Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was pledged that his government will legalize civil union for both gay and straight couples by the end of this year.

Muscat made the statement as he was awarded the ‘Gay Exiles' Soldier Award’ for supporting the country’s LGBT community and his commitment for legalizing gay civil unions.

Muscat said yesterday (18 June) that the government was committed in honoring its pledges made during the electoral campaign, including gay civil union.

LGBT people, along sex workers and people face abuses including torture, rape, assault, arbitrary arrest, and extortion documents a report released today.

In just one example of many interviewees, Saidi W., a gay man arrested in December 2011 reported how he was forced to assemble other gay men in a local bar at gun point, and told by police: ‘If you don’t call your friends, we’ll shoot you.’

From 26 June 26 to 3 July, US President Barack Obama will be visiting Africa. The visit takes him to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.

According a statement released by the White House, Obama will use his visit ‘to reinforce the importance that the United States places on our deep and growing ties with countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including through expanding economic growth, investment, and trade; strengthening democratic institutions; and investing in the next generation of African leaders’.

Jenny Owen Youngs has revealed she is engaged to another woman in an open letter to fans.

In the letter, posted online on the website EveryoneIsGay.com on June 12, Youngs writes about her plans to marry this summer and about her decision to come out.

‘I’m writing to tell you, among other things, that I am super gay,’ Youngs wrote.

‘This may or may not come as a surprise to you. If it does: Surprise! If it does not: You were right all along! Either way: Hooray!’

The line in the advertisement says it all: 'celebrating our life in the free world.'

Gay immigrants from the former Soviet Union are putting the final touches on a Russian float that will be part of the 30 June New York City Gay Pride Festival.

A University of Chicago fraternity is under fire for allegedly pulling a foul, anti-gay, racist prank on an unsuspecting postman.

Iran Becton, the postal carrier, says he was made to lug several boxes to a Phi Delta Theta door addressed to one person.

Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (religious police) raided a gay marriage party with over 80 participants in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, arresting five men.

The religious police backed by policemen and detectives, stormed a house in Mecca that was said to have held a gay marriage ceremony, yesterday (12 June), reported Al-Saudeh daily.

Five men were detained while the rest managed to flee to nearby mountains.

A 32-year-old trans woman has fled her small town in Scotland, as she can no longer endure abuse from locals who called her a 'witch'.

Stephanie Smyth, who worked as an administrator in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland said she received constant verbal abuse making her life in Johnstone ‘hell’.

The abuse started when she begun to embrace her true identity in her 20s, growing her hair and wearing women’s clothes.

Smyth underwent a gender-reassignment treatment last year.

When I got the opportunity to visit Portugal, thanks to the chic, boutique gay travel firm Further Afield, I did wonder if it would be similar to my many trips to Spain. As well as sharing a border, I thought paella would be the main dish served and palm trees would line the streets.

To my surprise Lisbon offered me much more and it all started when I stepped off the plane.

Five years ago, a gay teenager called Michael Causer was murdered.

At a house party in Liverpool, thugs stole his phone while he slept. When pictures of him and his boyfriend were discovered, he was brutally beaten.

Ten days later, he died from his brain injuries.

But now, in 2013, his mother Marie Causer is on a £1 million mission to help other LGBT youths.

After she and her husband Mike set up the Michael Causer Foundation, several lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people contacted them with their own stories of suffering.

There are still 20 days to go on a crowd-funding campaign to raise money to send a book of stories of survival from LGBT Singaporeans to social service centers, but the project has raised double its intended target already.

The campaign to send I Will Survive to Singapore's Family Service Centres (FSCs) exceeded its initial $1,000 (US dollars, €756) target during its first weekend on crowd-funding website Indiegogo.

Scott Thorson claims he and Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, were boyfriends.

Liberace's chauffeur allegedly met Jackson in the late 1970s. Their relationship started when the pop star was about to release his sixth studio album.

'It was right around the time Thriller was coming out and Michael and I became lovers,' Thorson said in an interview with The Sun.

Thorson insists Jackson was attentive in the seven year romance.