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'People always talk about all the great things I've done for this program. This program has done more things to me than you can imagine. Thank you Coach, I love You.' - Spartan great Morris Peterson

(New York) - Equality is a basic value underlying human rights standards and cannot be retracted at the whim of a simple majority, Human Rights Watch said in an amicus brief submitted to the California Supreme Court. Human Rights Watch called on the court to overturn Proposition 8, a referendum narrowly passed last November that withdrew the right to marry from lesbian and gay couples.read more

Prince William County music teacher Carol Mills, 52, is accustomed to singing in front of her 20 or so students during class at Rockledge Elementary school. And, on big occasions at her Alexandria church, Mills is part of a choir that presides over as many as 800 people.

So many people want to scatter the ashes of family and friends in beauty spots that the government has been forced to step in with anti-pollution rules. Last month, staff at the Jane Austen House Museum in Hampshire discovered piles of human ashes scattered around the novelist's home and gardens, and football grounds, rivers, parks, golf courses, lakes, rivers and mountain tops have all become favourite remembrance spots.Until 1960, only about one in three people in Britain chose cremation and it was uncommon for anyone to ask to have their ashes scattered. But, says the Cremation Society, there are now more than 420,000 cremations a year, 70% of all deaths. Most families want to sprinkle the ashes in places meaningful to the deceased. In the 1970s, about 12% of ashes were taken away from the crematorium - now it is nearer two-thirds.The Mountaineering Council of Scotland and Welsh conservationists have asked relatives to avoid going to mountain tops because the phosphate added to the

'Divorce is like death, but you have no grave and no funeral to show for it," says Caroline, who received her decree absolute last year. "When my sister's husband died, she had visitors every day, but when you go through divorce, there is none of that. People back off because they don't know how to deal with it. In some ways, death can be easier - you get closure."