ROBERT YAGER Robin Tyler and Diane Olson became the first same-sex couple to be married in Los Angeles State of the union: 18,000 Californian gay couples are legally married in a state which outlaws it Last year, California passed a controversial law allowing same-sex marriage for the first time. But now, the state's Supreme Court has overturned that right, resulting in a uniquely bizarre situation whereby 18,000 gay couples are legally married in a state which outlaws it By Guy Adams  The Independent  The bride wore a white tuxedo. And so, according to the breathless TV reports, did her bride. On 16 June last year, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson drove to Beverly Hills courthouse, where a liberal Rabbi conducted a simple half-hour ceremony that made them the first same-sex couple, in the history of Los Angeles County, to be legally married. They'd been together for 16 years. Needless to say, it was the happiest day of their lives. Fast-forward to 26 May 2009, a month shy of their first anniversary. Again, Tyler and Olson faced a red letter day. But this one wasn't such a party. Instead, the couple sat anxiously in a lawyer's office, surrounded once more by the world's media, waiting for California's Supreme Court to decide whether their wedding, and many thousands of gay and lesbian weddings like it, should be declared null and void. It's difficult, taking a detached view of this course of events, to decide whether Tyler and Olson are extremely lucky, or appallingly unfortunate. Did they hit a historic jackpot, being citizens in a Western democracy where two women can fall in love and spend the rest of their lives together? Or draw a short straw: choosing to formalise their relationship in California, at the exact point in history where gay weddings are at the centre of a fierce dispute? But back to 26 May. On that day, California's Supreme Court was meeting to discuss Proposition 8, a controversial ballot measure which had passed by a slim majority at the Presidential Election. It stipulated that henceforth: "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California". Seven judges (four men and three women) were charged with deciding whether that measure was constitutional. And, if so, what that meant for marriages like Tyler and Olson's. At around 10am, the verdict arrived. It was broadly as expected: the justices upheld, until further notice, a ban on new same-sex weddings which had begun in November, when the measure originally passed. But they decided that Tyler and Olson, and roughly 18,000 other gay couples who'd been married during the six-month period when the practice was legal, would be allowed to remain husband and husband, or wife and wife. "It felt bittersweet," recalls Tyler. "We'd been sat in the conference room at our attorney's office, joking and saying, 'Can you imagine if we're suddenly divorced?' But deep down, of course, we were worried. Then the verdict was announced. I…

   Mexico's New Lax Drug Laws Cause Flood in U.S.
    "Under the new law, up to about four joints of marijuana would be allowed for personal use. For cocaine, the limit is half a gram — about four lines, or half the weight of a paperclip. The heroin and meth limits are about half the size of a pencil eraser, and enough LSD to make a few grains of salt."    

 Wikileaks Afghanistan: Osama bin Laden alive Osama bin Laden is alive and playing a key role in directing the war in Afghanistan Read Article   

 The wave of anti-Christian violenceChristians in the Muslim world are becoming scapegoats as anger about the 'crusader west' takes holdComments (116) Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 January 2010 Article history Coptic Christians protest in Egypt after an attack in which gunmen opened fire on a crowd of churchgoers. Photograph: Khaled El-Fiqi/EPAA recent wave of violent attacks on Christian worshippers and churches in countries across the Muslim world is intensifying concern that continuing military conflict, cultural friction and economic imbalances embroiling Islam and the west are fuelling a parallel rise in religious intolerance at grassroots level.The increase in tensions is seen as particularly disturbing in countries such as Egypt where Islam and Christianity have a centuries-old history of largely peaceful co-existence. In one recent incident, gunmen attacked a Coptic Christian congregation near Luxor, on the Coptic Christmas eve, killing six churchgoers and provoking inter-communal rioting and arson.The Egyptian government said the violence was an isolated event and not sectarian. But many disagreed. About 2,000 Copts took to the streets of Cairo on Wednesday, saying the official response had been inadequate and complaining of systemic ill-treatment. One sign read: "Egypt burns while its leaders sleep."Egypt's constitution guarantees equal rights for all religions. Yet according to Human Rights Watch's 2009 world report, discrimination against Christians, Bahá'ís and minority Muslim sects is entrenched. Egypt's 78 million population is predominantly Sunni Muslim. Copts make up 10% of the total.Anger in local Muslim communities about Christian proselytising, alleged desecrations of the Qur'an, or "liberal" attitudes towards women often sparks confrontation. An attack on a Protestant church in Tizi Ouzou in Algeria on Saturday night, when Bibles and hymnals were burned, was reportedly touched off by rumoured Christian attempts to convert Muslims.Reactions to the incident were typically defensive. "We have always been persecuted in this country. It is not acceptable and the authorities must do something to stop the attacks against us," said Mustafa Krim, head of the Algerian Protestant Church Association. Government spokesman Fellahi Ada was unsympathetic, suggesting such complaints were a western plot."The general trend is that Christianity is no longer attractive in Algeria," he said. "This is why some circles outside Algeria are doing whatever possible to portray my country as a country where religious minorities are suffering and that an international intervention is needed to protect them."The US state department's latest country report on Algeria, whose population is 99% Sunni Muslim, says that "in practice" the Algerian government restricts religious freedom. Restrictions increased in 2009 following implementation of an ordinance limiting public assembly for the purpose of worship, the US said. Twenty-seven churches were closed for non-compliance with the ordinance. It also reported routine antisemitism in Algerian Arab media.In Tizi Ouzou, other influences may be at work: the…

Why Sweden rules the web Phone calls, movies, music, TV – Stockholm has emerged as the epicentre of an online revolution, giving us all what we want, instantly, for free. Tim Walker reports from the world's new digital capital

Spotify Share and share alike: Daniel Ek (left) and Martin Lorentzon of the internet jukebox Spotify  The courthouse at the corner of Scheelegatan and Fleminggatan is hardly what you'd call a marvel of modern Swedish design. Red-brick, nondescript, it's the last place in Stockholm you'd go looking for a party. But if you had been there a fortnight ago, that's exactly what you'd have found. For the last two weeks of February, room nine of the city's district court played host to the trial of The Pirate Bay, a Swedish website that compiles links to BitTorrent files – a particularly efficient form of file-sharing – from across the internet. As the world's largest BitTorrent "tracker" site (and the 108th most popular site on the web), The Pirate Bay boasts almost 3.5 million registered users, a further 21.5 million unregistered users, and a billion page views per month. But many of the files the six-year-old site tracks and indexes are illicit versions of copyrighted material, and the film and music industries brought the site to court in the hope of making it an example to pirates everywhere. However, proceedings did not go quite to plan. Instead of coming quietly, the three mischievous young men who run The Pirate Bay turned their trial into a sell-out show. Their friends from the anti-copyright think-tank Piratbyran ("The Pirate Bureau") turned up every day in a brightly painted campaign bus. Student bands played for supporters outside the court and, at the end of the trial's first week, the defendants threw a party at a nightclub in central Stockholm, offering free champagne to every guest. Related articles More Gadgets & Tech Articles So confident are the trio that they set up another website to cover the trial independently of the mainstream media. They named it Spectrial, a combination of "trial" and "spectacle". Tickets for half a day in the courtroom changed hands for €60 (£55) each on the black market, more than most rock concerts. The trial concluded last week, and both sides now await the verdict of the judging panel, due in April. But, to their fellow file-sharers, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Fredrik Neij are already folk heroes. *** Meanwhile, on the other side of Stockholm, a new internet company has turned this demand for free media into a viable business model that the music industry seems willing to stomach. Spotify, launched in October last year, is a piece of music software that looks not unlike iTunes, yet allows you to listen to a vast, growing catalogue of streamed tracks for free – as long as you are prepared to endure around a minute of advertising per hour. A premium version,…