Gay-rights activist detained at Olympic Park
SOCHI, Russia (AP) — An Italian activist shouting “It’s OK to be gay” and dressed in a rainbow-colored outfit and large headdress was detained Monday as she entered an arena to watch an Olympic hockey game.
Four men stopped Vladimir Luxuria, a former Communist lawmaker in the Italian parliament who has become a prominent transgender rights crusader and television personality, and then police drove her away in a car with Olympic markings.
Luxuria later told The Associated Press she was kept in the car for about 10 minutes, then released in the countryside after the men had taken away her Olympic spectator pass. She eventually made it back to her hotel and said she was leaving Russia this morning.
“They don’t say anything,” Luxuria said. “They just were people who had to do this, and they did it.”
Earlier Monday, Luxuria walked around the Olympic Park in Sochi for about two hours. She was shouting “Gay is OK” and “It’s OK to be gay” in both English and Russian.
As she was being led away from Shayba Arena, she was shouting “I have a ticket.”
Luxuria said she was detained Sunday evening by Russian police who told her she should not wear clothes with slogans supporting gay rights. Police denied detaining her.
U.N. letter to Kim Jong Un warns on accountability
GENEVA (AP) — A U.N. panel warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday that he may be held accountable for orchestrating widespread crimes against civilians in the secretive Asian nation, ranging from systematic executions to torture, rape and mass starvation.
It is unusual for a U.N. report to directly implicate a nation’s leader. But in a letter accompanying a yearlong investigative report, the chairman of a three-member U.N. commission of inquiry, retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, directly warned Kim that international prosecution is needed “to render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for crimes against humanity.”
“Even without being directly involved in crimes against humanity,” Kirby wrote, “a military commander may be held responsible for crimes against humanity committed by forces under the commander’s effective command and control.”
He urged Kim to take “all necessary and reasonable measures” to stop crimes against humanity and insure that they are properly investigated and prosecuted. Kirby added, however, there was no indication the North Korea would do so.
The investigative commission’s 372-page report is a wide-ranging indictment of North Korea for policies including political prison camps with 80,000 to 120,000 people, state-sponsored abductions of North Korean, Japanese and other nationals, and lifelong indoctrination.
Indiana Senate approves limited gay marriage ban
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Indiana Senate voted Monday to amend the state constitution by banning gay marriage, but it will be 2016 at the earliest before the measure appears on a statewide ballot because of a late change that limits the scope of the ban.
By voting 32-17 in favor of the diluted measure, senators finished the Legislature’s work on an effort to add the state’s current gay marriage to the Indiana Constitution. But because an original plan approved in 2011 prohibited civil unions as well, lawmakers restarted on the process by voting last month to remove the civil union language from the proposed amendment.
As a result, a referendum that might that might have been held in November now much wait at least two more years.
The Senate’s vote followed roughly an hour of debate in public and close to three hours of debate in private among the Senate’s Republicans. A conservative Republican senator launched a last-minute effort to get the civil unions ban back in the measure and have it placed on the November ballot, but failed to sway enough Republicans during the three-hour private meeting.
Despite the fact that a public vote would not happen until at least 2016, supporters of the ban said they would have to settle for “half a loaf.” Supporters said they still were concerned a judge could step in and overturn Indiana’s existing gay marriage ban, which is written in law, but not the constitution.
Test could predict which teen boys get depression
LONDON (AP) — A saliva test for teenage boys with mild symptoms of depression could help identify those who will later develop major depression, a new study says.
Researchers measured the stress hormone cortisol in teenage boys and found that ones with high levels coupled with mild depression symptoms were up to 14 times more likely to suffer clinical depression later in life than those with low or normal cortisol levels.
The test was tried on teenage boys and girls, but found to be most effective with boys.
About one in six people suffer from clinical depression at some point in their lives, and most mental health disorders start before age 24. There is currently no biological test to spot depression.
“This is the emergence of a new way of looking at mental illness,” Joe Herbert of the University of Cambridge and one of the study authors said at a news conference on Monday. “You don’t have to rely simply on what the patient tells you, but what you can measure inside the patient,” he said.
Herbert compared the new test to ones done for other health problems, such as heart disease, which evaluate things such as cholesterol and high blood sugar to determine a patient’s risk.
Trade ban has Russia’s knickers in a twist
MOSCOW (AP) — A trade ban on lacy lingerie has Russian consumers and their neighbors with their knickers in a twist.
The ban will outlaw any underwear containing less than 6 percent cotton from being imported, made, or sold in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. And it has struck a chord in societies where La Perla and Victoria’s Secret are panty paradises compared to Soviet-era cotton underwear, which was often about as flattering and shapely as drapery.
On Sunday, 30 women protesters in Kazakhstan were arrested and thrown into police vans while wearing lace underwear on their heads and shouting “Freedom to panties!”
The ban in those three countries was first outlined in 2010 by the Eurasian Economic Commission, which regulates the customs union, and it won’t go into effect until July 1. But a consumer outcry against it already is reaching a fever pitch.
Photographs comparing sexy modern underwear to outdated, Soviet goods began spreading on Facebook and Twitter on Sunday, as women and men alike railed against the prospective changes.
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