The road to ruin
By Jo Johnson


Auntie Noorie, a middle-aged eunuch from the hijra transgender community of Chennai - the huge south Indian port-city - is in great demand. For the loneliest of India’s lonely hearts, there’s no better matchmaker. In a mid-life career shift, the 54-year-old former sex worker has reinvented herself as a specialist marriage-broker-cum-agony-aunt for the HIV-positive community. Twenty years ago, she became the third person to be diagnosed HIV-positive in India. In these two decades an epidemic of terrifying proportions has spread across the sub-continent, infecting more than five million Indians. With 500,000 new cases recorded a year, experts say that if India has not done so already, it will soon overtake South Africa as the country with the most HIV infections. And it will be in India, home to one-sixth of humanity, that the global fight against Aids will be won or lost.

Indian Hospital Refuses HIV+ Patients
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

(New Delhi) Two state-run hospitals in India's Jharkhand state is accused of refusing treatment to people who are HIV-positive.

Allentown, Pa., ordinance to prevent antigay bias in jobs, housing upheld


A Pennsylvania court on Thursday ruled that Allentown can have an ordinance protecting residents from discrimination in housing or employment matters because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Climate warning as Siberia melts
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce


THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

Scientists find errors in global warming data By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY


Satellite and weather-balloon research released Friday removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say.

Occupied Zones
by Howard Zinn


IT has quickly become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with that term during the second world war. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied countries. The United States liberated them from occupation.

Junk Food Nation
By Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor

this is a must read on the foolishness of this goverment!!


Four Amendments & a Funeral
A month inside the house of horrors that is Congress
By MATT TAIBBI


It was a fairy-tale political season for George W. Bush, and it seemed like no one in the world noticed. Amid bombs in London, bloodshed in Iraq, a missing blonde in Aruba and a scandal curling up on the doorstep of Karl Rove, Bush's Republican Party quietly celebrated a massacre on Capitol Hill. Two of the most long-awaited legislative wet dreams of the Washington Insiders Club -- an energy bill and a much-delayed highway bill -- breezed into law. One mildly nervous evening was all it took to pass through the House the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), for years now a primary strategic focus of the battle-in-Seattle activist scene. And accompanied by scarcely a whimper from the Democratic opposition, a second version of the notorious USA Patriot Act passed triumphantly through both houses of Congress, with most of the law being made permanent this time.

Bush's summer bills were extraordinary pieces of legislation, broad in scope, transparently brazen and audaciously indulgent. They gave an energy industry drowning in the most obscene profits in its history billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks, including $2.9 billion for the coal industry.

Greenland glacier triples speed because of climate change: Greenpeace


The Greenland glacier Kangerdlugssuaq has unexpectedly picked up speed and become one the world's fasted-moving glaciers because of global warming, the environmental organisation Greenpeace said.

Independent scientists on board a Greenpeace ship found last month that the glacier, located in eastern Greenland, is moving at a speed of 14 kilometres per year, compared to five kilometres per year in 1988, it said.

Saudis Jailing HIV Foreigners
by Jan Prout 365Gay.com Toronto Bureau


(Toronto, Ontario) Saudi Arabia reportedly refuses to provide antiretroviral treatment to HIV-positive foreigners and instead confine them to caged hospital rooms until they are deported or die.

Transvestites, exempt from Thai military, no longer classified as having "mental disorder"


Bombarded by complaints from transvestites and transsexuals, who are exempt from the Thai military because they have been classified as having a "mental disorder," the Thai army is amending the law to omit the words and keep up with a changing society, an official said Wednesday.

Skin cancer hits young
Researchers say two malignancies are appearing in dramatic numbers among people under 40 despite public health efforts on wearing sunscreen, protective clothing
BY DELTHIA RICKS
STAFF WRITER; Staff writer Kai Ma contributed to this story.


The incidence of two forms of non-melanoma skin cancer has tripled among people younger than 40 - particularly women - an increase scientists attribute to tanning's continued allure and Earth's depleting ozone layer.

Christians & the War
Newsdesk.org Staff Report


The latest al Qaeda terror attacks have sparked renewed media coverage of Islam's relationship with violence, and have spurred questions about the role of moderate and liberal Muslims in preventing the spread of extremism.

But in America, Christianity is also invoked both in support of and opposition to the war.

check this out--more wacky christian magic thinking

Helping Boys Become Men, and Girls Become Women
Is My Child Becoming Homosexual?


Before puberty, children aren’t normally heterosexual or homosexual. They’re definitely gender conscious. But young children are not sexual beings yet — unless something sexual in nature has interrupted their developmental phases.

Cindy Sheehan says Bill O'Reilly is an "Obscenity to Humanity"


I just got off a conference call with Cindy Sheehan. Even though it rained last night and Sheehan is suffering from a sore throat and a fever, she is in good spirits and very, very determined and committed to see this through.

Sheehan said she is "overwhelmed and amazed at all the support" she's getting. She specifically said Texans have been amazing as has the sheriff of Crawford. She said people from places like North Carolina, Oregon and all parts of Texas are coming to Crawford to join her. She credited the Internet, saying without it, "nobody would know what was really going on." The "mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government," she said, and without the Internet, "we would be a fascist state." So true.

Falwell's 'Vote Christian' Criticized 1 hour, 50 minutes ago


LYNCHBURG, Va. - A Jewish organization is calling on the Rev. Jerry Falwell to retract a "vote Christian in 2008" statement made months ago in a letter raising money for his ministries.

Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe Harassed Once Again at the International Book Fair


On Friday 5th August, at around 3 p.m., a group of unidentified, smartly dressed, men approached the GALZ stand at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and stated that Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ)--this year's Felipa de Souza Award winner for advocating for the human rights and sexual rights of all persons whose gender or sexual identities or expressions do not conform to social or cultural norms or HIV status given by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission--was not allowed to be at the Fair. According to Keith Goddard, the Executive Director of GALZ, the men left and then entered the Book Fair offices where they issued threats against Book Fair staff. They returned to the GALZ stand and started packing away GALZ literature. GALZ members tried to attract the attention of police officers and security guards patrolling the gardens but all of them refused to intervene. The GALZ staff, seeing that they would receive no assistance, and not wishing any violence to take place packed up their belongings and withdrew.

This morning's edition of *The National Law Journal* includes an article:
Courts Still at Odds Over Transsexuals' Rights" by Dee McAree.


A groundbreaking decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year opened doors for transsexuals to bring discrimination lawsuits against their employers, but some lower federal courts are still holding to older precedents that bar Title VII claims.

District court judges are having a hard time with this," said Christopher Daley, a lawyer and director of the Transgender Law Center in San Francisco. "They are having a hard time feeling that they can really embrace the 6th Circuit ruling."

Battle Lines Drawn In NY Gay Marriage Suit
by Doug Windsor 365Gay.com New York Bureau


(New York City) Lawyers for five gay and lesbian couples suing for the right to marry in New York State told an appeals court on Monday that New York City is wrong when

New Charges Added In Colorado Gay Slaying
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff


(Montrose, Colorado) Two days after announcing the killing of a gay man may have been a hate crime, police said on Monday that the pair arrested in the slaying have had their charges raised and now face the death penalty

1952 court victory against anti-gay charges
Lavender & red, part 44
By Leslie Feinberg


The decision by Dale Jennings, a Mattachine founder, to fight catch-all "lewd-vagrancy" charges, stemming from an attempt by police to sexually entrap him, was not the first time a gay man in the U.S. had pleaded not guilty.

But the way Mattachine organizers fought the charges was a landmark. They took the struggle public, issuing leaflets explaining, "The issue is civil rights."

Snow Concedes Economic Surge Is Not Benefiting People Equally
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer


Treasury Secretary John W. Snow acknowledged yesterday that the fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally to less educated Americans, as he and the rest of President Bush's economic team prepared to meet today to discuss wages and income distribution in an otherwise surging economy.

Selling Goods by Doing Good
By Julia Bonstein


Save the rainforests by having a beer, help African school-children by eating chocolate: companies have discovered that the way to a customer's pocket is through his heart. But just how ethical is "ethical marketing?"

Families' fears grow after latest cross burning
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER


Tired of crime in Detroit, Sean Dean left for a home on a quiet suburban block. Like a growing number of African Americans, the 33-year-old sanitation worker saw his future outside the city where he was born and raised.

But Monday, he stood near what appeared to be evidence of another racially motivated attack directed against an African-American family in the suburbs. And he wondered: Am I welcome here?

That's a question several black suburbanites are asking after several attacks have raised concerns among prosecutors and civil rights activists. The latest attack was down the block from Dean's home. Early Sunday, someone burned a 6-foot cross on the Davis family's lawn in Dearborn Heights, police say.

CIA reading room

Bush skating on the thin ice of Alaskan oil
David Nason


Today, President George W. Bush will go to New Mexico to sign into law his new energy bill.

The legislation will open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska - a world-class wilderness region inhabited by many caribou - to oil and gas exploration.

Man beaten in gay bias attack


Two men walking together in Chelsea were attacked yesterday by a pair of thugs spewing anti-gay slurs, police said.

The punks confronted the men just before 1 a.m. at W. 18th St. and Ninth Ave. as they headed to the Roxy bar, a known gay hangout, police sources said.

One 33-year-old victim was punched in the face, sources said. He tussled with the attacker when another came up from behind and punched him in the back of the head, cops said.