EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Scotland is likely to have full marriage equality by the end of 2013 at the latest, Tim Hopkins, Director of the Equality Network, told LGBTQ Nation at a reception in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday evening.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, in an unusually outspoken declaration Sunday, told African leaders assembled at the African Union summit that they must respect gay rights, an issue that is controversial in many African states.

MOSCOW -- LGBT activists in Russia are planning a campaign to boycott the Russian airline Aeroflot following a report that a gay flight attendant was forced by the airline to enter into a heterosexual marriage or face losing his job.

A small group of LGBT Russians have taken their protest against laws intended to silence their movement to every region — and on Wednesday night they produced images of their protesting arrest in front of the Kremlin.

HAVANA, Cuba -- Cuba’s first daughter, Mariela Castro-Espín, on Sunday said the country’s lawmakers will consider legalizing same-sex civil unions this year.

Kuwaiti police have been torturing and sexually abusing transgender women continually since 2007, when a discriminatory law was passed which arbitrarily criminalizes “imitating the opposite sex,” Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday.

The Secretary-General of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights has described homosexuality as a western "disease," and said that same-sex marriage was "immoral."

As the British Prime Minister David Cameron visits Saudi Arabia on Friday, activists report plight of man arrested by the religious police who may face corporal punishment. Activists are concerned for the safety of a 30-year-old man arrested by the religious police in Saudi Arabia for using Facebook to date other men.

More positive change in Turkey with the news this week that the High Court of Appeals has ordered a newspaper to pay compensation for calling gay people “perverts” in a headline it printed in 2008.

The Canadian Minister Of Justice, Rob Nicholson, on Thursday afternoon announced that the Canadian government will re-work the current marriage law to allow non-resident couples married in Canada to obtain divorces, and in a statement said, "I want to be very clear that the government has no intention of reopening the debate on the definition of marriage."

Turkey’s High Court of Appeals has ordered the Turkish daily paper Yeni Akit to pay compensation for insulting LGBT people in a headline it printed in 2008, according to a report published by Hürriyet.

Portia Simpson-Miller on Thursday was sworn inas Jamaica’s new Prime Minister after being elected to the office on Dec. 29 -- in a pre-election debate last month, Simpson-Miller came out in support of LGBT rights in what activists called an “historic moment.

On January 1, a new homophobic constitution and law came into force in Hungary -- the constitution now bans same-sex couples from marriage while the new “Family Protection” law defines the family as a heterosexual unit and stipulates that media services should broadcast programs that respect the institution of marriage and family.

MOSCOW -- As tens of thousands of protesters braved sub zero temperatures across the Russian Federation last week to protest against the alleged election fraud and corruption by the Putin led government, demanding more freedom and democracy, leading Russian LGBTQ activists claimed that the opposition movement leadership excluded them.

The most organized and vociferous campaign against same-sex marriage in Scotland has been headed by the Catholic Church -- its leader, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has recently said that same-sex marriage will be "forfeiting the trust" of the nation, and "shaming Scotland in the eyes of the world.”