Sixteen members of a breakaway Amish community in rural eastern Ohio, including its leader, were convicted of federal hate crimes Thursday for the forcible cutting of Amish men's beards and Amish women's hair. Sam Mullet Sr. and the 15 followers were found guilty of conspiracy to violate federal hate-crime law in connection with what authorities said were the religiously motivated attacks on several fellow Amish people last year. The verdicts were read in U.S. District Court in Cleveland following several days of jury deliberation and a trial that began in late August, a U.S.

It seems as if we are in a time of unprecedented struggle over the meaning of women's bodies and sexuality. Controversy is swirling about an American University professor who breast-fed a baby in class; topless photos of Kate Middleton have been released; and a Time magazine cover showing a mother breast-feeding her toddler sparked even more tittering in May. It is not just the breast that is contested: Pussy Riot, the punk band, was sentenced to two years in a Russian prison after a staged performance in which they did high kicks that showed too much of their bodies.

"Writer-director Nick Cassavetes unveiled his new movie “Yellow” at the Toronto Film Festival this weekend and found himself defending the main character’s incestuous love affair with her own brother.

"You know what? This whole movie is about judgment, and lack of it, and doing what you want." he says

THOUSANDS of students in an east China city are being forced to work at a Foxconn plant after classes were suspended at the beginning of the new semester, it has been revealed. Students from Huai'an in Jiangsu Province were driven to a factory in the city run by Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Company after the plant couldn't find sufficient workers for the production of Apple's much-anticipated iPhone 5, they said in online posts.

"A man paralysed from the neck down has lost his High Court case to allow doctors to end his life without fear of prosecution."

Even if you disagree with the idea of being assisted in taking ones own life, we should also realize that it is his own body, and no state or entity has the right to decide what he is allowed to do with his own body.