INDIA

Gay people in India face deep-rooted trauma and live in fear, the Supreme Court said on Thursday during a hearing on the colonial-era ban on homosexuality. A five-judge bench made the comments while hearing a challenge to the ban, which the top court reinstated in 2013 after a four-year period of decriminalisation. Gay sex is considered taboo by many in socially conservative India, and despite opposition to lifting the ban from other petitioners and some lawmakers, activists are hopeful of a positive judgement in the current case.

Shridhar Chillal of Pune, who holds the Guinness World Record for the longest fingernails on one hand, finally had them cut off in a ceremony in New York on Wednesday. Chillal, 82, had been growing the nails on his left hand for 66 years and they had a combined length of 9.1 metres — about the same length as a London bus. They are now on display at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum in New York.