London
Assange to Sweden: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden to face questions over accusations of rape, a British court ruled this week. Assange says the sex he had with two accusers in 2010 was consensual, and he claims that the allegations are part of a U.S. plot to have him extradited from Sweden to the U.S. to face a secret indictment for exposing state secrets. U.S. lawyers say there is no evidence for that theory. Assange, 40, a former computer hacker, gained fame in 2010 with the release of video footage of U.S. soldiers killing civilians in Iraq, and later engineered a mass dump of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables. He won’t be on a plane to Stockholm anytime soon, though: The court gave Assange two weeks to challenge its judgment, and his lawyers are considering an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Zurich
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Radioactive mushrooms: Scientists testing imported produce for radiation from the Japanese nuclear meltdown at Fukushima last year found something even scarier—radiation from the Chernobyl meltdown more than 25 years ago. None of the Japanese samples tested positive for radiation. But a Ukrainian shipment of frozen wild mushrooms had unacceptably high levels of radioactive cesium-137. Ukrainian authorities had labeled the shipment as inspected and cleared for consumption. “It makes you wonder if those declarations are worth anything at all,” said chemist Rolf Etter of the Zurich food inspection laboratory. Authorities in Zurich destroyed the 10-ton shipment.
Warsaw
Who’re you calling racist? Poland and Ukraine, the joint hosts of this month’s European soccer championship, are complaining about their soccer fans being portrayed as racists. A BBC documentary, Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate, showed white fans in both countries giving the Nazi salute, taunting black players with monkey noises, and brutally beating nonwhite fans. Prominent black players, including former England captain Sol Campbell, are quoted as telling their families not to go to the championship because of the threat of mob violence. The Polish and Ukrainian governments denounced the report as “unjust” and “biased,” and said neo-Nazis were a common sight in British stadiums too.
