PO BAG 1: man

31 January 2017

UK pardons thousands convicted under past anti-gay laws

In this Thursday, March 19, 2015 file photo, a notebook of British mathematician Alan Turing is displayed in front of his portrait during an auction preview in Hong Kong. Thousands of men convicted under now-abolished anti-homosexuality laws in Britain have been pardoned posthumously under a law passed on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017 and many more still alive can now apply to have their criminal convictions wiped out. Calls for a general pardon have noted the 1954 suicide of World War II codebreaking hero Alan Turing after his conviction for "gross indecency." After he received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013, pressure for pardons intensified.

Thousands of men convicted under now-abolished anti-homosexuality laws in Britain have been pardoned posthumously under a law enacted on Tuesday, and many more still alive can now apply to have their criminal convictions wiped out.

Announcing the new law, the Ministry of Justice said the pardons apply automatically to deceased men who were convicted for consensual same-sex relations before homosexuality was decriminalized several decades ago. Men living with convictions can apply to the government to have their names cleared.

6 February 2016

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, 6th man on moon, dies in Florida

In a Sept. 5, 2007 file photo, former astronaut Edgar Mitchell arrives for the premiere of the "In the Shadow of the Moon," at the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Apollo 14 astronaut Mitchell, who became the sixth man on the moon when he and Alan Shepard helped NASA recover from Apollo 13's "successful failure" and later devoted his life to exploring the mind, physics and unexplained phenomena such as psychics and aliens, died Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016, at a West Palm Beach, Florida, hospice after a short illness. He was 85.

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who became the sixth man on the moon when he and Alan Shepard helped NASA recover from Apollo 13's "successful failure" and later devoted his life to exploring physics, the mind, and unexplained phenomena such as psychics and aliens, has died in Florida. He was 85.

Mitchell died Thursday night at a West Palm Beach hospice after a short illness, his daughter, Kimberly Mitchell, said. Mitchell's passing coincides with the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 14 mission from Jan. 31-Feb. 9, 1971.