Hasta La Gadget!

Singapore’s gay pride rally has attracted sponsorship from a record number of companies this year despite tighter government regulations aimed at stopping foreigners from supporting it, organizers said on Wednesday.

Organizers of the Pink Dot rally have raised S$253,000 ($183,000) from more than 100 Singaporean companies for the July 1 rally at a “Speaker’s Corner” in a downtown park.

Last year, 18 companies contributed, 13 of which were multinationals like Alphabet Inc’s Google and Facebook. Organizers declined to say how much was raised last year.

Days after last year’s rally conservative Singapore’s government announced that foreign firms would no longer be allowed to sponsor or participate in the rally.

Foreigners have never been legally allowed to join rallies in the city-state, but many have got around the restriction by “observing” such events.

But changes to the law announced in October removed the distinction between “participants” and “observers,” organizers said, leaving them “no choice” but to bar foreigners.

Darius Cheung, a Singaporean executive who led the funding drive, said the rally had gained recognition and this year’s sponsors were mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises.

“The more important part is to engage local companies to finally cement the position that the LGBT community is very well respected and accepted here and I think we did it,” Cheung told Reuters.

The event has been celebrated since 2009. People attend dressed in pink and shining pink flashlights.

Under Singapore law, sex between men is punishable by up to two years in jail, though prosecutions are rare.

Adeline Yeo said she was disappointed that she would not be able to attend with her Polish girlfriend.

“I feel let down … we were looking forward to attending together,” Yeo said.

“But this has definitely made us stronger,” she said, referring to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

“It’s all the more reason to pull all your friends and colleagues together for the Pink Dot.”

The LGBT movement in other conservative Asian countries has faced pressure this year.

In neighboring Indonesia, two men were last week publicly caned after being convicted by a sharia court of engaging in gay sex. In another part of Indonesia police have set up a special force to investigate LGBT activity.

Police in China briefly detained nine gay activists on Sunday after they tried to organize a gay rights conference, one of the activists told Reuters.

But a court in Taiwan, in a first for Asia, last week legalized same-sex marriage.

(Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Miyoung Kim, Robert Birsel)

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Say you’re Vladimir Putin, and you did a deal with Trump last year. I’m not suggesting there was any such deal, mind you. But if you are Putin and you did do a deal, what did Trump agree to do?

1. Repudiate NATO. NATO is the biggest thorn in your side – the alliance that both humiliates you and stymies your ambitions in the Baltics and elsewhere. Trump almost delivered on this last week by pointedly not reaffirming Article 5, which states that an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all.

2. Antagonize Europe, especially Angela Merkel. She’s the strongest leader in the West other than Trump, and you’d love to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Germany. Your larger goal is for Europe to no longer depend on the United States, so you can increase Russia’s influence in Europe. Trump has almost delivered on this one, too. Now Merkel even says Europe can no longer depend on America.

3. Reject the Paris accord on the environment. This will anger America’s other allies around the world and produce a wave of anti-Americanism – all to your advantage. Nothing would satisfy you more than isolating the United States. Seems like Trump is about to deliver on this one, too.

4. Embark on a new era of protectionism. Or at least anti-trade rhetoric. This will threaten the West’s economic interdependence, and loosen America’s economic grip on the rest of the world. Trump is on the way to delivering on this one.

5. End the economic sanctions on Russia imposed after the annexation of Crimea and Russian backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine. No delivery on this as yet, but you understand why. Trump has got to cope with all the suspicion in the U.S. over the deal he made with you to win him the presidency. Once that dies down, he’ll end the sanctions. (In the meantime, he’ll hand back to you two diplomatic compounds that were taken by the U.S. in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.)

And what did you agree to do, Vlad? Not only to help him win the presidency, but also to shut up about it so he wouldn’t be impeached and then convicted of treason.

In other words – if you did do a deal – Trump is still in the process of delivering on his side of it, as are you. That’s the art of the deal.

This post was first published on RobertReich.org.

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Wonder Woman hits theaters this week, and I know I can’t wait to see it. To celebrate, Man at Arms: Reforged created a real-life version of Wonder Woman’s indestructible God Killer sword from the movies.

They always do an amazing job and this sword is certainly a real beauty. It is a well designed sword to begin with. Naturally they tested it out along with the shield they recently made.

And since they didn’t have any DC bad guys attacking them, they had to use pineapples, soda bottles, gallons of water, and a piñata as their victims. It does some nice damage to all of the above.