It’s been more than eight years since 9/11, but the fallout continues to reverberate throughout today’s New York. The Obama administration’s waffling over how to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the attack’s mastermind, and the continuous, embarrassing delay in rebuilding the towers downtown have kept 9/11 more in the headlines than usual. Now, as those political battles roll on, a new story about the run-up to 9/11 has emerged—a previously undisclosed, covert C.I.A. effort to recruit a spy to penetrate Al Qaeda a year and a half before the planes crashed into the towers.

At a human rights forum held Friday morning in Kampala, a Ugandan Member of Parliament said he would kill his son if he discovered he was gay. The MP, Otto Odonga, was immediately denounced by the forum's keynote speaker, Makau Mutua. "I am baffled by the kind of hatred you spew against gay people," Mutua said, "including your desire to be a hangman. Would you apply to be a hangman if the person to be hanged were your son?"

Well, I expect I have your attention, so I might as well begin. I’ll do that by saying that I have heard both sides of the argument for, and against, gay marriage. Honestly, then, if I were the person in the United States given the decision about whether or not gay marriage should be legal, I would have to say that it should be legal. Because we have a Constitutional separation of church and state, though, I don’t think the gub’ment should be allowed to tell churches what kind of marriages they should, or should not allow. I also don’t think that the churches should tell the gub’ment what kind of marriages the gub’ment should, or should not allow.

A trial opened in Germany on Wednesday with all the elements of a 21st century spy thriller: criminal networks in the Balkans, leaking of state secrets and careless pillow-talk to a gay lover.Officially, the details are sketchy, but according to media reports the tale began when former soldier Anton K., was posted to Kosovo in 2005, ostensibly to work for the foreign ministry but in reality to set up a network of informants.

Pentagon statistics obtained by University of California researchers show that women were discharged under the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy" on openly gay service members at rates up to three times higher than their overall ranks.

ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr has accused the Greens of using its bill to legalise same-sex civil union ceremonies as a political wedge.