Fridae

The rugby teammates of openly gay businessman Mark Bingham, who was killed on United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11, will honour Bingham by holding the first annual Bingham Cup, an international gay rugby tournament to be held during San Francisco's annual pride celebration this weekend.

The 31-year-old gay man and other passengers are believed to have taken over the hijacked airplane from terrorists making it the only one of the four hijacked planes that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania and instead of its intended target.

Bingham was a strapping 220-pound, 6-foot-5 rugby player at Berkeley where he had played on three national championship teams before joining the San Francisco Fogs.

"It's going to be everything Mark would love," said Bryce Eberhart, a member of the Fogs, which broke barriers by being the first gay team accepted into the Northern California Rugby Union.

Bingham's mother, Alice Hoglan, will present the trophy on Saturday, June 29, to the winning team that emerges from the eight rugby clubs. She also plans to march with some of the 200 players in Sunday's pride parade, which draws about 1 million people each year.

Bingham was president and founder of The Bingham Group, a successful public relations firm for high-tech companies, in New York and San Francisco.

In related news, the White House on Monday approved the Mychal Judge Act -- a new law that grants federal death benefits to named beneficiaries listed on the victim's life insurance policy, including same-sex partners, of firefighters and police officers killed in the line of duty.

Until Monday, if a police officer or a firefighter died in the line of duty, only the spouse, parents or children were allowed to collect the federal death benefit of US$250,000.

Mychal Judge is a gay chaplain who perished on September 11 while administering last rites near the scene of the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center.