Nepal temple joins US lesbians in wedlock

KATHMANDU: There were no howls of outrage or attempts at disruption but only good-natured curiosity and non-stop traditional music as American psychologist Courtney Mitchell tied the knot with fellow American Sarah Welton, a lawyer by profession, in Kathmandu valley's celebrated Dakshinkali temple on Monday, making it Asia's first public lesbian wedding and an additional feather in the cap of Sunil Babu Pant, Nepal's only openly gay legislator.

Read the full story at The Times of India

Jackie Chan: Philanthropy's Hardest Working Man

Another long day is nearly over, and Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan is beat. And no wonder: The day before, he made an overnight dash to Beijing, carrying a torch in a run to promote the upcoming World University Games in Guangzhou. Landing in Hong Kong he rushes straight to a series of photo shoots, appearances and dubbing duties for Kung Fu Panda 2. Rubbing his eyes, it's clear he needs a break. But he still has one more appointment, this time with a special opponent.

Read the full story at Forbes

Humans really DO have a sixth sense... that lets us detect magnetic fields (and we're not aware we have it)

It has long been known as ESP, Spider Sense, or the ability to see things before they happen.
But now scientists have proved that humans really do have a sixth sense - that lets them detect magnetic fields.
Tests have shown that mankind may have the same innate sense of Earth’s magnetic field that has long been proved to exist in animals.

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

Council caretaker 'was juju wizard who trafficked young girls, kept them in coffins and forced them to eat hearts'

A council caretaker trafficked girls as young as 14 into Britain to work as prostitutes after they had been put under a voodoo spell, a court heard yesterday.
Anthony Harrison, 32, is alleged to have raped two girls in Britain after they had been subjected to an extraordinary African black magic ritual by a people-smuggling gang.
The terrifying ceremony was performed in Nigeria by a Juju priest to trap the girls into a life of sex slavery, it was said.

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

TV review: Abused: Breaking the Silence; Submarine School

The element of surprise has long passed. We've got so used to Catholic priests being accused of child sex abuse that the real rarity would be a TV documentary about one who kept his hands to himself. Yet it's the very familiarity of these stories that makes them still so powerful; the recognition that child abuse isn't limited to a few isolated priests but is an endemic problem that the Catholic church has gone out of its way to cover up for the best part of 50 years.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Is The Scheme packed with shameless stereotypes?

It is a graphic, no-holds-barred account of life on a hard-struck council estate in Kilmarnock, so it's perhaps little surprise that the Daily Mail has questioned the decision to show The Scheme, a "jaw-droppingly grotesque" fly-on-the-wall documentary series, on BBC1. (The second part aired last night.) But the moral motivation for making The Scheme has also become a hot topic in Scotland, where the series was first shown last year – partially at least; the last two episodes were pulled off air when one of the participants was charged with assault. The show became a huge hit for BBC Scotland, drawing over half a million viewers, and made cult stars of figures such as ex-heroin addict Marvin Baird (whose dog Bullet amassed more than 10,000 followers on Facebook) and teenage "competitive dancer" Kimberley Cunningham.

Read the full story on the Guardian

Locked-in syndrome: Shut out by a stroke

Tony Nicklinson is listening to the radio when I arrive. He's been hoisted into his wheelchair, and sits alone in a room overlooking his garden. Seeing me, he raises his eyebrows by way of hello. I introduce myself, ask how he is and tell him I've spent the afternoon with his lovely daughters. He nods stiffly. Then his eyes well up.

Tony had a stroke in 2005 and now suffers from locked-in syndrome: he's trapped inside his body, aware of everything going on but unable to engage with it. Paralysed from the neck down, Tony can't speak but he can think, hear and feel. He communicates through blinking, twice for no, once for yes.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Why corks are popping once more

Forget screw-caps, the old-fashioned cork is making a comeback. This week, as the wine industry gathers at Vinexpo, the world's biggest wine fair in Bordeaux, traditional cork-makers are feeling buoyant.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Iain Duncan Smith rejects cross-party pressure on women's pensions

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, has come under fire from government backbenchers over plans to fast-track changes to the pension age, which will leave 500,000 women waiting more than an extra year before they can retire with a state pension.

The work and pensions secretary refused to bow to increasing pressure from all sides of the Commons during a debate on the pensions bill, saying there would be no change to the timetable and conceding only that he was "willing to work to get this transition right".

Read the full story at the Guardian

Single parents pay the price of benefit reform

As a single mother with a young child, Becky English's career means a lot to her. The public relations manager's marriage ended six months after her daughter was born and she moved from London back to Teesside having decided it would offer her and Sophie, now four, a better standard of living.

English works four days a week, but when her six-month contract ends in November she fears she will struggle to find another position with the same convenient hours. She has been studying for a professional qualification in marketing at evening classes (while her sister looks after Sophie) to improve her job prospects.

English does not consider herself poor, but she budgets with extreme care and has cut out all but essentials. There is no spare cash at the end of the month.

Read the full story at the Guardian

EU calls for women to make up one-third of bank directors

Britain's banks could be radically overhauled under new proposals from Brussels demanding that a third of the directors on the boards of banks should be female.

A draft directive circulating in the City shows that Michel Barnier, Europe's internal markets commissioner, wants to impose mandatory quotas to dictate the number of women of sitting on bank boards. He believes the change would help prevent the kind of "group think" often blamed for exacerbating the crisis that struck the industry in 2008.

His plan contrasts sharply with the UK government's less radical decision, after an inquiry by the former trade minister Lord Davies, to set targets to encourage greater female representation in the boardroom.

Read the full story on the Guardian

How psychiatry became a damage limitation exercise

The warnings issued by the Royal College of Psychiatrists about the fate of psychiatric services in the UK will ring true for mental health workers and patients alike. The huge pressures put on inpatient units, the shortage of beds and the often unnecessary and intrusive bureaucracy all contribute to lowering standards of care. This, combined with a reduction in the number of trainee psychiatrists and increasing difficulty in obtaining visas for overseas workers, spells gloom for the future of mental health. Ministers are being exhorted to act now, before this dreadful situation becomes irreversible. But what action should they take?

Read the full story at the Guardian

This attack on legal aid is an attack on justice

Thirty years ago, I brought together local people and progressive lawyers to form the second Community Law Centre in Britain, still going strong to this day. The centre has been a lifeline for those in need of legal advice and representation, challenging public authorities – such as when we won the battle to change building regulations following the tragic death of a young husband, trapped in a high-rise Stonebridge estate flat because there was no way out of his burning flat.

Read the full story at the Guardian

It's not 7,000, but 700,000 seriously ill people who'll lose their sickness benefit

I was delighted to see Ed Miliband raise so passionately the issue of 7,000 cancer patients who will lose all employment and support allowance after one year (Miliband puts Cameron under pressure over coalition plan to cut cancer patients' benefits, 16 June). As you report, "Complex changes to eligibility for employment support allowance [previously incapacity benefit] for some groups could result in as many as 7,000 cancer patients losing up to £94 a week in sickness benefit."

This is an issue that many sickness and disability campaigners such as myself have been urgently trying to raise awareness of for months. As the article pointed out, however, David Cameron "did not seem to be aware of the detailed measure in the bill, even though it has been raised for months in parliament and the media".

Read the full story in the Guardian

Criminalising squatting would threaten our rights

The publication of the legal aid, sentencing and punishment bill has been widely reported as another major policy U-turn for the coalition government. Plans for sentencing reform heralded by the justice secretary Ken Clarke in December as a "rehabilitation revolution" have been replaced by a more traditional law and order agenda. "Hug-a-hoody" liberalism has finally morphed fully-formed, so it would seem, into its muscular revanchist doppelganger.

Less remarked in yesterday's speech by the prime minister outlining the new revised plans was a proposal to criminalise squatting subject to a brief consultation period. The announcement is, in many respects, hardly surprising. The justice secretary had already mooted the idea in March following a series of high-profile squats and the re-emergence of occupation-based practices as a key tactic of a vibrant and growing anti-cuts movement. If this is a move that may plausibly be seen as an attempt to further sanctify the virtues of private property, the impact of the ban on the use of "occupation" as a legitimate tool of protest must also be considered.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Michele Bachmann: homophobe-in-chief?

Given the explosive excitement surrounding congresswoman Michele Bachmann's White House bid, it was perhaps no surprise that organisers of a Minneapolis conservative bloggers' conference, Right Online, over the weekend chose to introduce her with the infuriatingly catchy Katy Perry song "Firework".

Bachmann is now a real rock star of the hardcore Republican right and the Tea Party faithful. But the song choice showed a profound misunderstanding of popular culture. For Firework – whatever one thinks of its musical merits – is a gay anthem. The video Perry filmed to go with it preaches a message of universal tolerance and includes a young man coming to happy terms with his sexuality and kissing another man. Which, to put it mildly, is ironic for Bachmann and her legion of supporters.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Students march for a better Chile

Chile's Sebastián Piñera government is facing hard times. In addition to citizen disapproval rates currently standing at 56%, he now has to contend with massive student protests of a scale not seen in Chile since the return of democracy in 1990. The latest large-scale protest brought together hundreds of thousands of people across the country, demanding better public education and social justice in one of the countries with, according to the Gini index, the highest inequality levels.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Private hospitals are no place for people with learning disabilities

Three weeks on, the fallout continues from BBC Panorama's exposure of sickening abuse of people with learning disabilities at the Winterbourne View private hospital near Bristol. Already it –is clear that the programme will come to be seen as a key milestone on the long journey to a civilised system of care and support for this section of society.

On Wednesday, more than 80 leading figures in the learning disability sector lend their names to a letter to the prime minister demanding an end to the placement of people in such facilities. There is, the letter says, "no place for hospitals such as Winterbourne View" and seeking to improve them will not do. "The model is wrong and does not work."

Read the full story at the Guardian

Almost a quarter of state school pupils are from an ethnic minority

England's state schools are far more ethnically diverse than they were five years ago, with almost a quarter of all pupils in primary and secondaries from an ethnic minority, official statistics show.

Some 24.3% of pupils in state primaries and secondaries are from an ethnic minority, according to figures collected in January and published by the Department for Education (DfE). Five years ago, the proportion was 19.8%.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Miliband and Cameron clash over rape case DNA legislation

Downing Street insisted David Cameron was not going to conduct a U-turn on the retention of suspects' DNA in rape cases after being put under pressure on the issue by the Labour leader, Ed Miliband.

The protection of freedoms bill requires the removal of DNA profiles from police databases after five years in all cases in which no charges are brought, but rape victims' groups have called for DNA to be retained in exceptional cases.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Women's rights activist missing in Iran

An Iranian photojournalist and women's rights activist who campaigned for female football fans to be allowed to enter stadiums has disappeared.

Maryam Majd, 25, is feared to have been held by security officials before boarding a flight from Tehran to Düsseldorf, Germany, where she intended to cover the Fifa Women's World Cup.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Female law student jailed after making up rape allegation because she was ashamed of failing university

A former law student who cried rape because she was ‘too ashamed’ to tell her family she had been kicked out of university was locked up for two years yesterday.
Aisha Mather, 19, ripped her tights, overturned a coffee table and pulled down curtains in an attempt to convince police she had been attacked at knifepoint and raped in her home.
She believed this would give her an excuse to leave her course and move back in with her parents, and kept up the pretence for eight days – even after police arrested a man who matched her detailed description of the tattooed black ‘rapist’.

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

Children's doctor Philipp Bonhoeffer wins hearsay evidence case

A paediatric cardiologist has won his High Court bid to prevent hearsay evidence being used in disciplinary proceedings over child abuse claims.

Prof Philipp Bonhoeffer, of Camden, north London, denies allegations of sexually abusing children in Kenya.

Read the full story at the BBC

Legal highs 'becoming bigger issue than illegal drugs'

Legal highs are becoming a bigger problem than illegal drugs, with many young people wrongly believing they are safe, a drugs worker claims.

Alan Andrews, an ex-heroin addict who runs a Llanelli-based drug intervention centre, said some legal drugs were stronger than illegal counterparts.

He told BBC Wales' Week In Week Out that legal did not mean safe.

Read the full story on the BBC

Drugs treatment policy for England 'doomed to failure'

Government policies for treating drug addicts in England are flawed and "doomed to failure", a think tank says.

The Centre for Policy Studies says rehabilitation is a better use of the £3.6bn now spent on treating users with drug substitutes like methadone and keeping them on benefits each year.

Read the full story on the BBC

Nova Scotia told to fund medical marijuana operation

A Canadian province has been ordered to pay for an ill couple's medical marijuana, Canadian media report.

The Nova Scotia income assistance appeals board ruled the couple needed treatment but were unable to afford growing supplies, CBC news reports.

The board ordered Nova Scotia to pay 2,500 Canadian dollars ($2,541; £1,569) to set up the growing operation.

Read the full story on the BBC

MP calls for smoke ban in cars carrying children

A Labour MP has called for a ban on adults smoking in cars where children are present, saying it would bring "tremendous" health benefits.

Alex Cunningham said children were particularly vulnerable to the effects of passive smoking and could not "remove" themselves from cars where cigarette smoke was circulating.

Parents simply exercising restraint was "not good enough", he told MPs.

But one Tory MP called the plan "over the top" and "ludicrous".

Read the full story on the BBC

China artist Ai Weiwei released on bail

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has returned home having been freed after more than two months' detention.

He was bailed late on Wednesday after pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion, Xinhua news agency said.

An outspoken critic of China's human rights record, his arrest in April prompted a global campaign for his release.

Read the full story on the BBC

Former soldier jailed for five years for underage sex

A former soldier has been jailed for five years after he admitted having sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Belfast Crown Court heard that Nigel Hall, 40, from Bendigo Street, Belfast began the "relationship of sorts" with the girl in the summer of 2008.

Read the full story on the BBC

Newry sex attacks 'linked to Sean Heaton by DNA'

DNA evidence links an alleged rapist to sex attacks on three different women, the High Court heard on Wednesday.

The victims were all dragged into alleyways and assaulted, according to the prosecution.

The attacks happened in Newry and Warrenpoint, County Down between 2002 and 2006.

Read the full story on the BBC

Boy talked of killing ex-girlfriend Rebecca Aylward, 15

A schoolboy accused of murdering a former girlfriend had talked about killing her to friends, a court heard.

Rebecca Aylward, 15, of Maesteg, near Bridgend, south Wales, was battered to death and her body found in woodland last October.

A 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denies murder.

Read the full story on the BBC

Booze for wrinklies: Good or bad?

UK trick-cyclists and American "exercise psychologists" took up diametrically opposed views today on the issue of whether old people should be allowed to drink booze.

Leading the British media was a new report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Older People’s Substance Misuse Working Group, which asserts that the nation's old-timers have their back teeth awash to a perilous degree, and demands that the government issue a new and tougher recommended daily alcohol limit for the silver drinker.

Read the full story on The Register

'We didn't just swap wives, we swapped lives': How Yankees stars traded families in scandal that rocked Seventies baseball

The story of Seventies baseball stars Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich would make for a far-fetched movie script.
But that the infamous wife-swap performed by the Yankees pitchers in 1972 is a true story, makes it a compelling tale that begs to be retold.
More interesting still, is that it is two Red Sox fans - Ben Affleck and Matt Damon - who have decided to bring it to the big screen, in their upcoming film The Trade.

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

Beware the 'alpha female', she's less likely to succeed if she's ballsy in the boardroom

Having fought their way into the boardroom they are a match for any man.
But a study has shown that when women bosses try to 'act like a man' and copy aggressive management styles it actually has the opposite effect - with staff working under so-called 'alpha females' less likely to co-operate to get results.
Researchers at the University of London found that women in the boardroom who suppress their natural skills in dealing with people can become confrontational, and would fare better from drawing on typical feminine qualities of sensitivity and good communication.

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

'It was like a bomb going off, but a nice bomb': Mother logs into Facebook account to find message from son she gave up for adoption 30 years ago

A mother was left stunned when she logged on to Facebook to find a message from the son she had given up for adoption over 30 years ago.
Pat Corlett, from Liverpool, was contacted by 36-year-old Chris Haworth - who she had not seen since he was six days old - on the social networking site last year.
The message began 'Hi my name is Chris and I was born on 22nd June 1975.' He then went on to ask her to contact him but added, 'You may not want to reply to this.'

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

Pervert tax consultant posed as Harrods' modelling agent to trick women into bizarre sex acts

A tax consultant posed as a modelling agent for Harrods in a bid to trick women into bizarre sex acts.
Jeffrey Edwards scoured small ads and customers' details on his work database to identify victims. He told them he was a fashion industry insider called Brett Raphael.
The 47-year-old, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, offered modelling work to 18 women over three years, using home-made documents and cash to convince them he was a talent scout for top stores, including the famous Harrods store in London.

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

Just half a glass of wine a day 'raises risk of breast cancer'

Just half a glass of wine a day raises a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer, one of Britain's leading doctors has warned.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore said that even those who stick within Government recommended limits for alcohol could be at higher risk.
He warned that one unit of alcohol a day - half a glass of wine - increased the risk of breast cancer by ten per cent.

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

Amish man in Indiana arrested, accused of sexting girl, 12

Police in Indiana say they arrested an Amish man who arrived in a horse-drawn buggy for a presumed rendezvous with a 12-year-old girl to whom he had sent sexually explicit cell phone messages.

Read the full story at CNN

Should Prenatal Care Be Extended to Dads?

Perhaps it's because mom has the burgeoning belly, but dads have largely been left out of prenatal care. That could be damaging to the family's health, contends research in a recent issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing.
Stressed-out, anxious pregnant women who don't receive adequate support are linked to less-than-ideal infant health outcomes. The role fathers-to-be play hasn't been studied nearly as much, but because pregnant women rely on them for support and care, researcher ManSoo Yu says it stands to reason that inattentive expectant fathers may also contribute to poorer infant health.

Read the full story at Time Magazine

How We Get Addicted

I was driving up the Massachusetts Turnpike one evening last February when I knocked over a bottle of water. I grabbed for it, swerved inadvertently--and a few seconds later found myself blinking into the flashlight beam of a state trooper. "How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?" he demanded. Before I could help myself, I blurted out an answer that was surely a new one to him. "I haven't had a drink," I said indignantly, "since 1981."

Read the full story at Time magazine

The Curse of the Crocodile: Russia's Deadly Designer Drug

The new arrivals at the drug rehab center in Chichevo, a tiny village that is a two hours' drive east of Moscow, are usually given two weeks without chores to recover from the nausea, pain and sleeplessness of withdrawal. After that, between Bible study and prayer (the center is run by Pentecostals), they have to start chopping firewood, hauling water from the village well or otherwise helping around the old wooden house. But a lot more leeway was allowed in the case of Irina Pavlova, the only resident at the center who is addicted to krokodil, or crocodile, Russia's deadliest new designer drug.

Read the full story at Time magazine

Stories of Mass Rape: Sifting Through Rumor and Taboo in Syria

Everybody, it seemed, had heard the stories, and could relay the same horrific details about Syrian soldiers allegedly raping women and girls with cruel impunity. There were ugly accounts, told by many refugees from the northern Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour, some of whom had crossed into nearby Turkey, and by others who remained in a strip of Syrian territory hugging the Turkish border.

Read the full story in Time magazine

Why Students Have a Right to Mock Teachers Online

Do students have a First Amendment right to make fun of their principals and teachers on Facebook and other social-media sites? Or can schools discipline them for talking out of school?
In a pair of free-speech rulings, a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania last week came down on the side of the students. In both cases, the court said that schools were wrong to suspend students for posting parodies of their principals on MySpace — one in which a boy made fun of his principal's body size, and another in which a girl made lewd sexual comments about her principal.

Read the full story in Time magazine

Study: Pop Songs Literally Get Stuck in Teens' Heads

Ever wonder why some songs are more popular than others?
Director of Emory University's Center for Neuropolicy Gregory Berns and economics research specialist Sara Moore have discovered there's some science behind that phenomenon.
Their federally-funded study, published in the June 8th issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology, found that the strength of brain activity in teens could predict which songs would sell 20,000 copies by Nielsen standards. Likewise, the lab found that 90% of songs that received a weak neural response sold fewer than 20,000 copies.

Read the full story in Time Magazine

What Gabrielle Giffords Can Expect When She Leaves Rehab

Recently released photos of a smiling Rep. Gabrielle Giffords have reassured her supporters that she is recovering well. They have also sparked much media interest — a strategic ploy by Giffords' team, who released the images in the hopes that the press will back off the Arizona congresswoman once she is discharged from inpatient treatment next month.
It's been just five months since a psychotic gunman shot Giffords in the head while she was meeting with constituents outside of a supermarket in Tucson in early January. Since Jan. 26, Giffords has been living in the residential rehabilitation clinic TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston. Next month, Giffords is scheduled to leave the facility to begin outpatient therapy; her team has not determined where.

Read the full story in Time magazine

The Fathering Gap: Pitfalls of Modern Fatherhood

Father's Day, which was invented by a woman, used to be a day when the member of the family who was least often home was celebrated with a gift or card he didn't really want, which was bought with money he probably earned. Yay. These days, with a large percentage of families having two working parents, things are a little different.
This year Father's Day is being celebrated with the release of studies about what modern fatherhood is like. The upshot is not good news: there's a growing "fathering gap" in America.

Read the full story in Time Magazine

An Addict's Battle With Painkiller Addiction Reveals Outdated Rehab Tactics

The New York Times today includes a moving personal story about overcoming opioid addiction. But while it describes one woman's triumph, it also illustrates something the Institute of Medicine calls a "quality chasm" between effective addiction care, as supported by scientific research, and the treatments people actually receive.

Read the full story in Time magazine

The Criminal Mind: How Drugs and Violence May Affect the Brain

Brain imaging studies of violent criminals are difficult to interpret because the most persistent among them — those who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of all crime — are not only violent but also overwhelmingly addicted to alcohol and other drugs. That makes it hard to work out which brain changes are associated with addiction (which isn't usually associated with violence) and which changes are connected with brutal behavior.

Read the full story in Time magazine

Hearing Things? It May Be Your Coffee Buzz

If you're stressed out and hopped up on caffeine — and who isn't these days — you might be prone to hallucinating, namely hearing snatches of the tune "White Christmas" in white noise, according to a recent study by Australian researchers.

Read the full story in Time magazine

Bangkok's Lucrative Hangover: Sex, Drugs and Popular Sequels

In "Farangs," a short story by Thai-American writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap, a guesthouse owner grumbles about foreign tourists and their narrow tastes. "P---y and elephants," she says. "That's all these people want."
Actually, we foreigners want much more. We want a drug-dealing monkey and an ass-kicking monk. We want a facial tattoo, men with breasts, and Mike Tyson tunelessly singing "One Night in Bangkok." And we get them all in The Hangover Part II, a sequel to the highest-grossing R-rated comedy in U.S. box-office history.

Read the full story in Time