Joe.My.God. LGBT News

The New York Times reports: United Nations experts demanded on Thursday that Chechnya halt the abduction, detention, beating and killing of gay and bisexual men, after weeks of reports about violent repression there. “These are acts of persecution and violence on an unprecedented scale in the region and constitute serious violations of the obligations of the Russian Federation under international …

Collider reports: Disney’s live-action musical remake of Beauty and the Beast is a box office smash, and it’s officially crossed the ultimate benchmark for studio tentpoles — $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Bill Condon‘s spin on the beloved Disney animated classic joins the billion dollar club less than a month of landing in US theaters on March 17. …

The Associated Press reports: The Virginia Supreme Court has dealt a blow to a bid to overturn protections for gay and transgender students at a northern Virginia school district. Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition, and a student filed a lawsuit after the Fairfax County School Board voted to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to its non-discrimination …

The Hill reports: President Trump on Thursday lauded the bombing of ISIS targets in Afghanistan with one of the United States’ most powerful weapons but declined to say whether he authorized the strike. “We have [an] incredible military. We are very proud of them and this was another very, very successful mission,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with first …

Last year the Justice Department declared that it would no longer contract with private for-profit prisons after widespread reports of corruption and mistreatment of prisoners by the global private prison company GEO Group. Back in February that decision was reversed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the GEO Group donated six figures to a pro-Trump super PAC. Which brings us …

Slate reports: Buried in the last paragraph of a Guardian story about British intelligence alerting the U.S. to contact between Trump advisers and Russian officials is this sort-of bombshell: One source suggested the official [American] investigation was making progress. “They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion,” the source said. “This is between people in the Trump campaign …

Reuters reports: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson received compensation worth $27.4 million last year when he was chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp, the world’s largest publicly traded oil producer, regulatory filings showed on Thursday. He and other senior executives got raises even though Exxon’s net income fell more than 50 percent in 2016 as the company, like many …

The New York Times reports: Fulfilling a campaign pledge, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced legislation on Thursday to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Canada. Many nations have either decriminalized marijuana, allowed it to be prescribed medically or effectively stopped enforcing laws against it. But when Mr. Trudeau’s bill passes as expected, Canada will become only the second nation, …

CNBC reports: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer will shortly hold his daily press briefing with Capitol Hill reporters. Earlier, U.S. forces dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb on an ISIS tunnel complex in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said the strike was “designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. Forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction …

The Daily Beast reports: The U.S. on Thursday dropped its largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan on Thursday, CNN reported. The 21,000-pound bomb, dubbed the “mother of all bombs” or MOAB, was dropped in eastern Afghanistan to target ISIS tunnels. The official name of the weapon is the massive ordinance air blast bomb, and it has never been used before in …