US/ VICTORY IN FIGHT AGAINST DOMA: Gene Balas and Carlos Morales were facing health problems and crushing financial pressures plaguing many US households when they decided to file bankruptcy as a married couple. The Obama administration said they couldn't, citing the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages. On Monday, 20 of 24 judges sitting on the country's largest consumer bankruptcy court sided with the gay couple. In doing so, the court took the extraordinary step of declaring the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The ruling is the first such attack of the Defense of Marriage Act in bankruptcy court, and it adds to the building pressure on the Obama administration to make good on a February pledge to stop defending the law in court. Balas and Morales were among the 18,000 Californian same sex couples who wed August 30, 2008, during the brief period when gay marriages were legal in the state.
US/ VICTORY IN CALIFORNIA OVER PROP 8: A US judge's gay relationship is no basis for tossing out his decision overturning California's same-sex marriage ban, another federal judge ruled on Tuesday. Doing otherwise would send a message that minority judges could not rule in civil rights cases, ruled Chief US District Judge James Ware, who upheld the decision to overturn California's gay marriage ban. In pointed language, Ware slapped down the attempt to throw out his gay former colleague's decision as an attack on standards of judicial impartiality, saying it ignored the idea that protecting the rights of minorities benefits all. ProtectMarriage.com, the anti-gay marriage group defending California's ban, will appeal Ware's ruling, said an attorney for the group. US District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco last year struck down California's same-sex marriage ban, known as Proposition 8, and supporters of the ban now say his ruling was compromised and should be vacated. The case was immediately appealed to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. It could set national policy if it reaches the US Supreme Court and is being watched throughout the nation, where same-sex marriage is legal in only a handful of states.
Bangladesh is setting up a special force to save the critically endangered Royal Bengal Tiger and other animals. The 300 member force will be deployed mostly around the Sundarbans mangrove forests, one of the last refuges of the tigers. The decision came months after they seized 3 tiger skins and a large quantity of bones, the biggest haul of illegal tiger parts in decades. The Sundarbans forests stretch between Bangladesh and India. Around 400 tigers still live in the area. Until now poaching has not been considered as the chief threat to the tiger population in Bangladesh. But the arrest of a poacher with tiger skins and bones earlier this year raised fears that an organised poaching group was operating in the mangrove forests. Officials admitted they did not have enough manpower, resources and training to counter the poachers, who they said were using increasingly sophisticated techniques to trap the tigers. The Minister of Environment and Forests said that the setting up of the new wildlife force was long overdue. The new force will also tackle a growing trade in the illegal trafficking of wild animals. Recently, officials seized a number of protected wild animals from people who were keeping them illegally. Earlier this month, customs officers at Bangkok airport in Thailand found hundreds of freshwater turtles and crocodiles packed in suitcases on a flight from Bangladesh.
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