内容摘要：Household food imports, meanwhile, rose by 136% from 2023 to 2024, government statistics show.

Household food imports, meanwhile, rose by 136% from 2023 to 2024, government statistics show.

It is an unprecedented setback to the Himalayan nation’s growing queer community, which has made significant progress in recent years.“It is a big crisis,″ said Sunil Babu Pant, an openly gay former parliamentarian and a leading LGBTQ+ campaigner. “When the community needs counselling or support, it is absent. People are going back to the closet again.”

In the past few years, Nepal’s LGBTQ+ community made rapid advancements in securing their rights. The nation became one of the first in Asia to. The constitution adopted in 2015 explicitly stated there can be no discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.The U.S. was among the biggest donors for the LGBTQ+ rights campaign.

Over the years, USAID and others stepped in and partnered with help centers to support initiatives like HIV prevention and care and safe-sex counselling. The U.S. funds were vital for running the centers and clinics that helped with distributing free condoms, screenings and follow-up treatment for people with HIV. Now the USAID office in Nepal is closed.With most of that funding gone, those gains are at risk.

Babu Dumi Rai, who worked at a help center in Kathmandu that has closed, warned that the aid cuts could lead to more HIV infections.

“In our community people are hesitant to buy condoms, and many of them are not even aware they need to use a condom or even how to properly use them,” Rai said. “With all these projects and services shuttered, there is now a very big risk of the HIV infections to be on the rise.”Yuval Raphael from Israel performs the song “New Day Will Rise” during the dress rehearsal for the second semi-final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest, in Basel, Switzerland, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Raphael performed Thursday in theat the contest in the Swiss city of Basel, securing enough votes from viewers to secure a place in Saturday’s final with her anthemic song “New Day Will Rise.” Oddsmakers make Raphael, a survivor of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on a music festival in southern Israel that started the Gaza war, one of the favorites to win the contest.

But some would prefer she was not here. A handful of protesters attempted to disrupt a rehearsal by Raphael on Thursday with “oversized flags and whistles,” contest organizers said. Videos on social media appeared to show a large Palestinian flag being extended in the crowd across several people.Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR, which is organizing the event, said “security personnel were able to quickly identify those involved and escort them out of the hall.”