BREAKING NEWS: The illustrious award-winning reporter, Ruby Comer, has turned the tables on TV news producer, Deepak Saini, and scores another memorable scoop. The twenty-seven-year-old journalist, reporter, and anchor, Deepak Saini, who hails from San Jose, California, is currently burning the midnight oil (he reports to work at 11 p.m.) at CBS affiliate KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota—brrr, that sounds cold! His show, KeloLand, airs from 5–7 in the morning. What a wretched hour for this old broad! Miss Ruby is no early bird. [...]

Something as simple and direct as one billboard can change lives in one community. Positive Young People Foundation (PYP), a new nonprofit dedicated to testing and prevention awareness, recently launched its AIDS-focused N-Ur-Face billboard campaign in South Carolina and Florida. Says Logan Voxx, CEO and founder of PYP, about the delivery method of the message, “Not everyone has a computer to log on to the Internet and view public service announcements through Facebook.” “Having those billboards that promote HIV testing and awareness is very important because this [...]

by Ekweremadu Franklin Uchenna since no blade fits to shave its locks it steals into our territory hiding like weed amongst wheat it snipes at our soldiers and unbars our gates to guests it drives us mad with cares and turns us into monsters which frighten our kith and kin it bags a million plaques each a prize for a hundred souls that has fallen by its sword Ekweremadu Franklin Uchenna is a young writer, currently living in Kaduna State in the North of Nigeria. [...]

A New Exhibit of the Work of Mark Morrisroe Shows How the Artist Pushed the Boundaries of Photography & Identity by Angela Leroux-Lindsey Here’s the thing about Mark Morrisroe: His work lodges in your psyche. It finds purchase in the space between the conscious and unconscious, the real and surreal, a space Morrisroe himself often seems to expose in his photographs and films. In one self-portrait, taken in 1986—the same year he was diagnosed with HIV—his gaze is direct, haunted, but not self-conscious; swathed in [...]

Florida’s ADAP Seeks Money for HIV/AIDS Patients by David Volz The Florida Department of Health is trying to find more money to provide medication for Florida’s HIV/AIDS patients. Florida is among other states struggling to keep up with services, especially providing drugs for its HIV/AIDS population. The economic downturn has had a negative effect on the department in general and the HIV/AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) in particular. “The HIV/AIDS Drug Assistance Program has been around for twenty years,” says Tom Liberti, chief of the [...]

Trained in Generosity, Suzanne “Africa” Engo Bolts Onto the Frontlines of AIDS to Conquer Ignorance by Dann Dulin She hit the ground running. At the spry age of six, Suzanne “Africa” Engo spoke at the General Assembly of the United Nations on World Children’s Day as junior ambassador for Cameroon—her activist spirit in full throttle. In 2008, at the age of twenty-nine, she once again spoke to the United Nations and confessed, “I am dying of activism.” Her sharply focused energy over two decades to [...]

Singer Kelly Price Tirelessly Motivates Others in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS & Breast Cancer by Sean Black Chart-topping R&B recording artist Kelly Price is poised for the May 3rd launch of her sixth solo album, Kelly, while her second single release “Not My Daddy,” a silky smooth duet featuring the perfectly-paired vocals of Mint Condition’s Stokley Williams seizes a Top 10 adult R&B radio spot. All indicators suggest that the double-platinum songstress is back where she belongs—climbing up the charts. Baring her soul in conversation, [...]

[FILM] The Test Directed by Gary Strieker Cielo Productions Part-documentary, part-strategic communication, The Test shares the success of the CarePack Demonstration Project, which sought to lessen the impact of HIV, malaria, and diarrhea on the lives of Kenyans. The film is lovingly photographed and offers a diversity of voices—it makes a good case for its suggestion to scale up these efforts. The suggestion is partial: The film and the campaign were created by Vestergaard Frandsen, makers of emergency response and disease control products who follow [...]

[BOOKS] Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke Grove/Atlantic This novel has been banned in the author’s native China. Yan Lianke is from Henan Province, the site of a devastating HIV outbreak during the 1990s after rural villagers were encouraged to sell blood at newly-established collection facilities. Improper practices led to widespread infection and to many children being born with HIV. In this novel, HIV (called “the fever”) spreads with the greed and materialism that Yan sees as the prevailing ethic of contemporary China. Narrated [...]

by Ruby Comer Help is on the way, my cupcakes. Several years ago aids2031 was established and its members are pulling out all the stops. Supported by such organizations as the Gates Foundation and amfAR, this UNAIDS initiative is scanning over the past thirty years of the epidemic to see what worked and what didn’t. They’re addressing today’s budding challenges and creating a long-term view, so that by the year 2031—the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of AIDS—this pandemic won’t exist. They’ve recently published a [...]