Same-sex couples find their stride on wedding day

Same-sex couples today still face many  questions when planning a wedding, whether it's legally binding ceremony or a "commitment ceremony" in a state where same-sex unions are not legal. What should we wear? Who buys the rings? Who walks whom down the aisle? Do we invite disapproving relatives?

Straight couples with mixed religious leanings or unconventional family dynamics might experience similar dilemmas. But Kathryn Hamm says same-sex couples are at the forefront of the DIY wedding movement because they're often forced to find alternatives when a church won't host them or a caterer declines to work with them. Such considerations extend to the customary language of the vows, which may need tweaking; wording of the invitations; and decisions about who to include in the bridal party, if there is one.

Growing support for same-sex marriage is good for business and society, the Hamms and others in the wedding industry agree. And, in states such as Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2004, some wedding planners say its normalization is changing the look and feel of individual ceremonies.

The single biggest change has been a dip in the average age of couples, same-sex-wedding planner Bernadette Coveney Smith said. Just as people who have been together for decades are finally deciding to get hitched, so are "millennials" and Gen-Xers who came out as teens and have lived most of their lives in the open about their sexuality.

Can girls abuse ?

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160 girls poisoned at Afghan school

Afghan girls traumatized after poisoning

A hospital in northern Afghanistan admitted 160 schoolgirls Tuesday after they were poisoned, a Takhar province police official said.

Their classrooms might have been sprayed with a toxic material before the girls entered, police spokesman Khalilullah Aseer said. He blamed the Taliban.

The incident, the second in a week's time, was reported at the Aahan Dara Girls School in Taluqan, the provincial capital.

The girls, ages 10 to 20, complained of headaches, dizziness and vomiting before being taken to the hospital, said Hafizullah Safi, director of the provincial health department.

More than half of them were discharged within a few hours of receiving treatment, Safi said. The health department collected blood samples and sent them to Kabul for testing.

Saving Aesha: Life after Taliban attack

 

Last week, more than 120 girls and three teachers were admitted after a similar suspected poisoning.

"The Afghan people know that the terrorists and the Taliban are doing these things to threaten girls and stop them going to school," Aseer said last week. "That's something we and the people believe. Now we are implementing democracy in Afghanistan and we want girls to be educated, but the government's enemies don't want this."

But earlier this week, the Taliban denied responsibility, instead blaming U.S. and NATO forces for the poisonings in an attempt to "defame" the insurgent group.

Taliban tightens grip in school

There have been several instances of girls being poisoned in schools in recent years.

In April, also in Takhar province, more than 170 women and girls were hospitalized after drinking apparently poisoned well water at a school. Local health officials blamed the acts on extremists opposed to women's education.

While nearly all the incidents involve girls, earlier this month, nearly 400 boys at a school in Khost province fell ill after drinking water from a well that a health official said may have been poisoned.

The Taliban recently demanded the closure of schools in two eastern provinces. In Ghazni, the school closure was in retaliation for the government's ban on motorbikes often used by insurgents. People in Wardak said the Taliban has been a little more lenient and has allowed schools to open late after making changes to the curriculum.

Toilet Restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan

Modern Toilet, Taipei, Taiwan

This toilet-themed restaurant in Taipei has been so wildly successful that a dozen branches have opened across Taiwan. At all of them, diners are seated on standard-sized toilets and eat out of miniature ones. Drinks, though, are served in tiny urinals..

2 Tibetans set selves on fire outside Lhasa temple

Men on Fire

Self-immolations are being reported in Tibet's capital for the first time since Tibetans began setting themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule more than a year ago.
two men were taken away by authorities within minutes of setting themselves on fire Sunday outside the Jokhang Temple, a spiritual site and popular tourist attraction in Lhasa.
Most of the more than 30 previous incidents took place in heavily Tibetan areas of China, but only one occurred in Tibet itself. Protests have become rare in remote Tibet and Lhasa in particular because of tight police security that has blanketed the area since anti-government riots erupted in Lhasa in 2008.
There have been at least 34 immolations in Tibetan areas since March of last year to draw attention to China's restrictions on Buddhism and to call for the return from exile of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Chinese authorities have confirmed some of the self-immolations but not all.
Nearly all the immolations have occurred in heavily Tibetan areas of Sichuan province and the Qinghai region. Inside Tibet itself, there had been one reported immolation prior to Sunday, a former monk who set himself on fire in December in the Chamdo region and survived.

Kolkata Knigt Rider take title after Bisla blitz

Manvinder Bisla starred for Kolkata as they chased down 191 to claim their maiden IPL title in Chennai

There were a galaxy of former Indian cricketers in attendance, the brightest lights from Bollywood were in the stands, both teams had some of the biggest stars in the world game but the headlining performance came from little-known Manvinder Bisla as Kolkata Knight Riders prised the IPL trophy out of Chennai Super Kings' hands. Bisla, who was without a Ranji Trophy side last season, made a mockery of his previous career Twenty20 strike-rate of 106 to play a jack-in-the-box innings that helped overhaul what had seemed a mountainous Super Kings total.
Manvinder Bisla made excellent 89 runs in just 48 balls while JH Kallis made 69 runs in 49 balls.

Syrian government claims 'tsunami of lies' surrounding Houla massacre

The Syrian government vehemently denies it was behind a massacre that left at least 85 people dead, and accuses world leaders of conspiring against it

The Syrian government vehemently denied Sunday it was behind a massacre that left at least 85 people dead, and it accused world leaders of conspiring against the regime.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said he addressed the media Sunday "to make a clear stance against the tsunami of lies."

"We deny that the Syrian armed forces were responsible of what took place in Houla," where the United Nations said at least 32 young children were slaughtered in an attack Friday, he said.

Makdissi also accused some U.N. countries of "openly working against Syria" and refuted the notion of an armed opposition in the country.

"There is no armed opposition in Syria. There is either an intellectual opposition, and we welcome their participation in national dialogue, or there are armed terrorist gangs that refuse the political resolution," Makdissi said.

But opposition activists and many world leaders say President Bashar al-Assad's regime has been lethally cracking down on dissidents seeking an end to the al-Assad family's 42-year rule.

U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan is scheduled to visit Syria on Monday, Makdissi said. Annan's spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Annan brokered a six-point peace plan two months ago and both sides agreed to it. But members of the rebel Free Syrian Army said the Annan plan is "dead," with some rebels vowing to retaliate against government forces after Friday's massacre.

"After such a long wait, a test of patience and steadfastness, the joint command of the FSA inside Syria announces that it is no longer possible to abide by the peace plan brokered by Kofi Annan, (which) the regime is taking advantage of in order to commit more massacres against our unarmed civilians," Free Syrian Army spokesman Col. Qasim Saad Eddine said in a video posted Saturday.

A cessation of violence is a key point of the peace plan. But since the Syrian regime and opposition members accepted the plan in March, at least 1,635 people have been killed, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said Saturday.

International outrage grew amid new details on the attack in Houla, where at least 32 children younger than 10 were killed on Friday, said Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria. He said observers counted a total of at least 85 bodies.

Opposition activists said entire families were slaughtered by government forces in Houla, as the regime's 14-month crackdown on dissidents continues unabated.

"This is a clear evidence that Kofi Annan's plan is dead and a clear indication that Bashar Assad and his criminal gang do not understand anything but the language of force and violence," Eddine said. He urged the U.N. Security Council to "issue urgent and swift resolutions to save Syria, its people and the entire region by forming an international coalition mandated by the UNSC to launch airstrikes" against regime forces and their strategic points.

While opposition activists put the blame squarely on al-Assad's regime, the Syrian government blamed regional and Western "enemies" for the Houla massacre.

"The Houla massacres are an integral part of the so-called intelligence war -- or the psychological warfare -- against Syria," said Jamal al-Mahmoud of the state-run Department of Political Science at Damascus University, according to the state-run Tishreen newspaper. "It is a policy carried out the enemies of Syria such as the United States, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and France to stage acts of revenge and to create chaos instead of restoring the security and the stability that the Syrian citizen needs."

Sunday, Syrian state-run TV said residents in Houla reported "terrorists from al Qaeda" carried out the violence in Houla. The Syrian regime has accused Western countries and Arab oil-rich Gulf states of conspiring with al Qaeda to attack Syria.

Several world leaders -- including Mood, Annan and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon -- have denounced the killings in Houla, a suburb not far from the anti-Assad bastion of Homs.

But to many, words have no effect.

"No more initiatives, no more proposals, no more political resolutions after today," said Eddine, the Free Syrian Army spokesman.

"We call on our fighters, the soldiers and the revolutionaries, to conduct organized and planned military strikes against Assad battalions and regime members," Brig. Gen. Mustafa Al-Sheikh, a top leader in the rebel group, said in a video statement posted on YouTube.

A graphic video posted on YouTube purports to show the lifeless bodies of small children killed in Houla. They are spread on the floor amid blankets, caked in blood. One child is turned to reveal a head wound.

CNN could not independently confirm the authenticity of the video, nor can it confirm reports from within the country because the government strictly limits access by foreign journalists.

Lt. Bassim al-Khaled, a spokesman of the rebel Free Syrian Movement, said more bloodshed is coming. The al-Assad government is using the cease-fire and peace plan "to kill more people and is trying to crush the uprising," al-Khaled said.

"So the only language this regime is going to understand is the language of the gun," al-Khaled said. "Wait and see, we will make them pay for each drop of blood which was shed."

U.N. officials say more than 9,000 people, mostly civilians, have died and tens of thousands have been uprooted since the uprising began in March 2011. Opposition groups report a death toll of more than 11,000 people.

Wife, her facebook friends arrested for man’s murder

A woman who developed a liking to Facebook and made her personal profile on the Social Networking site, perhaps never knew where it could take her to. She befriended some guys over Facebook, came close to them, developed illicit relations and ultimately hatched a plan to with two of them to kill her husband.

The plan was successfully executed but Punjab Police cracked the blind murder arresting all three in the process.

One Amarjit Singh son of Jagir Singh a resident of Gahour under Police Station Dakha, in the district of Ludhiana was found killed in the intervening night of 11-12 May, 2012.  The stabbed body of Amarjit Singh was found near village Sohia.

Sukhdeep Kaur wife of Amarjit Singh who had a Facebook profile had befriended Kabaddi Player Karamjit Singh (27) and Satnam Singh (25) through the Social Networking site.  Sukhdeep Kaur, an eighth standard pass out,  in the matter of 3-4 months came quite close to her FB friends, developed a liking and entered into illicit relations.

When Amarjit Singh came to know of his wife’s extra-marital activities he warned her and tried to stop her from making contact with her FB friends. Considering him to be a block in their relationship the trio hatched a plan to do away with Amarjit Singh.

Gurpreet Singh Toor, SSP Ludhiana (Rural) told that Sukhdeep Kaur as a part of the plan accompanied her husband to Dr. Ramesh’s Hospital at Ludhiana on the pretext of getting the eyes of their child checked.

Karamjit Singh and Satnam Singh also reached the Hospital in their Indica Car No. PB 26 D 0034 where Sukhdeep Kaur asked the two to take her husband to Chuhar Chak as it may take her long to get her son checked at Hospital.

The SSP told that the duo took Amarjit with them in their car and had drinks on the way. The two had mixed something in the drinks took Amarjit in a semi-conscious condition and stabbed him with a knife. As Amarjit breathed his last they threw his body near village Sohia.

However, the duo took away his Gold ‘Kara’, Gold Ring, A Gold Chain, Rs. 20 thousand in cash and his driving licence.

The SSP said that the investigation of the case was handed over to DSP Joginder Singh and Prem Singh, SHO Mullanpur Dakha. Sukhdeep Kaur and her friends have confessed to the crime.  All three have been booked for the murder of Amarjit Singh, he said.

Why climbers continue to feel Mount Everest's allure

The first... Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary

The world's tallest mountain has claimed four more lives but such tragedies make no dent in the increasing number of people attempting its ascent.

The enormously powerful winds that blast Mount Everest relent for just a few weeks every spring.
They are precious weeks that provide climbers with a chance to claim the greatest mountaineering "scalp" of them all - the world's highest summit.
Those wishing to make the ascent must spend months preparing and thousands of dollars for a permit, even before they start.
Then, on the climb itself, they have to brave all that the mountain can throw at them - bad weather, the effects of altitude, even the sight of the corpses of climbers who have died making the attempt.
Four people died on their way down from the summit last weekend.
Two hundred climbers are expected to make an attempt on the mountain this weekend, which is likely to be the last of this year's season.
What is it about Everest that keeps them coming?
"It is really quite simple - it's the biggest mountain in the world."
Dawa Steven Sherpa runs one of the companies that guides climbers on the mountain.
His words echo those of George Mallory, who summed up the allure of Everest before his fatal attempt to climb it in 1924: "Because it's there".
That phrase has been described as the three most famous words in mountaineering, and the challenge proves irresistible to hundreds of climbers every year.
"On the mountain itself, there are around 1,000 climbers at the moment - but it's a big mountain, and if you compare it with Mont Blanc, say, that's not very many", says Dawa Steven Sherpa, from Everest Base Camp.
"The problem is everyone wants to go to the summit on the same day at exactly the same time."
That is because climbers are keen to take advantage of perfect weather conditions, which could disappear at any moment and not reappear for months.
On 23 May 2010, for example, 169 climbers reached the summit in a single day - more than the total number who had conquered the mountain in the 30 years following the first ascent in 1953.

India Aarushi Talwar murder trial from 4 June

The mystery of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar's death is one of India's most notorious unsolved murders

The trial in the case of murdered Indian schoolgirl Aarushi Talwar will begin on 4 June, a court has announced.

Aarushi's parents, dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, have been charged with her murder and destruction of evidence.
Dr Rajesh Talwar has also been charged with misleading the investigations. The couple deny all the charges.
The brutal murders of Aarushi and her male domestic help, Hemraj, in 2008 shocked the country.
Dr Nupur Talwar has been in jail since 30 April and her bail application is pending in court.
The CBI says circumstantial evidence points to the parents' involvement in Aarushi's death, but there is a lack of hard evidence.
The gruesome tale of murder in an affluent Delhi suburb has generated huge interest in India.
Aarushi, 14, was murdered in her bedroom at the family home in Noida district while her parents slept.
A day later, the bludgeoned body of Hemraj was found on the roof.
Aarushi's father was arrested and later freed. Three other men, Dr Talwar's dental assistant and two servants employed by the family's friends and neighbours, were also questioned and released.

South Korea to chemically castrate rapist

South Korea is set to carry out the chemical castration of a serial rapist later this week, implementing recent legislation for the first time.

The drug treatment is intended to suppress sexual impulses and does not require the convict's consent.

The sex offender, identified only by his surname of Park, has been convicted of four counts of rape or attempted rape on young girls since the 1980s, according to the Ministry of Justice.

"Sex offenders over the age of 19, who have sexually offended against children under the age of 16 and are diagnosed with pedophilia, can be subject to such treatment," a Justice Ministry official said Wednesday, declining to be identified as is customary in South Korea.

A law authorizing this treatment for sex offenders came into effect last year. It followed a public outcry after a number of cases were reported of rapists reoffending following their release.

"There was growing demand for strengthened measures against pedophiles who are likely to repeat their actions," the official said.

Park will be required to undergo the treatment every three months, wear an electronic anklet and remain under scrutiny for three years.

Offenders could be subject to the treatment for as long as 15 years, according to the law.

Investors swarm Facebook's pre-IPO road show kickoff

Ahead of what's expected to be the biggest technology IPO in history, Facebook's executive team entered its first round of investor meetings to crowds befitting the arrival of a boy band. Facebook's power trio -- CEO Mark Zuckerberg, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and chief financial officer David Ebersman -- used a side entrance to duck into a Sheraton hotel in Manhattan early Monday afternoon. The group then spent 25 minutes answering about a dozen questions from some 400 investors packed into a ballroom, according to three attendees who described the presentation.
Andrew Beja, a manager with Granahan Investment Management who attended the presentation, spoke on the record. Two other attendees declined to be identified by name. 
Even the most pessimistic potential investors said they expect Facebook to price its IPO above the range of   $28 to $ 35 per share it outlined in a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg upgrades relationship status

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has ended a hectic week which saw his company valued at $106bn after a stock market flotation by getting married.
He wed his long-time girlfriend Priscilla Chan, 27, in a ceremony at his home in Palo Alto, California.
Chan also had a busy week, graduating from medical school on Monday, as Zuckerberg marked his 28th birthday.
The guests believed they were going to celebrate Chan's graduation - but found they were at a wedding instead.
The wedding ring, a "very simple ruby", was designed by Zuckerberg.
Nine years ago the pair met at Harvard, where Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004.
They later moved to California, where Facebook has its headquarters, and Chan studied at the medical school of the University of California, San Francisco.
Facebook's valuation after its flotation on Friday means the social network site is worth about the same as internet shopping giant Amazon, and more than the value of stalwarts such as Disney.
Even after the flotation, Zuckerberg continues to control just under 56% of the voting power of the company.

Behind the Cover: Are You Mom Enough?

Jamie Lynne Grumet with her  3 year old son

The subjects on this week’s TIME cover aren’t models in pose. Jamie Lynne Grumet, photographed by Martin Schoeller with her 3-year-old son, is a mother from Los Angeles who subscribes to attachment parenting, the subject of staff writer Kate Pickert’s cover story. Attachment parenting has been on the rise over the past two decades, since the publication of The Baby Book by Dr. Bill Sears and his wife Martha in 1992. Its three main tenets are extended breast-feeding, co-sleeping and “baby wearing,” in which infants are physically attached to their parents by slings.

In one day, Schoeller photographed four families from across the country who practice this method of motherhood. Using religious images of the Madonna and Child as reference, Schoeller captured each mother breast-feeding her child or children. “When you think of breast-feeding, you think of mothers holding their children, which was impossible with some of these older kids,” Schoeller says. “I liked the idea of having the kids standing up to underline the point that this was an uncommon situation.”

Ruchi Sanghvi: Facebook's pioneer woman

Ruchi Sanghvi cut her engineering teeth at Facebook

Ruchi Sanghvi was 23 years old when she became the first female engineer at Facebook.

She developed the news feed and saw the company grow from a small start-up into the world's biggest social network.
Despite her successful career in Silicon Valley, she says when she decided to pursue engineering, she was confronted with old-fashioned views.
"People asked me whether I was going to roll up my sleeves, wear overalls and work on the factory floor," she told World Update on BBC World Service Radio.
She thinks that being a woman and an engineer has helped her career path.
"The perception of engineering has changed and the profession has become more versatile over the past few years, she said.
According to Indian-born Sanghvi, companies in Silicon Valley are introducing progressive ideas and policies to facilitate a work-life balance for women and men alike.
Extended parental leave, flexible working hours and childcare facilities at work are changes in the right direction, but she says at the end of the day women have to make certain choices.
"Women need to understand that it is possible to stay in the workforce," she says.
"A lot of women decide to take a back seat in their professional careers even before they are pregnant or are ready to have children.
"My philosophy is that you should go full force ahead until you are ready for the next step. It is a balancing act and you need to make some trade-offs."
Chinese restaurant

“Start Quote

People asked me whether I was going to roll up my sleeves, wear overalls and work on the factory floor”

Ruchi Sanghvi Former Facebook engineer

In her early days at Facebook, Ruchi Sanghvi worked out of a tiny office space above a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto.

And little did she know of what was to come after she had joined in the autumn of 2005.
Ruchi Sanghvi left Facebook in 2010 to set up her own company, Cove, with her husband, who had joined Facebook as director of engineering at the same time as her.
In February 2012, Cove was bought by the cloud-sharing service Dropbox, and Ms Sanghvi has become vice-president of operations at the company at the age of 30.
Now vice-president of operations at Dropbox, she has some advice for Facebook as it becomes a public company.
Facebook must retain its "move fast and break things" ethos, she says.
"The company was really different from where it is today. We essentially didn't know the limits of our potential," she says.
"We decided we wanted to build a place where people could connect and communicate with their friends and family."
Ms Sanghvi developed the idea of the Facebook news feed with two other engineers.
She says that the goal was to create a dynamic, customised, daily newspaper.
Facebook had about 10 million users when the news feed was launched.
Now it has more than 900 million users worldwide so does she think the company can continue on its huge growth curve?
Sanghvi rejects suggestions that the social network could suffer the same fate as MySpace and Bebo.
"Facebook isn't just another social media platform.
"It really is where people connect with people they care about, their families, and their friends," she says.

Facebook share trading debut approaches

Mark Zuckerberg rings the Nasdaq bell as Facebook shares go on sale

Founder Mark Zuckerberg officially opened the day's trading on the Nasdaq exchange, although trading in Facebook shares will not start until later.
He appeared via video link from a celebration at the social network's headquarters in California.
The shares are priced at $38 each, valuing the eight-year-old social network site at $104bn (£66bn).
Strong demand has led Facebook to increase both the price and the number of shares available for sale.
The Nasdaq exchange, which is where technology giants such as Google and Apple are traded, opened at 0930 local time (1430 BST), with buying and selling of Facebook shares set to begin at 1105 local time.
Facebook's valuation means the social network site is worth about the same as internet shopping giant Amazon, and more than the value of stalwarts such as Disney.
The initial public offering (IPO) of the shares is the third-largest in US history, after the financial giant Visa and General Motors.
Facebook's owners are releasing just under a fifth of the company's total shares, about 421 million, which could raise about $18bn.
Facebook employees have been up all night ahead of the event, taking part in a "hackathon" at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
It is an event in which programmers work on projects and come up with new ideas.