Largest Reproduction of Mona Lisa Goes on Display

It's a paint-by-numbers and it's on display at a Welsh shopping mall...

"Dozens of adults from community groups and youngsters from Wrexham schools coloured 82 vinyl tiles to make the paint-by-numbers portrait."

Dolphins Filmed Playing 'Kickball' with Jellyfish

Marine biologists have filmed what they presume to be moments of pure aquatic sport in the waters of Wales, AFTER THE JUMP...

 

Civil Partnerships Fell in UK by 18 Percent Last Year

The UK saw civil partnership registrations decline by a fifth last year, the Guardian reports:

"A total of 33,956 partnerships between gay couples have been formed since the law first allowed them in December 2005. The fall in England and Wales, where 6,588 partnerships were formed last year, was 17%; in Scotland 24% and in Northern Ireland 23%, the provisional figures reveal. In 2008, men made up 53% of those forming civil partnerships, down from 55%, with the largest numbers being registered in the London borough of Westminster (234 between men and 48 between women) and Brighton and Hove (158 involving men and 116 women). The figures also show that 180 civil partnerships were dissolved last year, compared with 42 the year before. Most involved female couples."

Said activist Peter Tatchell: "After civil parternships were legislated there was a huge surge of couples who had been together for decades who suddenly wished to take advantage of the legal recognition. Now we've settled into a pattern of civil partnership take-up which reflects people who have recently fallen in love for the first time. He added that other couples are now waiting in the hope the law will change regarding same-sex marriage. Initially most were ready to settle for civil partnerships. After years of no legal rights they were desperate to get something. Now the mood is shifting in favour of full legal equality - the right to get married in a registry office on the same level as heterosexual couples."

News: Frank Kameny, Saturday Night Fever, Frog God, Wales

Re-hearing petition filed in Prop 8 challenge? UPDATE: See, AFTER THE JUMP...

AP: Pioneering activist Frank Kameny talks gays and government.

Simon Cowell to remake Saturday Night Fever with Zac Efron as Tony Manero?

Point Foundation announces 2009 scholars.

Jon Voight slams Obama: False prophet.

Hell's Kitchen host Gordon Ramsey calls Australian TV host Tracy Grimshaw a lesbian pig: "Later he said he was only joking.Grimshaw, though, failed to see the humor and retaliated on her program Monday night, calling Ramsay an 'arrogant narcissist' and a 'bully.'"

Malawian court has Mercy on Madonna: she'll be allowed to adopt.

Tom Brady rescued from overturned kayak in the Charles River in Boston: “He had to be rescued. The launch guy went out and got him and got him back in the kayak. He’s been bragging about it ever since. He’s telling everyone he rescued Tom Brady.”

Joan Garry: Obama lacking 'empathy' on gay rights.

Inside a NYC fundraiser for Gavin Newsom.

Multi-colored frog worshiped as a god in India?

KXRQ-FM Radio hosts who mocked transgender children to do special segment featuring transgender advocates: "Rashad Robinson of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation said Monday that the general manager of station KXRQ-FM told him that talk show hosts Rob Williams and Arnie States also plan to apologize during Thursday's show. During their May 28 program, one of the men said he would hit his son with his shoe if he wanted to wear high heels. The other quipped that a boy who asked to wear a dress was 'a little idiot.'  Several companies threatened to pull advertising from the station after GLAAD launched a letter-writing campaign against the comments."

Welsh gay men targeted by rangers with cameras in park raids?

No biting: Adam Lambert licks Twilight director.

Mika debuts new songs in London.

Graffiti art's new respect: "Like a slow-burning fuse, graffiti has smoldered in the contemporary art world for decades: omnipresent in the streets yet not quite hot enough to catch fire in the market. But this year it exploded, with graffiti and “street art” shows in major museums and gallery spaces both sides of the Atlantic — and people have been lining up round the block to get in."

One Life to Live to out two existing male characters played by openly gay  Scott Evans (Chris Evans' brother) and Brett Claywell, and put them in a love affair.

Is Dominic Monaghan joining Grey's Anatomy?

Brooklyn Assemblyman wants all non-Jews out of Holocaust memorial: "Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind doesn't want gays, political prisoners, gypsies, the handicapped — or any other group of people persecuted and killed by the hundreds of thousands during the Holocaust — to be recognized at the city-owned Holocaust Memorial Park in Sheepshead Bay. Even though 5 million non-Jews were killed by the Nazis alongside the 6 million Jews, Hikind says that 'to include these other groups diminishes their memory.'"

UPDATE to first item, AFTER THE JUMP...

News: Stephen Hawking, Blindness, Paul Rudnick, Tuna, Morrissey

2009 Pulitzer Prize winners announced.

Stem cells to cure most common form of blindness: "Surgeons predict it will become a routine, one-hour procedure that will be generally available in six or seven years’ time. The treatment involves replacing a layer of degenerated cells with new ones created from embryonic stem cells. This week Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical research company, will announce its financial backing to bring the therapy to patients." 

Milo Ventimiglia brings back 50's cut...

Got Talent: Britain has Susan Boyle, while Sweden has Naked Boys Dancing.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan recognized Friday's Day of Silence.

Madonna falls off horse, blames paparazzi.

Parents of gay children come out of the closet in China...

Kelly Clarkson does not hook up - video.

Bishop Gene Robinson: Civil and religious marriage should be separate. "In this country, it has become very confusing about where the civil action begins and ends and where the religious action begins and ends, because we have asked clergy to be agents of the state."

Bluefin tuna to be extinct by 2012?

Morrissey has meltdown over smell of grilled meat at Coachella.

Lady GaGa refuses to reveal anything about her teacup.

Paul Rudnick responds to Ted Haggard as fellow-heterosexual-with-issues Pastor Stan Belker: "As a teen-ager, I found that I was attracted both to serving Our Lord and to Jimmy Wiggins, the assistant coach of my high-school soccer team. I was in torment, and I would pray for hours on end, asking God why He would command me to love Him so deeply and at the same time just go and create Jimmy’s snug little soccer shorts."

Stephen Hawking "very ill" according to Cambridge University.

Gay controversy on UK version of The Apprentice as one contestant wants to re-brand the British seaside town of Margate as a gay resort and a teammate tells him she'd never let a homosexual come near her son.

Rice University survey shows growing support for gay rights.

Gawker Headquarters seating chart.

Australian crocodile bait.

Sacha Baron-Cohen apologizes to Madonna over adoption gag: "Madonna was said to be upset at a scene in Bruno’s forthcoming film which mocks her attempts to adopt an African baby. And we hear that shame-faced 37-year-old Sacha has sent her a bouquet of flowers to apologise.  An insider said: 'Sacha is always out to make great comedy – and if he upsets people along the way, so be it. But when word reached him that Madonna thought his sketch was insensitive, he sent her a bouquet of flowers to say, ‘No hard feelings’.'"

Some super slo-mo beauty.

Anti-gay hate crime convictions in Wales double in three years.

Iowa Republicans claim advisory that state recorders must perform same-sex marriages comes across as "veiled threat": [Victoria Hutton of the Iowa Department of Public Health] wrote in the e-mail: 'Following is the response from our attorney from the Iowa Attorney General's office. All county recorders in the state of Iowa are required to comply with the Varnum decision ... and to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in the same manner as licenses issued to opposite gender applicants.'"

News: Provincetown, John Mayer, Jamaica, Willem Dafoe, Zurich

Official boycott launched against Jamaica for persecution of gays.

128 prisoners, many of whom were jailed for the "crime" of homosexuality, are set to be executed in Iraq in the near future: "According to Ali Hili of IRAQI-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week. IRAQI-LGBT urgently requests that the UK Government, Human Rights Groups and the United Nations Human Rights Commission intervene with due speed to prevent this tragic miscarriage of justice from going ahead."

John Mayer turns fan cruise into Love Boat.

Recession-era spending: Elton John celebrates 62 at Hamburger Hamlet.

Russia's Gay Pride organizers plan activist tie-in to Eurovision Song Contest awards: We believe this is the best way for those who support democratic values in Europe and who take part in the show to bring support to human rights campaigners in Russia."

Zac Efron attacked by Q-tips.

More on the growing threat to gays in Uganda: "We’ve gotten word from three separate Ugandan sources that local gays and lesbians in Uganda are worried about imminent violence, with many making plans to go into hiding or leave the country."

Jon Stewart talks marriage at University of Vermont: “I can understand being against gay marriage — if they decided to make it mandatory. This isn’t a cultural divide: They’re wrong.”

 Protestors shadow Vermont Governor Jim Douglas in wake of same-sex marriage veto remarks: "Roughly 200 protesters greeted the governor and his wife when they showed up at Green Mountain College for a maple sugaring event Saturday. The crowd watched quietly, sang or chanted while Douglas used a hand-cranked drill to tap a tree in an arboretum decorated with rainbow ribbons."

Madonna determined to adopt again in Malawi...

Zurich, Switzerland has a new lesbian mayor: "Zurich, Switzerland, has elected its first female and first openly lesbian mayor, Corine Mauch. A member of the centre-left Social Democrats, Mauch has been elected with a lead of 11,000 votes over her opposition following the surprise resignation of previous incumbent Elmar Ledergerber late last year."

New York Post says it has seen a video of Vice President Joe Biden's daughter doing cocaine: "The video, which the shooter initially hoped to sell for $2 million before scaling back his price to $400,000, shows a 20-something woman with light skin and long brown hair taking a red straw from her mouth, bending over a desk, inserting the straw into her nostril and snorting lines of white powder."

Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Martone show their love in Ipanema.

Right Whale mania grips Provincetown... Video...

L.A. Times on Barney Frank accusations: Does Antonin Scalia hate gays?

Gay rights groups want the Royal Family to give the okay for a hypothetical same-sex couple in the Monarchy to be able to engage in a civil partnership: "[Ben Summerskill, chief executive of gay rights group Stonewall] said: ‘I have little doubt that in 21st and 22nd Century Britain the public will judge the quality of their monarch by much more than their sexual orientation.’ He said the subject could be debated openly now because, as far as he was aware, there are no gays in the Royal Family."

Willem Dafoe gets "cheeky" for new Lars von Trier film.

Josh Hartnett rushed to hospital for abdominal pain.

Campaign against homophobic bullying to be launched in Wales: "The new bilingual version of 'The School Report' will be distributed to all secondary schools in Wales. It found 65% of pupils had experienced bullying because of their sexuality. The launch takes place at the Stonewall Cymru annual event in Llandudno. The education minister Jane Hutt said the assembly government was working to develop guidance on anti-gay bullying. 'The Welsh Assembly Government fully supports the launch of 'The School Report' which highlights the vital role schools can play in preventing and responding to homophobic bullying, both within their boundaries but also in the wider community'"

Obamas to pay for White House renovations out of their own pockets: "They 'are not using public funds or accepting donations of goods for redecorating their private quarters,' says Camille Johnston, director of communications for the First Lady. Nor is the couple, who reported $4.2 million in household income in 2007 tax returns, using money from the White House Historical Association, a privately funded foundation that paid for a $74,000 set of china shortly before Laura Bush left town."