A Ban on Gay Sex: India's supreme court recriminalized gay sex illegal all over again after a previous ruling decriminalized it. The UN says the ban violates international law. Clearly this calls for civil disobedience...

Bertha Will Be Stuck for Weeks, at Least: Tunneling experts predict it will take a long time just to figure out what's blocking tunnel-digger Bertha, which/who has been lodged under downtown since last Friday, let alone remove the blockage. Officials say they might need to send in divers (who work under high-pressure air in front of the machine) to break up the obstacle or dig six stories down to extract the object. That could take "several weeks." But remember, nothing could possibly go wrong.

Cute Blond Texas Teen: He ducks a prison term for killing four people while driving drunk because, no shit, his lawyers made a case that he'd been raised wealthy and didn't respect the consequences of breaking rules. Instead of incarceration, he has to do a stint at an expensive rehab center in California.

Some Movies: About some stuff were nominated for some awards.

RIP, Justice Chambers: A state supreme court judge whose name was also his office died yesterday. He was one of the dissenters—god bless him—in the court's bigoted anti-gay-marriage decision.

Narrower Seats in Coach: Airbus wants to slim down the middle and window seats so that it can widen the aisle seat. As WSJ reports: "The new seat would be ideal for the expanding market of very large passengers, Airbus said [in obviously the greatest pun evar]."

Dept. of Duh: Map of states with most cancer deaths looks a lot like the map of states with most smoking.

Retail! Sales are up 0.7 percent last month, filling corporations with holiday cheer.

Humans Have Macabre Traditions: Throngs of people are waiting in the sweltering South African heat to view a week-old body.

That "Fake" Sign-Language Interpreter at Mandela's Funeral? His name is Thamsanqa Jantjie, and he's gotten complaints about signing for the African National Congress before. Jantjie claims that at Mendela's service he was hit by a schizophrenic episode in which he had hallucinations and he believed he was being chased. Here's he is, in his own words:

"What happened that day, I see angels come to the stadium ... I start realizing that the problem is here. And the problem, I don’t know the attack of this problem, how will it comes. Sometimes I react violent on that place. Sometimes I will see things that chase me,” Jantjie said...

Asked how often he had become violent, he said “a lot” while declining to provide details.

Blogger: She wants (a) a free meal from a restaurant on Christmas Eve and (b) is now charging $75 to people who want to talk to her.