Women in same-sex relationships can now register both their names on the birth certificate of a child conceived as a result of fertility treatment.

Female couples not in a civil partnership but receiving fertility treatment may also both be registered.

The law change applies to female couples in England and Wales who were having fertility treatment on or after 6 April 2009.

Previously, the mother's female partner could not be registered as a parent.

But the change in the law confers legal parenthood on the mother's female partner.

According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, there were 728 lesbians who underwent in vitro fertilisation (IVF) between 1999 and 2006.

Police taking valuables from unlocked cars to drive home anti-theft message

Police in Richmond upon Thames, south west London have been taking valuable items from unlocked cars to encourage motorists to take better care of their property.

While forces across the country have been sending warning letters to the owners of cars when they see possessions unattended, this is believed to be the first time that goods have been "stolen" to drive the crime-prevention message home.

When officers remove goods, they leave a note in the car telling the owner that they can retrieve their possessions from Twickenham police station.

The initiative has been launched in an area where theft from cars has been rife.

A Saudi Arabian father forced his 10-year-old daughter to return to her 80-year-old husband Sunday, after she was found hiding at the home of her aunt for 10 days, Arab News reported.

The young girl's husband, who denies he is 80 despite family claims, accused the aunt of violating the terms of his marriage, allowed by Sharia Law.

"My marriage is not against Sharia. It included the elements of acceptance and response by the father of the bride,” he told a local newspaper...

Depression's Evolutionary Roots

Depression seems to pose an evolutionary paradox. Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare — why isn’t depression?

...

Fredi explains how he makes the seemingly impossible a reality during a certain month each year...

To be tremendously fit is a must for all professional footballers: a demand that leads some Muslim players to forgo the duty of fasting during Ramadan, preferring to fulfill their obligation when the football season ends. However, for Sevilla’s Freddie Kanoute, this is not the case.

The former Tottenham Hotspur striker believes it is possible for a modern footballer to remain in peak physical condition during the holy month.

One of the youngest detainees at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay has been released and sent home to his native Afghanistan, his lawyers say.

They said Mohammed Jawad was detained at 12 in 2002 and is now 19, although the Pentagon disputed his age.

Mr Jawad had been accused of injuring two US soldiers and their interpreter by throwing a grenade at their vehicle.

Much of the case against him had been ruled inadmissible by a US military judge in 2008.

Closure pledge

Mr Jawad's release was ordered last month by US District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle, who described the US government's case against him as "an outrage" that was "riddled with holes".

In another stunning blow to Israeli settlement-builder Lev Leviev, the Israeli business magazine Globes Online has reported that BlackRock Inc., one of the world's largest investment management firms, has divested from Leviev's Africa-Israel Investments. The Globes article follows a similar report by the Norwegian news service Norwatch. The move comes after a nearly two-year-long global boycott campaign of Leviev's businesses that developed in response to the billionaire's construction activities in at least four Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, all of which violate international law, and his abusive labor practices in the diamond industry in Angola and Namibia.

Smoking a shisha pipe is as bad for people as smoking tobacco, the Department of Health and the Centre for Tobacco Control Research has found.

People who smoke shisha, or herbal tobacco, can suffer from high carbon monoxide levels, its research revealed.

It found one session of smoking shisha resulted in carbon monoxide levels at least four to five times higher than the amount produced by a cigarette.

High levels of carbon monoxide can lead to brain damage and unconsciousness.

Shisha is an Arabic water-pipe in which fruit-scented tobacco is burnt using coal, passed through an ornate water vessel and inhaled through a hose.

The Libyan man jailed in Scotland for blowing up a US airliner over Lockerbie in 1988 has arrived back in Libya after being set free.

The Scottish government released Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who is 57 and has terminal cancer, on compassionate grounds.

US President Barack Obama said the move was "a mistake", and some relatives of US victims reacted angrily.

read more here

India will import food to make up for shortages caused by a drought thought to be affecting 700 million people, the finance minister has said.

The minister, Pranab Mukherjee, did not specify what would be imported and when, saying he wanted to avoid speculation on prices.

The drought is affecting almost half of India's districts.

Food prices have risen by 10% after poor monsoon rains hit sowing. Monsoon rains are critical to India's farmers.

...

The summer rains are crucial to crops such as rice, soybean, sugarcane and cotton.

...

Up to 70% of Indians are dependent on farm incomes, and about 60% of India's farms depend on rains.