Police, marchers 'surprised' by violence at Estonian gay parade


Tallinn - A violent attack on a gay-pride parade in the Estonian capital Tallinn took police and organizers by surprise, parade organizers said on Monday.

'The police acted appropriately, but you can't do much with two police against thirty attackers. We're surprised and ashamed how violent the attack was,' parade spokeswoman Maali Kabin told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Saturday's attack by around two dozen Estonian skinheads wielding stones and sticks left several marchers injured, including one Spanish man with head wounds. It is the first time in Tallinn Pride's three-year history that protests have turned violent.
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Gov't-backed gay forum makes cautious debut
(China Daily)

Beijing's first government-backed Internet forum for homosexuals has slowly begun to take off, despite initial reluctance by authorities to give it too much publicity.

Fu Qingyuan, an official with the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control of Chaoyang District, said the centre created the forum two months ago but did not publicize it until Sunday because they did not want to cause unnecessary public debate.


The forum was created to promote HIV/AIDS prevention awareness among China's homosexuals and offer professional assistance to the group, Fu said.

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Mo. Army Base Leader in Gays Discharged


WASHINGTON -- An Army base in Missouri used the "don't ask, don't tell" policy to kick out more soldiers than any other military installation last year, followed by an Army base on the Kentucky-Tennessee border and a naval base in Virginia.

Sixty people were dismissed last year from Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., according to Defense Department documents shared with The Associated Press by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. That was up from 40 discharges under the policy from the training facility in 2004.