Globe Trot: Homosexuality now a crime in Uganda

UGANDA: President Yoweri Museveni signed into law today a bill criminalizing homosexual activity. According to Warren Throckmorton, the bill allows for life in prison for the “offense of homosexuality.” Museveni pushed aside pressure from the Obama administration and sidestepped a questionable Ministry of Health commission report in finalizing the controversial law, asserting Uganda’s “independence in the face of Western pressure.” There’s controversy over it here, too, as Marvin Olasky notes: “Homosexuality, like heterosexual adultery, is sinful, but the question is: What legal penalty should there be for such actions?”

EGYPT: The military-appointed interim cabinet in Egypt has resigned. Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi—a free-market economist who supported the ouster of Hosni Mubarak but gained the confidence of military heads who have now twice appointed him to key positions—said in 2012, “political democracy is not a treatment for all diseases,” but “at least it is a remedy for tyranny.”

SYRIA: The headlines say 60 more evacuees were freed in Syria. But the real question is why have the rebels been holding approximately 500 men (including teenagers), in Homs, in some cases for three years?

CHINA: What’s a conservative outfit like the American Enterprise Institute doing hosting the Dalai Lama? AEI head Arthur Brooks says conservatism “shouldn't be fighting against things” but “should be fighting for people.” The problem with the conservative movement “is it became a product-driven movement."

DEATHS: The world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor has died in London at 110. And the last surviving sibling of the Von Trapp family singers, Austrian escapees of the Nazis made famous in The Sound of Music, has died in Stowe, Vt., at 99.

LIBERIA: Here’s a story of how one refugee pastor broke a vow and is rebuilding the church.