North Korea, Anchorage, Colton Haynes, Queer British Art, Vin Diesel, NASA's Cassini Probe: HOT LINKS

NORTH KOREA. Missile launch provocation ahead of U.S. – China summit. “The missile flew about 60 km (40 miles) from its launch site at Sinpo, a port city on North Korea’s east coast, the South Korean Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. Sinpo is home to a North Korean submarine base. The launch comes just a day before the start of a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where talks about adding pressure on the North to drop its arms development will take centre stage.”

ART YOU CAN EAT. Put Vin Diesel between your lips and take a bite.

FIVETHIRTYEIGHT. Is filibustering Gorsuch a smart strategy?

NEIL GORSUCH. Plagiarist?

WESTCHESTER COUNTY. Transgender woman and former TV reporter runs for office in Hillary Clinton’s town.

ANCHORAGE. City makes history with election of two openly gay lawmakers: “Christopher Constant, running against a prominent Democrat and three lesser known conservatives for the downtown seat being vacated by Flynn, won Tuesday with 52 percent of the vote. His closest competitor was David Dunsmore, a fellow Democrat, who mustered just 23.35 percent of the vote after the latter pursued a final week of negative campaigning, which evidently backfired. Felix Rivera, also openly gay, is now too an Assembly member-elect, fending off three challengers while maintaining nearly 47 percent of the vote in midtown Anchorage. Rivera ran for the seat being vacated by Assembly Chair Elvi Gray-Jackson with her full support — as well as the support of current Vice-chair Dick Traini.”

DATE NIGHT. Colton Haynes and Jeff Leatham step out to Chateau Marmont.

BRONZED. What Tom Daley is after the Diving World Cup.

QUEER BRITISH ART. A review of Tate Britain’s new exhibit: “The exhibition’s focus on white male artists is impossible to ignore, with women, trans people and people of color glaringly underrepresented. The exhibition’s curator, Clare Barlow, confesses that, ‘we have been constantly frustrated by the comparative scarcity of material relating to intersectional identities: working-class queer lives, queer people of color, trans and genderqueer identities, even queer women artists.'”

FINLAND. More than 800 same-sex couples marry during first month of marriage equality. “New figures from the Population Register Centre of Finland show 770 same-sex couples have changed their relationship status to married since March 1. Since Finland granted gay marriages equal legal footing, couples were able to change their status from registered to married by simply submitting a form to their local register office. A total of 87 new same-sex couples tied the knot in the same time period, making the grand total of gay marriages 857 in the first month after the legal change.”