By Angelo Amante

ROME (Reuters) – Thousands of people marched in Rome on Saturday during the summit of the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies, calling on them to act against climate change and ensure fair access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Climate activists led the march, carrying colourful placards, playing drums and dancing as they demanded world leaders save the planet.

“We are holding this protest for environmental and social issues and against the G20, which continues undaunted on a path that has almost led us to social and ecological failure,” said protester Edoardo Mentrasti.

They marched alongside students and groups of workers in a city on high security alert, with up to 6,000 police and about 500 soldiers deployed to maintain order. Metro stations have been closed and bus routes diverted due to the G20 summit.

Italian police are particularly anxious about unrest after recent protests over the country’s mandatory COVID health pass for workers turned violent when neo-fascist activists attacked the headquarters of the CGIL labour union in Rome.

In Saturday’s march, a large banner saying “stop patents, vaccines are a global right” was held by demonstrators parading along the banks of the Tiber river.

In the morning, the G20 leaders kicked off two days of talks where they were set to acknowledge the existential threat of climate change, but stop short of radical new commitments to tame global warming.

“There is an alternative to a development model based on 20 of the world’s most important heads of state meeting in a room and deciding on the fate of the world,” demonstrator Luca Ianniello said.

A separate, smaller protest against the Italian government, was in progress a few kilometres away.

Demonstrators have been kept far from the summit centre, located in a suburb built by the 20th Century fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

(Reporting by Angelo Amante)

By Peter Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City officials on Friday were preparing for shortages of firefighters, police officers and other first responders as a showdown looms between the city and its unvaccinated uniformed workforce, who face a 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) deadline to be immunized.

Leaders of unions representing firefighters and police officers have said more than one-third of their members could be sent home on unpaid leave when enforcement of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate takes effect on Monday.

“If you’re going to take a third of the ambulances off-line, if you’re going to take a third of the engine companies off-line, you’ll without question increase response times and increase the rate of death,” Uniformed Firefighters Association Andrew Ansbro told NY1 TV on Friday.

But Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, who announced the mandate nine days ago, said officials were prepared to manage any staffing gaps with overtime and schedule changes and by enlisting private ambulance companies to cover for the city’s paramedics.

Discussing those moves with reporters on Thursday, the mayor pointed out that the city also faced staffing shortages last year when many first responders were infected with the coronavirus.

The dispute in the United States’ most populous city was the latest chapter in a series of clashes across the country over public and private vaccination mandates.

New York City uniformed workers, including sanitation workers, have staged several protests this week, including one on Thursday at the mayor’s official residence. Many have said consideration should be given for the so-called natural immunity of those who have had COVID, which the firefighters’ union says includes 70% of its members.

City health officials have said that while research has yet to determine the degree of immunity that previous COVID infections yield, it is widely agreed that vaccines increase protection – even for those who have been infected.

De Blasio said only 76% of the uniformed workers facing the mandate deadline have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, as compared with 86% of city workers overall. Within that group, he said the lowest rate was among Fire Department employees at 64%, while nearly three-quarters of police employees have complied.

He stressed, however, that he expects those rates to rise significantly by Monday.

The mayor pointed to earlier mandate deadlines for other New York state and city workers that prompted a rush for last-minute vaccinations by healthcare and education workers as the reality set in that their paychecks were about to stop coming.

“And then suddenly it becomes really clear what they have to do,” de Blasio told reporters on Thursday.

By the time a vaccination requirement for state healthcare workers kicked in on Sept. 27, Governor Kathy Hochul reported that 92% of hospital employees had gotten at least one dose and 85% were fully vaccinated, up from 77% a month earlier.

Thousands of city teachers and other school employees also waited until the final days before an Oct. 1 deadline, de Blasio said, with 96% of the them currently vaccinated.

Police and fire unions have filed lawsuits against the mandate. The Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, which represents 24,000 police officers, lost a bid earlier this week for a court order to halt the deadline, but has taken its request to a state appeals court where it is still pending.

The courts have generally not been sympathetic to efforts to block vaccine mandates.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor rejected https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-courts-sotomayor-lets-new-york-school-vaccine-mandate-remain-2021-10-01 a request by four teachers and teaching assistants to block the city’s Oct. 1 mandate for school workers. And Justice Amy Coney Barrett in August denied a bid by Indiana University students to block that school’s vaccine mandate.

In Chicago, a federal judge was expected to rule on Friday on a request by a group of firefighters and other city workers for a court order to halt vaccine mandates ordered by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, both Democrats.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – Felicia Moore, Atlanta’s city council president, vows to hire 250 police officers to help combat her city’s rising crime rate if she is elected mayor next week. Her most prominent Democratic rival, former Mayor Kasim Reed, wants to go even further, putting 750 more officers on the streets.

Public safety is at the forefront in dozens of major U.S. cities poised to elect mayors on Tuesday. However, a year after “defund the police” became a rallying cry at protests against racism and police brutality, Democratic candidates from Atlanta to Minneapolis are eschewing proposals to reduce police funding even as they emphasize the need for reform.

With most urban areas deeply Democratic, the campaigns provide a preview of how Democrats may seek to bridge the gaps between liberals who support policing overhauls and moderates who worry Republicans will weaponize the issue in next year’s congressional elections.

Republicans effectively labeled some Democrats as police “defunders” during the 2020 elections, even though most mainstream candidates – including President Joe Biden – never embraced the movement pushed by party progressives.

Democrats want to avoid similar pitfalls in 2021 as crime continues to surge. Last month, the FBI reported murders rose nearly 30% in 2020, while violent crime overall went up for the first time in four years.

That trend has not abated in cities like Atlanta, where homicides have risen more than 60% since 2019.

A Pew Research Center poll released this week found 47% of Americans want to see police spending increase, up from 31% in June 2020. Only 15% said funding should be reduced, down from 25% last year.

Polls show Black voters – who are more likely to be victims of crime and live in neighborhoods with high crime rates – are particularly opposed to cutting funding.

“Communities that tend to be Black and brown, that tend to be less affluent, actually want police,” said Tammy Greer, a political science professor at Clark Atlanta University. “The pendulum was always going to shift back.”

An early signal came in New York, where former police officer Eric Adams won the Democratic mayoral nomination in June over several progressive rivals after positioning himself as a moderate who favored more aggressive policing.

Even candidates who still support redirecting funds from policing to other priorities, such as public housing and social work, have curbed their language to avoid alienating residents fearful for their safety.

In Buffalo, New York, India Walton joined protesters last year as they chanted anti-police slogans after a city officer was videotaped shoving a 75-year-old man to the ground.

But as a mayoral candidate, Walton has eschewed “defund” language and vowed not to lay off a single officer, even as she calls for cutting $7.5 million from the police budget as well as reforms such as relying on civilian personnel to handle mental health calls.

“In her capacity as an activist, during the uprisings last summer, she was really speaking from a place of resistance to injustice,” campaign spokesperson Jesse Myerson said. “Obviously, that’s a very different posture than the sort of cooler-headed, more intellectually studied posture of a candidate for office.”

This summer, Walton, a democratic socialist, pulled off a shocking upset in the Democratic primary, beating four-term incumbent Byron Brown. Brown, who has since mounted a write-in campaign, has in ads accused Walton of wanting to “defund” the police.

BACKLASH TO ‘DEFUND’ MOVEMENT

In Boston, Annissa Essaibi George, a city council member running for mayor, has similarly attacked the race’s leading candidate, Michelle Wu, as planning to “defund” the police. Wu rejects the charge as false.

Wu was among several council members who called for a 10% cut to the police budget last year. Her mayoral campaign, however, has not promoted a specific figure, instead pushing changes such as using civilians to respond to emergency calls for mentally disturbed or homeless people.

“Michelle has always said that we need to invest more in the intersection of public health and public safety,” said campaign spokesperson Sarah Anders. “Michelle thinks that it’s less about pinpointing any one number and more about the reforms that we need.”

In Seattle, one of the country’s most liberal cities, mayoral candidate and city council President Lorena Gonzalez supported calls last year to halve the police budget and invest the money in social programs.

Polls show her trailing Bruce Harrell, a former council president and fellow Democrat who has advocated hiring more officers alongside a number of police reforms.

“If this is a year ago, in the face of a dramatic few months in mid-2020, I think this would be a very different story,” said Zachary Wood, a public affairs professor at Seattle University.

In Minneapolis, where George Floyd’s murder by a white police officer prompted last year’s widespread demonstrations, voters will decide whether to approve a ballot measure replacing the police department with a new public safety agency.

Mayor Jacob Frey, who is seeking reelection, opposes the proposal. He says the city needs to hire more police to replenish an under-staffed department.

“I have never supported defunding or abolishing the police,” he said at a debate this week.

All of the leading candidates in Atlanta’s mayoral race support more officers to combat crime, while also calling for reforms to ensure racial equity.

Moore, who like Reed is a Democrat in the nonpartisan race, backs the creation of civilian first responders to handle non-violent emergency calls, among other reforms. But the city also needs enough officers to keep neighborhoods safe, she said.

“Defunding the police doesn’t get us anywhere,” she said.

The race has disappointed left-wing activists like Kelsea Bond, co-chair of the Atlanta chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“There really was this glimmer of hope last year,” Bond said. “The city has only expanded policing and incarceration since last year, and a lot of it has been backlash to the ‘defund the police’ movement.”

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Cynthia Osterman)

By Joseph Tanfani

(Reuters) – Former U.S. president Donald Trump’s slashing rhetorical style and divisive politics allowed him to essentially take over the Republican Party. His supporters are so devoted that most believe his false claim that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud.

But the same tactics that have inspired fierce political loyalty have undermined Trump’s business, built around real-estate development and branding deals that have allowed him to make millions by licensing his name.

Trump’s business brand was once synonymous with wealth and success, an image that now clashes sharply with a political brand rooted in the anger of his largely rural and working-class voter base. His presidency is now associated in the minds of many with its violent end, as supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Those searing images, along with years of bitter rhetoric, are costing Trump money. Revenues from some of his high-end properties have declined, vacancies in office buildings have increased and his lenders are warning that the company’s revenues may not be sufficient to cover his debt payments, according to Trump’s financial disclosures as president, Trump Organization records filed with government agencies, and reports from companies that track real-estate company finances.

Prospective tenants in New York are shunning his buildings, one real-estate broker said, to avoid being associated with Trump. Organizers of golf tournaments have pulled events from his courses.

Trump’s focus on the political brand has increasingly overtaken his identity as a real-estate mogul, says one hospitality industry veteran.

“Prior to his political career, the Trump brand was about luxury – the casinos, the golf resorts,” said Scott Smith, a former hotel executive and hospitality professor at the University of South Carolina. “When he entered into politics, he took the Trump brand in an entirely different direction.”

Trump’s business also remains under the cloud of a joint criminal fraud investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and the New York Attorney General. The company and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, have been charged with a scheme to evade payroll taxes, and investigators continue to probe whether Trump or his representatives committed fraud by misrepresenting financials in loan applications and tax returns. Weisselberg and the company deny wrongdoing and are contesting the charges.

As his development business struggles, Trump has announced his first major deal since leaving office — and it has nothing to do with real-estate. On Oct. 20, he said he will build a new social media platform aimed in part at giving him a political forum after being banned by Facebook and Twitter, who said after the U.S. Capitol riots that Trump used their platforms to incite violence.

That deal could prove lucrative for Trump regardless of whether the platform succeeds. Investors rushed to buy shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp, the publicly traded blank-check acquisition company that plans to merge with the newly announced Trump Media and Technology Group. Digital World shares surged and are now worth about $2 billion. Trump’s new media company will have at least a 69% stake in the combined company, but Trump has not disclosed his level of ownership in Trump Media.

Trump has also been raising money for his political operation, which reported having $100 million on June 30, as he hints at a 2024 presidential run.

Eric Trump, the former president’s middle son and a Trump Organization executive, said in an interview that the company is now in “a phenomenal spot.” He cited a refinancing of a loan on San Francisco office buildings that gave the Trump business about $162 million in cash, according to loan documents and a release by Vornado Realty Trust, the venture’s majority owner.

“We’re sitting on a tremendous amount of cash,” Eric Trump told Reuters.

In an email, a spokesperson for Donald Trump denied that the business has slumped since he entered politics.

“The real estate company is doing extremely well, and this is evident in Florida and elsewhere,” Liz Harrington said in an emailed statement. “Considering the coronavirus pandemic, in which the hotel industry was hit particularly hard, Mr. Trump’s company is doing phenomenally well.”

Financial records show Trump’s real-estate business has declined. Income from the family’s holdings, heavy on golf courses and hotels, took a beating during 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. Revenues at his Las Vegas hotel, for instance, fell from $22.9 million in 2017 to $9.2 million during 2020 and the first 20 days of 2021, according to Trump’s financial disclosures.

Trump is now making a second attempt to sell his lease on one high-profile property, the Trump International Hotel, housed in a former federal building in Washington, D.C., after failing to secure a buyer at the original asking price of $500 million. Meanwhile, the business is paying the federal government $3 million annually in lease payments, according to documents released earlier this month by the House Oversight Committee of the U.S. Congress. Those records show Trump’s Washington hotel lost more than $73 million since 2016.

The damage to Trump’s business image started early in his presidency. One consultant for Trump, arguing in a 2017 public hearing for a lower tax bill at his Doral golf resort, said Trump’s politics had damaged his business model.

“It’s actually not about the property, it is about the brand,” said consultant Jessica Vachiratevanurak, at a December 2017 hearing of the Miami-Dade Value Adjustment Board, in a video recording reviewed by Reuters. She cited a meeting she attended where top Trump Organization executives had described “severe ramifications” to his golf business from, for instance, tournaments and charity events being canceled by organizations wanting to avoid associating with Trump.

The resort saw revenues fall from $92 million in 2015 to $75 million in 2017, she said at another hearing the following year. Trump’s presidential financial disclosure listed Doral revenues at $44 million last year.

Vachiratevanurak declined a Reuters request for comment.

“This is obviously false as Doral is doing very well,” Trump spokesperson Harrington said.

In Trump’s home base of New York, the Trump name has become increasingly toxic. One high-profile property, the Trump SoHo hotel in lower Manhattan, was rebranded the Dominick in 2017. New York City in January canceled his leases on a golf course, two Central Park skating rinks and a carousel; Trump has sued the city for wrongful termination of the golf course lease.

At 40 Wall Street, the 72-story skyscraper that was among Trump’s proudest acquisitions, problems that started before the pandemic have gotten worse, according to reports from firms that track real-estate performance. After the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots, some of Trump’s large tenants, including the Girl Scouts and a nonprofit called TB Alliance, said they were exploring whether they could get out of their leases. One commercial real-estate broker says many prospective tenants won’t consider the building because Trump’s name is on it.

The Girl Scouts did not respond to comment requests, and TB Alliance said it was “exploring all options” for leaving the Trump building.

“Most New York tenants want nothing to do with it, and that’s been the case for five years now,” said Ruth Colp-Haber, who said she has placed seven clients in the building over the years, but can’t interest anyone now. “It’s the biggest bargain going, but they won’t look at it.”

Occupancy was 84% in March 2021, well below the average of about 89% for that downtown New York office market, according to Mike Brotschol, managing director of KBRA Analytics LLC. The rents Trump has been able to charge are lower, too – between $38 and $42 per square foot in a market where the average runs closer to $50, he said.

The property’s financials have tumbled into risky territory, the reports say.

Trump took out a $160 million loan in 2015 to refinance 40 Wall Street – personally guaranteeing $26 million. Last year, the building was placed on an industry watchlist for commercial mortgage-backed securities at risk of defaulting, according to reports by KBRA and Trepp, which also monitors real-estate loans. In the first quarter of the year, according to the KBRA report, the debt-service coverage ratio, a statistic monitored by banks, dipped to a number indicating that the building’s cash flow can’t cover its debt payments.

In the statement for Trump, Harrington blamed “the disastrous policies of Bill de Blasio,” New York’s mayor, for the downturn in the city’s office market. “Despite all these serious headwinds, Mr. Trump has very little debt relative to value and the company is doing very well,” she said.

The Doral resort and Washington hotel, along with a hotel in Chicago, are secured by about $340 million in loans from Deutsche Bank AG, Trump’s biggest lender. But the bank has no appetite for more business with Trump and has no plans to extend the loans after they come due in 2023 and 2024, a senior Deutsche Bank source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Asked about the bank’s unwillingness to work with Trump, his spokeswoman said: “So what?”

Experts say the prospect of any new Trump-branded development faces long odds. One hotel industry executive said hotel developers – worried about cutting themselves off from the millions of customers turned off by Trump – will likely think twice before signing any branding deals to put the Trump name on their properties.

“People have choices. You can go to the Ritz Carlton, you can go to the Four Seasons, and not bring the politics into it one way or the other,” said Vicki Richman, chief operating officer of HVS Asset Management, a hospitality industry consultancy and property manager.

The Trump Organization tried to take its premium luxury hotel brand downmarket with two new brands: Scion, a mid-priced offering, and American Idea for budget travelers. The company scrapped plans for both in 2019, citing difficulties doing business in a contentious political environment.

Harrington said nothing is off the table for Trump’s business.

“We have many, many things under consideration,” she said. “But we also have politics under consideration.”

(Reporting by Joseph Tanfani; additional reporting by Peter Eisler, Greg Roumeliotis and Matt Scuffham; editing by Jason Szep and Brian Thevenot)

MEGA

MADONNA’S DAUGHTER LOURDES LEON BRINGS THE HEAT IN MARC JACOBS SPRING COLLECTION — AND EVEN SHOWS OFF HER UNSHAVEN ARMPITS

Lourdes sizzled in a black bodysuit with sheer tights and high pointed toe heels for a new Mugler campaign. The daughter of Madonna and Carlos Leon has been busy as of late. She walked the runway show for Bottega Veneta in Detroit on October 21.

The sexy snap comes at a peculiar time after an insider spilled to OK! the eldest of the Queen of Pop’s six children, Lourdes and Rocco Ritchie, 21, are growing tired of their mom dressing sexy at her age. (Madonna is also Mom to David Banda, 15, as well as 8-year-old twins Stelle and Estere Ciccone.)

“They can’t understand why [her behavior] needs to be so hyper and gratuitous,” dished the source. The Grammy winner recently made a jaw-dropping appearance on late-night TV, in which she crawled across host Jimmy Fallon’s desk and flashed her bum to the audience.

 

The Material Girl songstress’ children love and respect her, “but it makes them cringe to see her writhing around naked and making a fool of herself,” the source added, explaining that Lourdes and Rocco have “struggled for years” with her attention-seeking behavior.

MATERIAL-LESS GIRL! MADONNA LEAVES LITTLE TO THE IMAGINATION WITH SET OF RACY SNAPS FOLLOWING PHOTOSHOP FAIL

“Madonna thinks she’s being hip and irreverent and still gets this huge kick out of shocking people, but it’s reaching a boiling point,” the insider continued, noting the kids are planning an intervention to let her know how they are feeling.

 

“[The siblings] plan to sit their mom down and tell her she needs a reset before she winds up imploding and ruining her legacy,” concluded the insider.

Lourdes recently revealed her mom was a “control freak” and controlled every aspect of her life as she was growing up. “I needed to be completely independent from her as soon as I graduated high school,” she told Interview magazine earlier this month.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress on Thursday will open a year’s worth of investigations into whether Big Oil deceived Americans about its role in climate change, with Democratic lawmakers planning to grill the chiefs of four oil companies and two lobby groups.

Environmental groups and their congressional allies hope the hearing evokes the Big Tobacco hearings of the 1990s, which began a shift in public opinion about that industry. Energy industry representatives plan to focus on their current support of climate action.

“The narrative is, in my view, simple: they know they lied and they continue to deceive,” Representative Ro Khanna, chair of the environment subcommittee on the Environment, told Reuters in an interview. “And if we can establish that I think it will be a Big Tobacco moment for Big Oil.”

Khanna will lead the hearings along with Representative Carolyn Maloney, chair of the Oversight and Reform Committee.

It will be the first time that executives of the top oil majors – ExxonMobil, Shell Oil, BP America and Chevron – and the heads of the American Petroleum Institute and Chamber of Commerce will answer questions about climate change in Congress under oath.

Representative James Comer, top Republican on the committee, will say the panel should be addressing inflation and high energy prices which he believes are caused by policies of President Joe Biden’s administration, according to written testimony that contained no mention of climate change.

Republicans invited Neal Crabtree, a worker who lost his job after Biden canceled the Keystone XL oil pipeline, to testify to the panel.

This summer, the United Nations released a report warning that unless immediate, rapid and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the average global temperature is likely to reach or cross the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7 degrees F) warming threshold within 20 years.

BP America’s CEO David Lawler and Shell Oil’s CEO Gretchen Watkins plan to talk about their recognition that climate change was a problem in the 1990s and about their current efforts to adapt their business models to add more renewable energy and lower emissions, according to prepared testimony.

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods will say that the company “responded accordingly” when the “scientific community’s understanding of climate change developed” and that oil and gas will still be needed to meet growing global energy demand.

And the energy interests are also likely to say that more time is needed for a transition to cleaner energy.

Suzanne Clark, the president and CEO of the Chamber, will tell lawmakers that one of President Joe Biden’s top climate aides, John Kerry, said this year that half of the emissions cuts needed to get to net zero will come from technologies that are not developed yet, according to her written testimony.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio)

Peterson also claimed that Holmes convinced the family with the project, saying, “This was going to be a game-changer for health care.”

Holmes also reportedly told the family that the blood-testing device produced by her company could be used in places such as military helicopters and refugee camps. She also reportedly said that they could run between 200 to 300 tests through the company’s machines using only a tiny amount of blood. Peterson was intrigued by the presentation and of what it could potentially bring to the health care industry.

Jurors selected in Holmes’ trial were shown for the first time clips of the alleged criminal, who was trying to defend her company during interviews on television from 2015 and 2016. “This is what happens when you work to change things,” she told the interviewer on CNBC Mad Money in 2015. “First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world.”

During her appearance on theTODAY show in 2016, Holmes claimed, “anything that happens in this company is my responsibility.”

As Radar previously reported, the alleged scammer and her former COO Sunny Balwani are currently being charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. Both are facing 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Prosecutors accuse the two of being aware of Theranos’ inability to produce “accurate and reliable results for certain blood tests.”

“Holmes and Balwani used advertisements and solicitations to encourage and induce doctors and patients to use Theranos’ blood testing laboratory services, even though, according to the government, the defendants knew Theranos was not capable of consistently producing accurate and reliable results for certain blood tests.”

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) -Lawyers for the United States launched a fresh attempt on Wednesday to have Julian Assange extradited from Britain, arguing that concerns about the WikiLeaks founder’s mental health should not prevent him from facing U.S. justice.

The 50-year-old Australian is wanted in the United States on 18 criminal charges, including breaking a spying law, after WikiLeaks published thousands of secret U.S. files and diplomatic cables in 2010.

The United States is appealing against a Jan. 4 ruling by a London District Judge that Assange should not be extradited because he would likely commit suicide in a U.S. prison.

Lawyer James Lewis told the court the United States had addressed the District Judge’s concerns by making assurances to Britain regarding how Assange would be treated if extradited.

These included that he would not be subject to a set of strict detention conditions known as Special Administrative Measures and would not be detained at a maximum security penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, known as ADX.

The U.S. authorities had also assured Britain that they would consent to Assange serving in Australia any custodial sentence imposed by a U.S. court, Lewis said.

Assange, who denies any wrongdoing, is being held at Belmarsh Prison. In the morning, the court was told he felt too unwell to appear via video link, but later in the day he did appear on the screen. Wearing a shirt, tie and mask, he was sitting at a table, holding his head in his hand.

In a court document circulated to media, Assange’s lawyers rejected the U.S. assurances, saying he could be held in another maximum security facility under oppressive conditions that would drive him to suicide.

They said Australia had given no indication it would consent to Assange being transferred there to serve a U.S. sentence, and he would be at high risk while awaiting a transfer.

“On the evidence, Mr Assange will most likely be dead before it (the proposed transfer) can have any purchase,” they wrote.

The appeal hearing is scheduled to last two days, with the judges expected to give their ruling at a later date.

‘FREE JULIAN ASSANGE’

Supporters of Assange gathered outside the court building from early on Wednesday, chanting “free Julian Assange”, before his father and Stella Moris, his partner and mother of his two children, arrived.

Another subject of dispute in the appeal is whether the evidence of a psychiatric expert called by Assange’s defence team in the original extradition hearing was reliable.

The U.S. lawyers argue the evidence should be dismissed because the expert initially failed to disclose that Moris was Assange’s partner and that the pair had children — information they said was highly relevant to the issue of his suicide risk.

Assange’s lawyers said the District Judge had been right to take into account the expert’s evidence.

WikiLeaks came to prominence when it published vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables which the United States says put lives in danger.

Soon afterwards Sweden sought Assange’s extradition from Britain over allegations of sex crimes. He was ordered to be sent to Sweden in 2012, but instead fled to the Ecuadorean embassy in London and lived there for seven years.

He was dragged out in April 2019 and jailed for breaching his British bail conditions, although the Swedish case against him had been dropped. The U.S. authorities then sought his extradition.

Supporters see Assange as an anti-establishment hero victimised for exposing U.S. wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S. prosecutors regard him as a reckless enemy of the state whose actions threatened the lives of agents named in the leaked material.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Christina Fincher and Jonathan Oatis)