S. for job opportunities. They were filling potholes on an overnight shift when the bridge was destroyed.

Officials said the Dali would move at about 1 mph on the roughly 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) trip back to port, a fraction of the speed it was traveling when it lost power and brought down the bridge.

The ship is expected to remain in the port for a several weeks and undergo temporary repairs before being moved to a shipyard for more substantial repairs. It will return to the same marine terminal it occupied before beginning its ill-fated voyage.

Crews began preparing the ship to be refloated about 18 hours before it started moving Monday morning. That process included releasing anchors and pumping out over 1 million gallons of water that were keeping the ship grounded and stable during complex cleanup operations. Crews conducted a controlled demolition on May 13 to break down the largest remaining span of the collapsed bridge, which was draped across the Dali’s bow.

Dive teams also completed inspections of the site to confirm there were no obstructions that would hinder the voyage.

The Dali experienced two electrical blackouts about 10 hours before leaving the Port of Baltimore on its way to Sri Lanka, according to a preliminary report released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board. In response to those issues, the crew made changes to the ship’s electrical configuration, switching to a transformer and breaker system that had previously been out of use for several months, the report says.

The Dali experienced two more blackouts as it was approaching the Key Bridge, causing it to lose propulsion and drift off course at the exact wrong moment.

The two tugboats that helped guide the Dali out of the port had peeled off after it entered the main shipping channel. That was normal protocol, according to the report, but when the power went out, the tugs were too far away to help avert disaster.

The FBI has also launched a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading up to the crash.

The ship’s crew members haven’t been allowed to leave the vessel since the disaster. Officials said they’ve been busy maintaining the ship and assisting investigators. Of the crew members, 20 are from India and one is Sri Lankan. Officials have said they will be able to disembark once the Dali is docked in Baltimore.

Officials plan to reopen the port’s 50-foot (15-meter) deep draft channel by the end of May. Until then, crews have established a temporary channel that’s slightly shallower.
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LONDON — British authorities and the country’s public health service knowingly exposed tens of thousands of patients to deadly infections through contaminated blood and blood products, and hid the truth about the disaster for decades, an inquiry into the U.K.’s infected blood scandal found Monday.

An estimated 3,000 people in the United Kingdom are believed to have died and many others were left with lifelong illnesses after receiving blood or blood products tainted with HIV or hepatitis in the 1970s to the early 1990s.

The scandal is widely seen as the deadliest disaster in the history of Britain’s state-run National Health Service since its inception in 1948.

Former judge Brian Langstaff, who chaired the inquiry, slammed successive governments and medical professionals for “a catalogue of failures” and refusal to admit responsibility to save face and expense. He found that deliberate attempts were made to conceal the scandal, and there was evidence of government officials destroying documents.

“This disaster was not an accident. The infections happened because those in authority — doctors, the blood services and successive governments — did not put patient safety first,” he said. “The response of those in authority served to compound people’s suffering.”

Campaigners have fought for decades to bring official failings to light and secure government compensation. The inquiry was finally approved in 2017, and over the past four years it reviewed evidence from more than 5,000 witnesses and more than 100,000 documents.

Many of those affected were people with hemophilia, a condition affecting the blood’s ability to clot. In the 1970s, patients were given a new treatment that the U.K. imported from the United States. Some of the plasma used to make the blood products was traced to high-risk donors, including prison inmates, who were paid to give blood samples.

Because manufacturers of the treatment mixed plasma from thousands of donations, one infected donor would compromise the whole batch.

The report said around 1,250 people with bleeding disorders, including 380 children, were infected with HIV -tainted blood products. Three-quarters of them have died. Up to 5,000 others who received the blood products developed chronic hepatitis C, a type of liver infection.

Meanwhile an estimated 26,800 others were also infected with hepatitis C after receiving blood transfusions, often given in hospitals after childbirth, surgery or an accident, the report said.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is expected to apologize later Monday, and authorities are expected to announce compensation of about 10 billion pounds ($12.7 billion) in all to victims. Details about that payment are not expected until Tuesday at the earliest.

The report said many of the deaths and illnesses could have been avoided had the government taken steps to address the risks linked to blood transfusions or the use of blood products. Since the 1940s and the early 1980s it has been known that hepatitis and the cause of AIDS respectively could be transmitted this way, the inquiry said.

Langstaff said that unlike a long list of developed countries, officials in the U.K. failed to ensure rigorous blood donor selection and screening of blood products. At one school attended by children with hemophilia, public health officials gave the children “multiple, riskier” treatments as part of research, the report said.

He added that over the years authorities “compounded the agony by refusing to accept that wrong had been done,” falsely telling patients they had received the best treatment available and that blood screening had been introduced at the earliest opportunity. When people were found to be infected, officials delayed informing them about what happened.

Langstaff said that while each failure on its own was serious, taken “together they are a calamity.”

Andy Evans, of campaign group Tainted Blood, told reporters that he and others “felt like we were shouting into the wind during the last 40 years.”

“We have been gaslit for generations. This report today brings an end to that. It looks to the future as well and says this cannot continue,” he said.

Diana Johnson, a lawmaker who has long campaigned for the victims, said she hoped that those found responsible for the disaster will face justice — including prosecution — though the investigations have taken so long that some of the key players may well have died since.

“There has to be accountability for the actions that were taken, even if it was 30, 40, 50 years ago,” she said.
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London — A British court has ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal against an order that he be extradited to the U.S. on espionage charges.

Two High Court judges on Monday said Assange has grounds to challenge the U.K. government’s extradition order.

The ruling sets the stage for an appeal process likely to further drag out a years-long legal saga. Assange faces 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of a trove of classified U.S. documents almost 15 years ago.

The Australian computer expert has spent the last five years in a British high-security prison after taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years.

Assange’s lawyers have argued he was a journalist who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sending him to the U.S., they said, would expose him to a politically motivated prosecution and risk a “flagrant denial of justice.”

The U.S. government says Assange’s actions went way beyond those of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents.

In March, two judges rejected the bulk of Assange’s arguments but said he could take his case to the Court of Appeal unless the U.S. guaranteed he would not face the death penalty if extradited and would have the same free speech protections as a U.S. citizen.

The court said that if Assange couldn’t rely on the First Amendment then it was arguable his extradition would be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which also provides free speech and media protections.

The U.S. provided those reassurances, but Assange’s legal team and supporters argue they are not good enough to rely on to send him to the U.S. federal court system because the First Amendment promises fall short. The U.S. said Assange could seek to rely on the amendment but it would be up to a judge to decide whether he could.

Attorney James Lewis, representing the U.S., said Assange’s conduct was “simply unprotected” by the First Amendment.

“No one, neither U.S. citizens nor foreign citizens, are entitled to rely on the First Amendment in relation to publication of illegally obtained national defense information giving the names of innocent sources, to their grave and imminent risk of harm,” Lewis said.

The WikiLeaks founder, who has spent the past five years in a British prison, was not in court to hear his fate being debated. He did not attend for health reasons, Fitzgerald said.

Commuters emerging from a Tube stop near the courthouse couldn’t miss a large sign bearing Assange’s photo and the words, “Publishing is not a crime. War crimes are.” Scores of supporters gathered outside the neo-Gothic Royal Courts of Justice chanting “Free Julian Assange” and “Press freedom, Assange freedom.”

Some held a large white banner aimed at President Joe Biden, exhorting: “Let him go Joe.”

Assange’s lawyers say he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted, though American authorities have said any sentence would likely be much shorter.

Assange’s family and supporters say his physical and mental health have suffered during more than a decade of legal battles, which includes seven years spent inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London from 2012 until 2019. He has spent the past five years in a British high-security prison.

His legal team is prepared to ask the European Court of Human Rights to intervene. But his supporters fear Assange could be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal.

Judges Victoria Sharp and Jeremy Johnson may also postpone issuing a decision.

 
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Vienna — The UN nuclear watchdog on Monday called for “vigilance” against trafficking of nuclear and other radioactive material, saying it has recorded more than 4,200 thefts or other incidents over the past 30 years.

Last year, 31 countries reported 168 incidents “in line with historical averages,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Six of those were “likely related to trafficking or malicious use,” it added.

Since 1993, the IAEA has recorded 4,243 incidents, with 350 of them connected or likely to be connected to trafficking or malicious use.

“The reoccurrence of incidents confirms the need for vigilance and continuous improvement of the regulatory oversight to control, secure and properly dispose radioactive material,” said Elena Buglova, director of the IAEA’s nuclear security division.

Most incidents are not connected to trafficking or malicious use, involving for example scrap metal found to be contaminated.

The IAEA noted a decline in incidents involving nuclear material, such as uranium, plutonium and thorium.

But Buglova warned dangerous materials remain vulnerable, especially during transport, stressing the “importance of strengthening transport security measures.”

The Vienna-based IAEA released the data as it opens its fourth international conference on nuclear security, which runs until Friday in the Austrian capital.

The previous one was also held in Vienna in 2020.

A total of 145 states currently report to the IAEA about incidents that involve nuclear or other radioactive material lost, stolen, improperly disposed of or otherwise neglected.

Many radioactive substances are used in hospitals, universities and industry worldwide.

The big worry is that extremists could get hold of the materials and use them in a “dirty bomb” — a device whereby conventional explosives disperse radioactive materials.

Although the damage and loss of life caused by such a “dirty bomb” would be a fraction of that unleashed by a fission or fusion atom bomb, it could still cause mass panic in an urban area.
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LONDON — Britain and Finland will sign a new strategic partnership on Monday to strengthen ties and counter the “threat of Russian aggression,” the U.K. foreign minister said.

The two countries will declare Russia as “the most significant and direct threat to European peace and stability,” according to a Foreign Office press release.

The agreement will be endorsed by U.K. foreign minister David Cameron and his Finnish counterpart Elina Valtonen in London.

“As we stand together to support Ukraine, including through providing military aid and training, we are clear that the threat of Russian aggression, following the war it started, will not be tolerated,” said Cameron.

“This strategic partnership, built on our shared values, will see the UK and Finland step up cooperation to bolster European security as well as seize new opportunities, from science and technology to closer energy ties,” he added.

The countries will work together to counter Russian disinformation, malicious cyber activities and support Ukraine’s recovery, reconstruction, and modernization, according to the Foreign Office.

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Finland has joined the NATO military alliance and shut off much of its border with Russia. Britain is a major military supporter of Ukraine.
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Cannes, France — Filmmakers Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir spent so much time following an all-girl theatre troupe in a remote Egyptian village that at one point someone tried to sell them a house.

“He thought we were always there so we might as well live there,” Riyadh told AFP after the premiere of their documentary at the Cannes Film Festival.

“The Brink of Dreams” follows a group of teenage girls in rural southern Egypt over four years, between rehearsals, as they navigate the tough decisions that will determine their adulthood.

Majda dreams of studying theatre in Cairo, Monika wants to become a famous singer and Haidi is being pursued by the hottest guy in the village.

In their feminist street performances, they boldly rail against the patriarchy, challenging members of the crowd on issues such as self-fulfillment and early marriage.

But soon life takes over and the teenagers from Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority find themselves confronted with these concepts for real.

The camera discreetly captures conversations in the family shop, between a father and daughter, or two lovers, as neighbors and animals go about their daily lives.

“In the beginning there was a lot of people always looking at the camera. Everybody was self-conscious,” said Riyadh.

But “once the trust had been built between them and us, we had that chance to blend in.”

Riyadh said the documentary, which is screening in a sidebar section of the festival, was driven by her and co-director Amin discovering the troupe in 2017.

The film “is intentionally feminist in every way but I think it was also dictated by what this inspiring group of women was already doing,” she said.

It’s “mind-blowing because they’re demanding answers about very important things and opening a dialogue with everybody in their community.”

Co-director Amin said the main challenge was editing down 100 hours of footage to tell this coming-of-age tale and convey a seldom seen side of Egypt.

“Most mainstream films in Egypt tell stories about living in gated compounds and shopping in malls,” Amin said.

“It’s very rare to see stories that take place in the south outside of Cairo or Alexandria and see girls like those girls on screen.”

The documentary has a French distributor, but the filmmakers also hope to show the film widely in Egypt, including in the rural south.

Until then, six of the actors in the film got to attend the Cannes premiere, after a last-minute rush to get them their first passports and visas on time.

Monika, the aspiring singer, has two children now. But on the red carpet, the DJ played the catchy song that she made with a popular Egyptian producer called Molotof for the film’s final credits.
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SAVANNAH, Ga. — An argument between two women led to a gunfight that left 11 people hurt in a busy tourist area of Savannah, Georgia, late Saturday, one of five weekend shootings in the city, two of which were fatal, authorities said.

Two people were injured in separate shootings Friday. Two more shootings Saturday resulted in two deaths. Then came the gunfire just before midnight Saturday near Savannah’s Ellis Square.

The shooting broke out as two women argued in an area business, according to Police Chief Lenny Gunther, who didn’t name the establishment.

“One shot rang out. That triggered other individuals to shoot,” he said. “We had multiple individuals discharge their weapons to shoot at each other, which resulted in multiple people getting shot.”

Ten of the 11 injured were hit by gunfire. Authorities did not say what caused the 11th injury. Victims were treated at the scene and “several” were taken to a hospital, police said. None of the injuries appeared life threatening.

Mayor Van Johnson said a proliferation of guns was a factor in the shootings and that reasonable gun control laws are needed. He also stressed the need for gun owners to keep their weapons from being stolen and for people carrying guns to know how and when to use them.

“We have to insist on smart gun laws,” Johnson said at a Sunday news conference. “And then, on the other end, we have to insist that people act responsibly with those weapons.”

The mass shooting happened a week ahead of the tourist-heavy Memorial Day weekend. Gunther sought to assure people that police staffing will be sufficient to keep the public safe.

Ellis Square is in Savannah’s historic district, an area popular among tourists and locals. It was developed in 2010 and is known for a large fountain and a life-sized statue of songwriter Johnny Mercer.

The first two of Savannah’s weekend shootings happened Friday. Each of those resulted in a non-life-threatening injury and an arrest. On Saturday, police answering a call about a home invasion found a dead juvenile at the home. Initial reports are that shots were fired after a resident confronted an armed intruder.

Still another shooting was reported at a Savannah intersection Saturday night that left one man dead and a juvenile injured.
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Almost half a million Ukrainian immigrants have moved to the U.S. since the start of Russia’s invasion, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Two of the biggest challenges they face are finding health care and a job. In one small Colorado city, a local clinic owner, herself a Ukrainian immigrant, is helping out as much as she can. Svitlana Prystinska has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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Bratislava, Slovakia — When four bullets fired by a lone gunman hit Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Matus Kostolny’s life as a journalist quickly went from hard to harder.

The 49-year-old editor-in-chief of the independent Dennik N daily, branded “hostile” by the government, immediately started getting threats from readers and accusations from Fico’s political allies.

“Ten minutes after we ran the story about the prime minister being shot, I started receiving messages that I am to blame, that I have blood on my hands and will pay for it,” Kostolny told AFP.

“From day one some politicians from the governing coalition have been saying that… it is certain media including Dennik N that bear responsibility for the attack,” he said in an interview.

Domestic media had in 2018 unveiled links between the Italian mafia and Fico’s government, sparking protests that led to his resignation.

Fico is in intensive care following two long operations, but his life is no longer in danger.

He is serving his fourth term as prime minister of the EU and NATO member of 5.4 million people, leading a coalition of two centrist parties and a smaller nationalist one.

He secured this term when his centrist Smer party won a general election in September, calling for a truce over Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

Shortly after, Fico banned four Slovak media — Dennik N, Aktuality, Denník SME and TV Markiza — from entering the government building, labeling them as “hostile media” and “unwelcome guests.”

“We have earned the label of a hostile outlet by existing and doing the kind of journalism we are doing, asking without flattering and publishing critical texts,” said Kostolny.

“Politicians don’t like this, not only Robert Fico… who actually assaulted us from the day we were established.”

Fico’s government is also pushing a controversial bill giving it control over the RTVS public television and radio broadcaster.

A breaking point

As an independent daily, Dennik N gets most of its income from readers, Kostolny said.

It was founded by a group of journalists in 2014. Four years later, Slovakia was shaken by the murder of Aktuality journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée.

An article by Kuciak, published posthumously, reported on government links with the mafia and open war followed between the prime minister and the media.

“Jan Kuciak’s murder was a breaking point. At that time, the society split into us and them,” said Kostolny.

He added Fico had to become more pragmatic as he was trying to avoid prison, chased by media looking for motives behind the Kuciak murder.

“He needed to win the (2023) election and come back to salvage his freedom,” Kostolny said.

Fico shifted toward extreme politics, using a stronger language to woo voters outside the typical Smer electorate.

Extremely dangerous

His uncompromising stance on journalists was reflected by the international Media Freedom Index for 2024, published by Reporters Without Borders, in which Slovakia slid 12 places to 29th in the world.

Its authors singled Fico out — alongside Hungary’s Viktor Orban — as “politicians… trying to reduce the space for independent journalism.”

Kostolny said Wednesday’s attack had made things even worse and that he now expected politicians to interfere in media work.

Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak, Fico’s closest ally, said that media “lies” were the reason “why Robert Fico is fighting for his life today.”

“At the moment the atmosphere is so heated. They are pointing fingers and saying journalists, especially those from Dennik N, are partly responsible for the attack,” said Kostolny.

“This is extremely dangerous, because once you start dealing with problems using violence, you can’t be sure it will not continue.”

A father of two sons, Kostolny said he “would be lying” if he said he was not afraid.

“I’m not sure what we are in for. Over the six years since Jan Kuciak’s murder, we have found out what Fico is capable of,” he said.

“On the other hand, I’m absolutely determined to continue the service we have to provide. I can’t take fright just because they’re attacking us.”
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Anaheim, California — Disneyland performers who help bring Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and other beloved characters to life at the Southern California resort chose to unionize following a three-day vote culminating Saturday.

The Actors’ Equity Association labor union said in a statement Saturday that cast members for the parades and characters departments at Disney’s theme parks near Los Angeles voted by a wide margin for the union to become the bargaining agent for the group of roughly 1,700 workers.

An association website tracking the balloting among cast members indicated passage by 78.7% (953 votes) in favor and 21.3% (258 votes) opposed.

“They say that Disneyland is ‘the place where dreams come true,’ and for the Disney Cast Members who have worked to organize a union, their dream came true today,” Actors’ Equity Association President Kate Shindle said in a statement Saturday night.

Shindle called the workers the “front lines” of the Disneyland guest experience. The association and cast members will discuss improvements to health and safety, wages, benefits, working conditions and job security before meeting with Walt Disney Company representatives about negotiating the staff priorities into a contract, she said.

The union already represents theatrical performers at Disney’s Florida parks.

Barring any election challenges, the regional director of the National Labor Relations Board will certify the results within a week, the association said.

The NLRB did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking confirmation or additional information about the vote.

The election took place on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday in Anaheim, California, after workers earlier this year filed cards to form the unit called “Magic United.”

Parade and character workers who promoted unionizing said they love helping to create a magical experience at Disneyland but grew concerned when they were asked to resume hugging visitors after returning to work during the coronavirus pandemic. They said they also suffer injuries from complex costumes and erratic schedules.

Most of the more than 35,000 workers at the Disneyland Resort, including cleaning crews, pyrotechnic specialists and security staff, are already in labor unions. The resort includes Disneyland, the Walt Disney Co.’s oldest theme park, Disney California Adventure and the shopping and entertainment district Downtown Disney in Anaheim.

In recent years, Disney has faced allegations of not paying its Southern California workers, who face exorbitant housing costs and often commute long distances or cram into small homes, a livable wage. Parade performers and character actors earn a base pay of $24.15 an hour, up from $20 before January, with premiums for different roles.

Union membership has been on a decadeslong decline in the United States, but organizations have seen growing public support in recent years during high-profile contract negotiations involving Hollywood studios and Las Vegas hotels. The NLRB, which protects workers’ right to organize, reported more than 2,500 filings for union representation during the 2023 fiscal year, which was the highest number in eight years.

The effort to organize character and parade performers in California came more than 40 years after those who play Mickey, Goofy and Donald Duck in Florida were organized by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union traditionally known to represent transportation workers.

At that time, the Florida performers complained about filthy costumes and abuse from guests, including children who would kick the shins of Disney villains such as Captain Hook.
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Beijing — China’s commerce ministry on Sunday launched an anti-dumping probe into POM copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, imported from the European Union, United States, Japan and Taiwan.

The plastics can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc and have various applications including in auto parts, electronics, and medical equipment, the ministry said in a statement.

The investigation should be completed in a year but could be extended for six months, it said.

The European Commission, which oversees EU trade policy, said it would carefully study the contents of the investigation before deciding on any next steps.

“We expect China to ensure that this investigation is fully in line with all relevant WTO (World Trade Organization) rules and obligations,” a spokesperson said.

China’s plastics probe comes amid a broader trade row with the United States and Europe.

The United States on Tuesday unveiled steep tariff increases on Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs, computer chips, medical products and other imports.

On Friday, the European Union launched a trade investigation into Chinese tinplate steel, the latest in a string of EU trade and subsidy probes into Chinese exports.

Most notably, the European Commission launched a probe last September to decide whether to impose punitive tariffs on cheaper Chinese EVs that it suspects of benefiting from state subsidies.

Beijing argues the recent focus by the United States and Europe on the risks to other economies from China’s excess capacity is misguided.

Chinese officials say the criticism understates innovation by Chinese companies in key industries and overstates the importance of state support in driving their growth.
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Days after an assassination attempt, Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico remains in serious condition, but the worst may be over, according to his deputy. A suspect remains in custody. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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President Joe Biden and his Republican rival in the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump, have agreed to participate in two debates. A set of rules aims to make their interactions as civilized as possible. But whether the debates will sway undecided voters remains to be seen, particularly given their timing. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias explains.
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Bratislava — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s life is no longer in danger following an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Sunday.

A lone gunman, who appeared in court Saturday, shot Fico four times and he was at one stage said to be fighting for his life.

“He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care,” Kalinak, Fico’s closest political ally, told reporters.

The Slovak premier was shot as he was greeting supporters after a government meeting in the central town of Handlova. He underwent a five-hour operation on Wednesday and another on Friday at a hospital in the central city of Banska Bystrica.

“We can consider his condition stable with a positive prognosis,” Kalinak said outside the hospital, adding, “We all feel a bit more relaxed now.”

Kalinak added that Fico would stay at Banska Bystrica for the moment.

The suspected gunman, identified by Slovak media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, has been charged with premeditated attempted murder and was ordered held in custody at a hearing on Saturday.

Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said that if one of the shots “went just a few centimeters higher, it would have hit the prime minister’s liver”.

The attempted assassination has highlighted acute political divisions in the country where 59-year-old Fico took office in October after his centrist populist Smer party won a general election.

He is serving his fourth term as prime minister after campaigning on proposals for peace between Russia and Slovakia’s neighbor Ukraine, and to halt military aid to Kyiv, which his government has done.

Fico leads a coalition comprising his Smer party, the centrist HLAS and the small nationalist SNS party.

Kalinak said the government would carry on without Fico “according to the program he has outlined”.

Slovakia was already sharply divided over politics since the 2018 murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee.

Kuciak pointed at links between Italian mafia and Fico’s then government, and his murder sparked nationwide protests that resulted in Fico’s resignation in 2018.

The divisions deepened further with the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Following the attack on Fico, outgoing President Zuzana Caputova and her successor Peter Pellegrini, a Fico ally who takes over in June, tried to quell the tensions.

Following a proposal by Caputova and Pellegrini, several parties have suspended campaigning for European Parliament elections scheduled for June.

But some politicians have been quick to blame the Fico attack on their opponents or media.

SNS chairman Andrej Danko blamed the media just after the shooting, and Kalinak took on the opposition and media in an emotional speech on the Smer website on Friday.

Pellegrini said Sunday that a meeting of parliamentary party leaders he was planning to host on Tuesday to help ease tensions would probably not happen.

“The past few days and some press conferences have shown us that some politicians are simply not capable of fundamental self-reflection even after such a huge tragedy,” said Pellegrini.

“It has turned out that the time is not ripe for a round table with the representatives of all parliamentary parties yet,” he added.

In a debate on the TA3 news channel, Danko said it was “false to say that a meeting on Tuesday would reconcile society”.

Police have meanwhile charged several people who had approved of the attack on Fico on social media.
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London — The host of a news conference about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition fight wryly welcomed journalists last week to the “millionth” press briefing on his court case.

Deborah Bonetti, director of the Foreign Press Association, was only half joking. Assange’s legal saga has dragged on for well over a decade but it could come to an end in the U.K. as soon as Monday. 

Assange faces a hearing in London’s High Court that could end with him being sent to the U.S. to face espionage charges, or provide him another chance to appeal his extradition.

The outcome will depend on how much weight judges give to reassurances U.S. officials have provided that Assange’s rights won’t be trampled if he goes on trial.

Here’s a look at the case:

What Assange is charged with

Assange, 52, an Australian computer expert, has been indicted in the U.S. on 18 charges over Wikileaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010.

Prosecutors say he conspired with U.S. army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer and release secret diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He faces 17 counts of espionage and one charge of computer misuse. If convicted, his lawyers say he could receive a prison term of up to 175 years, though American authorities have said any sentence is likely to be much lower.

Assange and his supporters argue he acted as a journalist to expose U.S. military wrongdoing and is protected under press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Among the files published by WikiLeaks was video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Baghdad that killed 11 people, including two Reuters journalists.

“Julian has been indicted for receiving, possessing and communicating information to the public of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. government,” his wife, Stella Assange, said. “Reporting a crime is never a crime.”

U.S. lawyers say Assange is guilty of trying to hack the Pentagon computer and that WikiLeaks’ publications created a “grave and imminent risk” to U.S. intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Why the case has dragged on so long

While the U.S. criminal case against Assange was only unsealed in 2019, his freedom has been restricted for a dozen years.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and was granted political asylum after courts in England ruled he should be extradited to Sweden as part of a rape investigation in the Scandinavian country.

He was arrested by British police after Ecuador’s government withdrew his asylum status in 2019 and then jailed for skipping bail when he first took shelter inside the embassy.

Although Sweden eventually dropped its sex crimes investigation because so much time had elapsed, Assange has remained in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison while the extradition battle with the U.S. continues.

His wife said his mental and physical health have deteriorated behind bars.

“He’s fighting to survive and that’s a daily battle,” she said.

A judge in London initially blocked Assange’s transfer to the U.S. in 2021 on the grounds he was likely to kill himself if held in harsh American prison conditions.

But subsequent courts cleared the way for the move after U.S. authorities provided assurances he wouldn’t experience the severe treatment that his lawyers said would put his physical and mental health at risk.

The British government authorized Assange’s extradition in 2022.

What the latest hearing is about

Assange’s lawyers raised nine grounds for appeal at a hearing in February, including the allegation that his prosecution is political.  

The court accepted three of his arguments, issuing a provisional ruling in March that said Assange could take his case to the Court of Appeal unless the U.S. guaranteed he would not face the death penalty if extradited and would have the same free speech protections as a U.S. citizen.

The U.S. provided those reassurances three weeks later, though his supporters are skeptical.

Stella Assange said the “so-called assurances” were made up of “weasel words.”

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson said the judges had asked if Assange could rely on First Amendment protections.

“It should be an easy yes or no question,” Hrafnsson said. “The answer was, ‘He can seek to rely on First Amendment protections.’ That is a ‘no.’ So the only rational decision on Monday is for the judges to come out and say, ‘This is not good enough.’ Anything else is a judicial scandal.”

The possible outcome

If Assange prevails, it would set the stage for an appeal process likely to further drag out the case.

If an appeal is rejected, his legal team plans to ask the European Court of Human Rights to intervene. But his supporters fear Assange could possibly be transferred before the court in Strasbourg, France, could halt his removal.

“Julian is just one decision away from being extradited,” his wife said.

Assange, who hopes to be in court Monday, has been encouraged by the work others have done in the political fight to free him, his wife said.

If he loses in court, he still may have another shot at freedom.

President Joe Biden said last month that he was considering a request from Australia to drop the case and let Assange return to his home country.

Officials have no other details but Stella Assange said it was “a good sign” and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the comment was encouraging.
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JACUMÉ, Mexico — Near the towering border wall flanked by a U.S. Border Patrol vehicle, botanist Sula Vanderplank heard a quail in the scrub yelp “chi-ca-go,” a sound the birds use to signal they are separated from a mate or group.

Then silence.

A quail on the Mexican side called back, triggering a back-and-forth soundtrack that was both fitting and heartbreaking in an ecosystem split by an artificial barrier.

Vanderplank was among several botanists and citizen scientists participating in the Border Bioblitz near the Mexican community of Jacumé, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Tijuana.

Roughly 1,000 volunteers armed with the iNaturalist app on their smartphones are documenting as many species as possible along the U.S.-Mexico border in May. Uploading photos to the app helps identify plants and animals, and records the coordinates of the location. 

The hope is the information could lead to more protections for the region’s natural richness, which is overshadowed by news of drug trafficking and migrant smuggling.

On a recent day, Bioblitz volunteers scrutinized a bright yellow blooming carpet of common Goldfields, a sharp contrast to the imposing steel bollards of the border wall topped with rolls of razor wire. Some navigated their way around piles of empty water jugs, a gray hoodie and empty cans of tuna fish left under the branches of native flora like the Tecate Cypress.

“There’s a fabulous amount of biodiversity here that’s traditionally been overlooked,” Vanderplank, of the binational program Baja Rare, said.

The efforts started in response to former President Donald Trump adding hundreds of miles of border walls that toppled untold numbers of saguaro cactuses in Arizona and passed through the biodiversity hotspot of Baja California.

“When the border wall construction began, we realized how little hard data we had, especially when it came to plants and small organisms,” Vanderplank said. “We don’t know what all we could lose.”

Since then, there has been a groundswell of initiatives to document the borderland’s flora and fauna as climate change coupled with habitat loss, pollution and development have hammered the world’s biodiversity. One estimate in 2019 warns that a million plant and animal species face extinction within decades, a rate of loss 1,000 times greater than expected.

The United Nations is expected hold a high-level meeting in Colombia of signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity in October aiming to protect 30% of land, freshwater and oceans considered important for biodiversity by 2030, known as 30 by 30. Representatives from nearly 200 countries are expected to present plans on how they will meet conservation targets agreed upon in 2022.

Currently, 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas are protected. 

Baja California peninsula, which borders California and is home to Tijuana with one of Mexico’s highest homicide rates, has more than 4,000 species of plants. A quarter of them are endemic and at least 400 plants are considered rare with little to no protection.

Flora and fauna that have gone extinct or are in danger of disappearing in the U.S., like the California red-legged frog, are thriving south of the border, producing specimens that are being used to bring back populations.

But the region’s crime deters many U.S. scientists from crossing the border. Mexico also is restricting permits for botanists and not allowing seeds to be collected, further curtailing the work, scientists say.

Bioblitz organizers work with local communities and say they take people only to areas deemed safe.

“You have to be really careful because of the violence,” said Jon Rebman, a curator of botany at the San Diego Natural History Museum, who has named 33 new plants for science from the southern California and Baja California region.

“It’s scary from that standpoint, yet those are the areas where we really need more information because there’s hardly any protected area on the south side,” he said.

Using the museum’s collection, Rebman made a list of 15 plant species endemic to Baja California and not seen since being collected nearly a century ago. He created a binational team to find them. So far, they have located 11.

Rebman also discovered two new plants to science in 2021 in a canyon off a Tijuana highway: the new species, Astragalus tijuanensis, and a new variety of the Astragalus brauntonii named lativexillum.

“I was worried they would go extinct before we even got them named,” Rebman said. “That tells you what type of area we’re working in.”

Tijuana-based botanist Mariana Fernandez of Expediciones Botánicas periodically checks on the plants. Working with Rebman, she is pushing Baja California to adopt more protections for its native plants. Currently only a fraction are on Mexico’s federal protection list. 

She hopes the state will step in, while she also tries to build support by taking Tijuana residents and Baja officials on hikes.

“People are amazed that these things exist in Tijuana, and I hope to show more and more people so they can see the beauty, because we need that,” Fernandez said. “It’s important to not be impeded by the barriers that humans create.”

As border security increases with the number of people being displaced by natural disasters, violence and wars at record levels worldwide, more migrants are traipsing out to areas like the stretch near Jacumé. The tiny community of about 100 families includes members of the Kumeyaay tribe and sits across the border from an equally sparsely populated desert near the California town of Jacumba Hot Springs. Population: about 1,000.

The area has seen thousands of asylum seekers who wait for an opportunity to cross, usually in the cloak of darkness, and then camp again on the U.S. side after turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Fernandez was among the botanists helping Bioblitz volunteers on the Mexican side near a crumbling crossing station from the 1920s.

“I never would have thought that there would be so much biodiversity on the border,” said Jocelyn Reyes, a student of Fernandez at La Universidad Autónoma de Baja California who stopped every few feet to hover over a plant and photograph its details. “It’s so interesting and makes you realize there’s so much worth saving.” 
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ATLANTA — U.S. President Joe Biden speaks Sunday at the former university of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr, in a bid to woo Black voters that risks being overshadowed by protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden’s graduation speech at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, will be his most direct engagement with students since demonstrations over the conflict roiled campuses across the United States.

Students at Morehouse, a historically Black college, have called on the school’s administration to cancel the speech over Biden’s support for Israel, which has caused strong opposition in a U.S. presidential election year.

“I think it will be a moving commencement address. I think it will meet the moment,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing Friday.

Asked about reports that the college principal would shut down the ceremony if there was major disruption, Jean-Pierre said: “He will respect the peaceful protesters. It is up to Morehouse on how to manage that and move forward.”

A senior White House official recently met students and faculty members at Morehouse to discuss objections to Biden delivering the address, NBC News reported.

While Biden’s choice of Martin Luther King Jr’s alma mater emphasizes the heroism of the civil rights hero, protesters have pointed out that King was also an anti-war activist who opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

Biden initially stayed silent on the Gaza protests but later said that “order must prevail” after police broke up several university protest encampments around the U.S.

Biden poll worries

Biden’s problems with voters over Gaza mirrors wider issues he has with Black and younger voters, two groups that helped him beat Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

He will need to keep those strands in his coalition to have a hope of preventing Trump from making a sensational comeback to the White House despite a chaotic first term and multiple criminal indictments.

The Morehouse College visit caps days of events in which Biden is reaching out to Black voters, all staged around the 70th anniversary of a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended racial school segregation.

A New York Times/Siena poll last week showed that in addition to trailing Trump in several key battleground states, Biden is also losing ground with African Americans.

Trump is winning more than 20% of Black voters in the poll — which would be the highest level of Black support for a Republican presidential candidate since the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964, The New York Times said.

Several other polls have also shown Biden’s support lagging among Black voters.

Biden accused Trump and his “extreme” supporters of “going after diversity, equity and inclusion all across America” in a speech Friday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington on Friday.

On Thursday in the Oval Office, Biden welcomed key figures and relatives of plaintiffs in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that proved a milestone for the U.S. civil rights movement.

Later Sunday, Biden will then travel to Detroit where he will address the NAACP, the nation’s top civil rights group.
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MOSCOW — Russian officials said on Sunday that Ukraine fired nine U.S. ATACMS at Crimea and attacked Russian regions with at least 60 drones in a major attack which forced one oil refinery in southern Russia to halt operations.

Russian air defenses shot down nine U.S. ATACMS missiles over Crimea along with 57 drones over Russia’s Krasnodar region and three drones over Belgorod region, the Russian defense ministry said.

Local officials said six drones crashed onto the territory of an oil refinery in Slavyansk in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. Interfax news agency said the refinery halted work after the attack.

Slavyansk refinery is a private plant with a capacity of 4 million metric tons of oil per year, about 1 million bpd.

There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.

Russia has reported an uptick in Ukrainian attacks on its territory since opening a new front in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine earlier this month.

President Vladimir Putin says Russia is carving out a buffer zone there to protect Russia from such attacks, which Russia says risk triggering a broader war between Russia and the West if Ukraine uses Western weapons.

Russia said on Saturday Russian forces captured the village of Starytsia in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and that Russian forces had defeated Ukrainian units along the front, including in the Sumy region.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s forces have destroyed all of 37 attack drones launched by Russia overnight, Ukraine’s air force chief said Sunday.

“As a result of the anti-aircraft battle, all 37 ‘Shaheds’ were shot down in Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy and Kherson regions,” the commander said.

Odesa governor Oleh Kiper said on the telegram messaging app that 20 drones were destroyed in the Odesa region.

“An administrative building in Odesa district was damaged by falling debris. In Odesa, the debris fell into the yard of a residential area. Fortunately, there were no injuries,” Kiper said.

No destruction or casualties were reported by military and civilian authorities in other regions.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports. 
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser met early Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss what the kingdom described as the “semifinal” version of a wide-ranging security agreement between the countries.

The announcement by the state-run Saudi Press Agency comes as the strategic deal had been upended after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage back to the Gaza Strip.

In the time since, a punishing Israeli airstrike campaign and ground offensive there has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. The war has endangered the security deal that had included Saudi Arabia diplomatically recognizing Israel for the first time since its founding in 1948.

Saudi state media released no images of Jake Sullivan and Prince Mohammed meeting in Dhahran, a city in the kingdom’s far east that’s home to its state-run oil giant, the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. known as Saudi Aramco.

“The semifinal version of the draft strategic agreements between the kingdom and the United States of America, which are almost being finalized — and what is being worked on between the two sides in the Palestinian issue to find a credible path — were discussed,” the statement released after the talks said.

That included “a two-state solution that meets the aspirations and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” and “the situation in Gaza and the need to stop the war there and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid,” the statement added.

Saudi Arabia has long called for an independent Palestinian state to be created along Israel’s 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as its capital. However, that likely may be untenable for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government hinges on support from hardliners who oppose a two-state solution and support Israeli settlements on lands Palestinians want for that state.

The White House had acknowledged Sullivan’s trip and that he would later head on to Israel, where he’s scheduled meet Netanyahu on Sunday. However, there was no immediate statement from the U.S. on the discussions, other than to say they would be “including the war in Gaza and ongoing efforts to achieve a lasting peace and security in the region.”

Saudi Arabia has long relied — like other Gulf Arab nations — on the U.S. to be the security guarantor for the wider Middle East as tensions over Iran’s nuclear program in recent years have spilled over into a series of attacks. The proposal now being discussed likely would deepen that, and also reportedly includes access to advanced weapons and possibly trade deals as well.

Saudi Arabia has also pushed for nuclear cooperation in the deal that includes America allowing it to enrich uranium in the kingdom — something that worries nonproliferation experts, as spinning centrifuges opens the door to a possible weapons program. Prince Mohammed has said the kingdom would pursue a nuclear weapon if Iran had one. Iran in recent weeks has increasingly threatened it could do so.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York meanwhile confirmed that Tehran held indirect talks with U.S. officials in Oman last week. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted the mission as describing the talks as “an ongoing process.”

“The negotiations have not been the first and will not be the last of their kind,” the mission said, according to IRNA.

Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has been the site of U.S.-Iran talks in the past, including under Biden despite the tensions between the two nations.
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RIETI, Italy — Ella Anthony knew it was time to leave her native Nigeria when she escaped an abusive, forced marriage only to face angry relatives who threatened to turn her in to police because she was gay.  

Since Nigeria criminalizes same-sex relationships, Anthony fled a possible prison term and headed with her partner to Libya in 2014 and then Italy, where they both won asylum. Their claim? That they had a well-founded fear of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution back home.

While many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrive in Italy from Africa and the Mideast are escaping war, conflict and poverty, an increasing number are fleeing possible prison terms and death sentences in their home countries because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, advocates say.

And despite huge obstacles to win asylum on LGBTQ+ grounds, Anthony and her partner, Doris Ezuruike Chinonso are proof that it can be done, even if the challenges remain significant for so-called “rainbow refugees” like them.

“Certainly life here in Italy isn’t 100% what we want. But let’s say it’s 80% better than in my country,” Chinonso, 34, said with Anthony by her side at their home in Rieti, north of Rome. In Nigeria, “if you’re lucky you end up prison. If you’re not lucky, they kill you,” she said. 

“Here you can live as you like,” she said.

Most European countries don’t keep statistics on the number of migrants who claim anti-LGBTQ+ persecution as a reason for seeking refugee protection under international law. But non-governmental organizations that track the phenomenon say the numbers are rising as countries pass or toughen anti-homosexuality laws — a trend being highlighted on Friday’s observance of the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.

To date, more than 60 countries have anti-LGBTQ+ laws on the books, most of them in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia.

“The ultimate result is people trying to flee these countries to find safe haven elsewhere,” said Kimahli Powell, chief executive of Rainbow Railroad, which provides financial, legal and logistical support to LGBTQ+ people needing asylum assistance.

In an interview, Powell said his organization had received about 15,000 requests for assistance last year, up from some 9,500 the year before. One-tenth of those 2023 requests, or about 1,500, came from Uganda, which passed an anti-homosexuality law that year that allows the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” and up to 14 years in prison for “attempted aggravated homosexuality.”

Nigeria also criminalizes consensual same-sex relations between adults and the public display of affection between same-sex couples, as well as restricting the work of groups that advocate for gay people and their rights, according to Human Rights Watch. In regions of Nigeria where Sharia law is in force, LGBTQ+ people can face up to 14 years in prison or the death penalty.

Anthony, 37, said it was precisely the threat of prison that compelled her to leave. She said her family had sold her into marriage, but that she left the relationship because her husband repeatedly abused her. When she returned home, her brother and uncles threatened to turn her into police because she was gay. The fear and alienation drove her first to attempt suicide, and then take up a trafficker’s offer to pay for passage to Europe.

“At a certain point, I couldn’t take all these sufferings,” Anthony said through tears. “When this man told me that I should abandon the village, I immediately accepted.”

After arriving in Libya, Anthony and Chinonso paid traffickers for the risky boat trip across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy, where they both claimed asylum as a member of a group – LGBTQ+ people – who faced persecution in Nigeria. According to refugee norms, applicants for asylum can be granted international protection based on being a “member of a particular social group.”

But the process is by no means easy, straightforward or guaranteed. Privacy concerns limit the types of questions about sexual orientation that migrants can be asked during the asylum interview process. Social taboos and a reluctance to openly identify as gay or transgender mean some migrants might not volunteer the information immediately. Ignorance on the part of asylum interviewers about anti-gay laws in countries of origin can result in unsuccessful claims, according to the EU Agency for Asylum, which helps EU countries implement asylum norms.  

As a result, no comprehensive data exists about how many migrants seek or win asylum in the EU on LGBTQ+ grounds. Based on estimates reported by NGOs working with would-be refugees, the numbers in individual EU countries ranged from two to three in Poland in 2016 to 500 in Finland from 2015-2017 and 80 in Italy from 2012-2017, according to a 2017 report by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights.

An EU directive grants special protection for people made vulnerable due to sexual discrimination, prescribing “special procedural guarantees” in countries that receive them. However, it doesn’t specify what those guarantees involve and implementation is uneven. As a result, LGBTQ+ asylum seekers don’t always find protected environments once in the EU.

“We’re talking about people who are unfortunately victims of a double stigma: being a migrant, and being members of the LGBTQIA+ community,” said lawyer Marina De Stradis.

Even within Italy, the options vary widely from region to region, with the better-funded north offering more services than the less-developed south. In the capital Rome, there are only 10 beds specifically designated for LGBTQ+ migrants, said Antonella Ugirashebuja, an activist with the Arcigay association.

She said the lack of special protections often impacts female migrants more negatively than male, and can be especially dangerous for lesbians.

“Lesbians leaving Africa often, or more frequently, end up in prostitution and sexual exploitation networks because they lack (economic) support from their families,” she said. “The family considers them people to be pushed away, to be rejected … Especially in countries where this is punishable by law.”

Anthony and Chinonso consider themselves lucky: They live in a neat flat in Rieti with their dog Paddy, and dream of starting a family even if Italy doesn’t allow gay marriage.

Chinonso, who was studying medicine in Nigeria, is now a social and health worker. Anthony works at the deli counter in a Carrefour supermarket in Rome. She would have liked to have been able to continue working as a film editor, but is happy.

“It gave me the opportunity to grow,” she said.
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