Ladies, take your pick...

Now I’ll admit that this hardly qualifies as news, but today scientists finally admitted that when it comes to women and penises, size truly does matter. A study of 105 heterosexual Australian women published in the American journal Proceedings of the Nat… Read full post »

While we may normally associate French Revolutions with guillotines and ambitious Corsican corporals, there is no doubt that France has just undergone an equally radical upheaval which, this time around, will likely be accompanied by confetti and horse-drawn coaches. On Tuesday afternoo… Read full post »

In today’s issue, The Guardian is reporting on a sweetheart deal between Benito Mussolini and the Catholic Church that is still yielding the Vatican millions in ill-gotten gains. It seems that in 1929 the Italian dictator offered the sum of $92 million in today’s money to Pope Pius XI in… Read full post »

The French are gearing up for a new revolution. (Source: AFP) 

French president François Hollande based his 2012 election campaign partially on marriage equality, and yet his enthusiasm for the issue appears to have cooled since taking office and facing France’s vast… Read full post »

We’ve all heard about Stalin’s practice of not only liquidating his political rivals with a bullet to the back of the neck or an icepick through the skull, but also erasing them from photographs, as if they had never existed in the first place. This practice seemed so bizarre to the… Read full post »

Manliness may well be one of the glories of the human race, but now even scientists are agreeing that it comes with a hefty price tag to everyone – and to no one more than to men themselves.

Three scientists from Korea - Kyung-Jin Min, Cheol-Koo Lee, and… Read full post »

It’s a joy to hear that the more than sixteen billion dollars in foreign aid we have invested in Afghanistan in just the last four years, let… Read full post »

The Russian “punk cooperative” Pussy Riot has been given a two-year sentence in a prison camp after their conviction for “hooliganism” at an anti-government demonstration in a Moscow cathedral earlier this year. This is a tough punishment for an offence that, according to some… Read full post »

We all know that faith can move mountains, but can it also halt gay marriage? That’s what French Catholics are waiting to find out today, after millions of them duly delivered a prayer to the Virgin Mary asking for her intercession against a new law that will soon be put up… Read full post »

France’s Catholic Church is so eager to prevent the upcoming legalization of gay marriage that it is actually enlisting a dead king in its campaign. This August 15, the day on which the Virgin Mary physically ascended into heaven, French churches will once more read a prayer… Read full post »

Vietnam is not only becoming richer, it is also becoming more colorful. Today its capital, Hanoi, once the target of thousands of tons of US bombs, became witness to Vietnam’s first Gay Pride demonstration. Several dozen LGBT activists and sympathizers hit the streets on bike, wa… Read full post »

Don’t you trust mainstream media reports on the Syrian civil war? I don’t see why you should. The only thing we know for sure about the conflict is that it’s a tragedy and a crime – on all sides. As far as actual events in that fractured country are concerned, the… Read full post »

Ugandan government poster

Just imagine that a simple, harmless, one-time medical procedure could provide you, your loved ones, and all your neighbors with lifetime protection from a deadly epidemic. You’d sign up for it right away, wouldn’t you?

This is precisely what the… Read full post »

War and foreign intervention always stimulate local economies, both commercially and sexually, and that is certainly the case in Juba, capital of the world’s newest country, South Sudan. According to a report on Swedish radio today, prostitution is booming in the East African cit/… Read full post »

Who has been killing Iran’s nuclear scientists? The Iranian government has been blaming British, French, and German agents, and even their own dissidents working on Israel’s payroll. Now, in a book published last Saturday, CBS reporter Dan Raviv and former Haaretz correspondent Yossi Melm… Read full post »

On June 29, I wrote an article in this space about Samira Ghorbani Danesh, a 24-year-old Iranian asylum-seeker who had been in immediate danger of being deported from her country of refuge, Germany, back to Iran, where she faced persecution for her lesbian orientation and political activism… Read full post »

 Public enemy no. 1: "Pussy Riot"

Those Americans who thoughtlessly disseminate the conservative “myth of the separation of Church and State” might want to pause for a moment and consider what’s going on in Russia these days. In that formerly communist country the… Read full post »

On Sunday, 1,100 gay passengers of the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam of the Holland America Line were denied landing rights in Casablanca after local authorities became aware of their sexual orientation. Morocco, like other Muslim countries, legally discriminates against public displays o/… Read full post »

Relatively speaking, lesbians have it good in Iran. A man who gets arrested for homosexual acts is immediately executed, whereas as women get off with 100 lashes. They are only stoned to death after the third offence.

But 22-year-old architecture student Samira Ghorbani Danesh didn’t t… Read full post »

It’s only natural to regard man-on-woman rape as a heinous crime, among the worst of the worst, right alongside torture and child abuse. But take away the fear and loathing for a moment and it becomes clear that the perpetrators are frequently as self-deluded as they are psychopathic. This is p… Read full post »

Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the “Convention on Torture and on Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.” Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1984, it was enacted on June 26, 1987, following ratification by twenty national gover/… Read full post »

Time to say goodbye?

Have you been meaning to change your diet and improve your lifestyle, but could never find the courage or motivation to do so? Strangely enough, your best ally in this endeavor might not be a self-help guru or your own iron will, but rather a… Read full post »

For many young people, a weekend spent alone can sometimes feel like dying. But for their elders, loneliness can literally spell an early death. While this is hardly a surprise for anyone dealing with older people as they progressively face bereavement and isolation, a recent study by… Read full post »

An American drone in action: "Working hard to meet international standards"?

If you believe that the Obama Administration’s policy of seemingly arbitrary and certainly unaccountable drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries is nothing short of a war crime… Read full post »