The law defines the rather nebulous concept as “spreading information aimed at forming non- traditional sexual behaviour among children, suggesting this behaviour is attractive, and making a false statement about the socially equal nature of traditional and non-traditional relationships”.

Fines for breaking the law will be up to £100 for individuals, £1,000 for officials, and £20,000 for organisations. Already there have been doubts about how to define propaganda, with a group of Communists in southern Russia complaining that Elton John’s stage outfits should be considered “homosexual propaganda”.

Russia set to pass strict anti-gay law that could see foreigners deported for ‘sexual propaganda’ – Europe – World – The Independent

Huda al-Ajmi, 37, is the first woman known to have been convicted for criticising the U.S.-allied Gulf Arab state’s ruler, described as “immune and inviolable” in the constitution.

Kuwait has penalised several Twitter users in recent months for slurs against the emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah. The political trials have drawn rebuke abroad and anger at home.

The sources said the court had given Ajmi two consecutive five-year terms for insulting the emir and one year for insulting an unspecified religious sect. “This is the highest sentence of its kind in these kindS of cases,” one source said.

Ajmi has not yet been taken into custody and can appeal the sentences, the sources said. It is rare for a woman to serve jail time for political crimes in Kuwait, which allows more freedom of speech than some other Gulf Arab states.

Kuwaiti court gives woman 11 years in jail for insulting emir | Reuters

It takes a very significant date for the word “today” to be deemed too sensitive to mention. But 24 years after the Chinese government’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, “today” is part of a long list of search terms that have been censored on Sina Weibo, the country’s most popular microblog.

Other banned words include “tomorrow,” “that year,” “special day,” and many number combinations that could refer to 4 June 1989, such as 6-4, 64, 63+1, 65-1, and 35 (shorthand for May 35th).

Chinese Communist party authorities, fearing a threat to their legitimacy, forbid open discussion of the so-called “June 4th incident” in the country’s media and on its internet. Yet internet users have reacted by using ever-more oblique references to commemorate the tragedy, treating censors to an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse.

Many of their posts have been embedded in pictures, which can often elude automatic detection: a girl with her hand over her mouth; a Lego man facing down three green Lego tanks; the iconic “tank man” picture with its tanks photoshopped into four giant rubber ducks, a reference to a well-known art installation in Hong Kong’s Victoria harbour.

Most of these pictures, too, have since been scrubbed clean. By Tuesday afternoon, the term “big yellow duck” had also been blocked.

Tiananmen Square online searches censored by Chinese authorities | World news | The Guardian

Mannequins displaying lingerie and other skimpy clothing may soon be banned in India’s cosmopolitan city of Mumbai as an anti-rape measure.

The municipal council overwhelmingly passed a resolution last month barring stores from putting scantily-clad mannequins outside their shops. The municipal commissioner has yet to give the required approval of the resolution.

City council member Ritu Tawde said she proposed the mannequin ban because such displays degrade women and could provoke men to attack them.

Indians have increasingly demanded stronger protections for women since the gang rape and killing of a student on a bus in the capital of New Delhi in December.

“Such people get provoked by mannequins. After all, a mannequin is a replica of a woman’s body. That’s why I oppose it, because mannequins do not suit Indian culture,” Tawde said. However, shop owners will still be able to display mannequins how they want inside their stores, she said.

Business officials ridiculed the resolution, saying it would have no impact on violence against women.

“We are living in the 21st century where these kinds of things, all porn, the movies, the pictures, all these things are available on websites, available on mobiles. A mannequin hardly makes any difference to the people,” said Viren Shah, president of the Federation of Retail Traders Welfare Association.

Indian city to ban lingerie mannequins in attempt to stop rape | Fox News

Toasting with new friends just got a futuristic, and slightly creepy, upgrade.

Budweiser recently unveiled the “Buddy Cup,” a pint glass with a built-in chip that connects to Facebook. The cup automatically connects people on Facebook when they clink glasses with another “Buddy Cup” user, creating a virtual friendship instantly.

The cup’s promotional video shows the glass being tested in Brazil as images of drinkers enjoyably clinking pints flash across the screen.

“So, they just did the same as always: Went out drinking Bud, and making new friends,” a male narrator announces in the company’s commercial. “Buddy Cup: the more Buds, the more friends.”

Feedback toward the Facebook-integrated glass has been mixed.

Tech blog BetaBeat writes, “In the olden times, clinking your beers together with a stranger was a sign of celebration—a mutual agreement that things were about to get weird. The fact that you’d never have to see them again or explain why you puked down the front of your shirt was a significant part of the appeal. Now, Budweiser is about to destroy that sacred experience with the introduction of the Buddy Cup.”

Responses on Twitter highlight the creepy factor in sharing contact details with the clink of a glass.

“This is a bad idea, @Budweiser,” writes ecarlson23. “I don’t want my drunk life posted all over facebook.”

Another user writes, “This is so wrong, in so many ways – Budweiser.”

The cup was developed by advertising agency Agencia Africa in partnership with Bolha, a digital innovation studio in Sao Paulo. The idea was to create an interactive relationship between consumers and the product.

“Innovation is in Budweiser’s DNA,” Sergio Gordilho, chief creative officer at Agencia Africa, told The Drum. “Its platforms are constantly surprising consumers with the best there is in terms of premium experiences. The ‘Buddy Cup’ is another idea bringing the brand even closer to its consumers and opening new levels of interaction for them.”

Budweiser unveils beer glass that connects to Facebook | Fox News

Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries, but they disagree on what it includes and who should be subject to it, an extensive new survey says.

Suicide bombing was mostly rejected In the study by the Washington-based Pew Forum, but it won 40 percent support in the Palestinian territories, 39 percent in Afghanistan, 29 percent in Eygpt and 26 percent in Bangladesh.

Three-quarters of respondents said abortion is morally wrong and 80 percent or more rejected homosexuality and sex outside of marriage.

Over three-quarters of Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia want sharia courts to decide family law issues such as divorce and property disputes, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life said on Tuesday.

Views on punishments such as chopping off thieves hands or decreeing death for apostates is more evenly divided in much of the Islamic world, although more than three-quarters of Muslims in South Asia say they are justified.

Many in Muslim world want sharia as law of land: survey – Yahoo! News Canada

Campaigners for Muslim women’s rights said while short term contract marriages are illegal in India and forbidden in Islam, they are increasing in Hyderabad, in southern India, where wealthy foreigners, local agents and Qazis – government-appointed Muslim priests – are exploiting poverty among the citys Muslim families.

The victim, Nausheen Tobassum, revealed the scale of the problem when she escaped from her home last month after her parents pressurised her to consummate a forced marriage to a middle aged Sudanese man who had paid around £1,200 for her to be his wife for four weeks.

She told police she had been taken by her aunt to a hotel where she and three other teenage girls were introduced to a Sudanese oil company executive. The groom, Usama Ibrahim Mohammed, 44 and married with two children in Khartoum, later arrived at her home where a Qazi performed a wedding ceremony.

According to Inspector Vijay Kumar he had paid 100,000 Rupees around £1,200 to the girls aunt Mumtaz Begum, who in turn paid 70,000 Rupees to her parents, 5,000 Rupees to the Qazi, 5,000 Rupees to an Urdu translator and kept 20,000 Rupees herself. The wedding certificate came with a Talaknama which fixed the terms of the divorce at the end of the grooms holiday.

“The next day he came to the house of the victim girl and asked her to participate in sex but she refused. She is a young girl and the groom is older than her father,” Inspector Kumar told The Telegraph.

Her parents reassured him they would persuade their daughter and told her she would be punished if she did not. Instead she ran out of their tiny one room home in Hyderabads Moghulpuri neighbourhood and was rescued by a police patrol. The police arrested the groom, the victims aunt and the Qazi, and issued a warrant for her parents arrest – Nausheen is a minor under Indian law and cannot marry until she reaches 18. Her parents are now in hiding but will be charged with arranging a child marriage, outraging the modesty of a woman, and criminal conspiracy.

Inspector Kumar said there are dozens of illegal short term contract marriages in the city, and that the Sudanese man they arrested had come to Hyderabad after a friend in Khartoum told him he had taken a 40 day wife during an earlier visit.

“If a Sudanese wants to have sex, he has to pay three times more [in Sudan] because there are far fewer girls there, or he takes a second wife. In India the girls are coming for a cheaper rate and they are beautiful. Even if they are only staying for a few days they are doing this kind of illegal marriages for sex,” he said.

He said the visitors want to marry because they believe prostitution is forbidden under Islam. Poor families agree to contract marriages because they have many daughters and cannot afford to pay for all their weddings.

Instead, they have a series of one-month contract marriages to fund their own genuine wedding.

Shiraz Amina Khan of Hyderabads Women and Child Welfare Society, said there were up to 15 contract marriages in the city every month and that the number is rising.

“They come to Hyderabad because it has maximum downtrodden families. Thirty to forty per cent of families are going for the option of contract marriages to relieve their poverty. It has to be stopped,” she said.

Teenager exposes Indias one month wives sex tourism – Telegraph

A Saudi newspaper says the kingdom’s religious police are now allowing women to ride motorbikes and bicycles but only in restricted, recreational areas.

The Al-Yawm daily on Monday cited an unnamed official from the powerful religious police as saying women can ride bikes in parks and recreational areas but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the full Islamic head-to-toe abaya.

Saudi Arabia follows an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and bans women from driving. Women are also banned from riding motorcycles or bicycles in public places. The newspaper didn’t say what triggered the lifting of the ban.

The official says women may not use the bikes for transportation but “only for entertainment” and that they should shun places where young men gather “to avoid harassment.”

Saudi Arabian Religious Police ‘Lift Bicycle Ban For Women’ – As Long As They Wear A Veil & Are With A Male Relative

A Kuwaiti court has increased the prison sentence of a grocer convicted of insulting Gulf Arab emirate’s ruler on Twitter to the maximum five years, his lawyer said on Thursday.

A lower court had previously sentenced Bader al-Rashidi to two years in jail for publishing false news that could harm national security and plotting to overthrow Kuwait’s rulers via his tweets, defense lawyer Jasser al-Jidei said.

“The appeals court stiffened the sentence to five years. This is the first time the court hands down the maximum sentence,” Jidei told Reuters, adding that prosecutors had filed the appeal for a longer jail term.

Jidei, arguing that the tweets attributed to Rashidi had originated from a computer his client had bought second-hand, said he planned to appeal against the ruling in the court of cassation, Kuwait’s highest appeals court.

Kuwait, a U.S. ally and oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the Internet. Twitter, seen as a freer tool of expression than the conventional media, is popular in the country of 3.7 million.

Last month, three former opposition lawmakers were sentenced to three years in jail for comments deemed offensive toward the emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.

Human Rights Watch has said prosecutors have charged nearly 25 people with offending the ruler. Kuwait’s information ministry has said it supports free speech but that authorities must enforce the law.

The United States and Amnesty International have also called on Kuwait to respect freedom of expression.

Kuwait allows more public dissent than other Gulf states and has avoided the kind of mass unrest seen in Arab uprisings that have unseated four autocratic leaders since 2011.

Kuwait lengthens sentence of man who insulted emir: lawyer | Reuters

Forty two percent of Austrians think “not everything was bad under Hitler,” while 57% think “there was nothing positive about the Hitler era,” according to a poll conducted by newspaper Der Standard that was published on Friday.

The poll was conducted among 502 eligible voters in Austria and published ahead of the 75th anniversary of the country’s annexation by Nazi Germany.

61% thought the country adequately dealt with its Nazi past, while 39% thought more should be done.

Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, and a debate still smoulders on whether Austrians were Hitler’s first victims or willing accomplices. Austria’s Jewish population was nearly wiped out in the ensuing Holocaust.

54% answered that neo-Nazi groups would be successful in the Austrian elections, if there was no law banning them.

In January, an Austrian court  sentenced a leading neo-Nazi figure to nine years in jail for his role in launching an extreme-right website that glorified Nazism.

Gottfried Kuessel, 54, had denied any wrongdoing and told the court he had turned over a new leaf since serving a previous jail term for neo-Nazi activity, which is banned in Austria.

But heeding prosecutors’ description of Kuessel as a prime leader of the extreme right, the jury voted 5-3 late on Thursday to convict him. Two other defendants got sentences of seven and four-and-a-half years.

Jewish leaders have warned of late against what they called creeping tolerance of anti-Semitism in Austria.

42% of Austrians think Hitler rule wasn’t all bad | JPost | Israel News