COVINGTON, Ky. – This Ohio River city, across the water from Cincinnati, has recently been plagued by reports of hate crimes against the LGBT community.

Now comes word that someone apparently supportive of the National Alliance, a white separatist group founded by William Luther Pierce of Hillsboro, W. Va., has illegally posted dozens of anti-gay hate fliers in Covington’s Mainstrasse neighborhood, where there is a significant LGBT presence.

CHICAGO -- Prosecutors have upgraded charges against two southwest suburban men who allegedly shouted anti-gay slurs as they attacked a woman outside a Hickory Hills restaurant.

Mohammad Shaban, 35, of Hickory Hills, and Akram Alshoweat, 25, of Oak Lawn, are now charged with felony hate crime and robbery in an alleged attack on a woman June 28. Prosecutors originally had charged the men with a misdemeanor count of battery, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office said Tuesday.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A gay couple who innocently made a late-night stop at a White Castle in Staten Island was among the latest in a skyrocketing number of hate crime victims in the city.

The number of bias attacks has ballooned from 111 to 200 through July 11 - an 80% surge from the same time period in 2009. A pocket of Port Richmond has been ground zero for such attacks, with six Mexican immigrants beaten there in separate incidents since April.

For married couple Luis and Richard Vieira, the attack on July 7 began with a homophobic slur.

DAYTON, Ohio — Vandals have torn down the first and only Ohio historical marker for a gay or lesbian person and one local activist is calling it a hate crime.

The marker recognizing Natalie Barney — literary patron and lesbian author who lived most of her life in Paris — was knocked down in Cooper Park some time before Wednesday, July 7, said John Gantt, executive director of the Greater Dayton LGBT Center.

“A friend noticed it had been torn down and told me about it,” Gantt said. “I called police and they came and took a report.”