Gay rugby gets bookie's backing

A gay rugby tournament to be held in Ireland next year has received Ђ100,000 (Ј72,000) in sponsorship from the betting group, Paddy Power.

The deal, the biggest ever secured for a gay event in Ireland, will be used to host the 2008 Bingham Cup, an international rugby tournament that has already sold more than 600 tickets to those living abroad.

The sponsorship was proposed by Paddy Power who view the event as highly appropriate for their brand.

Paddy Power's marketing director Ken Robertson said: "We wouldn't be the sort of company that does what you might expect a bookmaker to do.

"This might raise a few eyebrows when it comes to town, but we're not scared of that."

The Bigham Cup's director Richie Whyte was overjoyed with the support, although he is still looking for sponsorship from a drinks company.

"I think it's hard for some sponsors to imagine what an event like this will be like," he said.

Mr Robertson added that it was no longer just men betting on sports events, with the gay and lesbian market representing an important sector of consumer society.

The Bingham Cup will take place at Dublin University next June. 32 amateur rugby teams will compete.

The event has been held three times since its launch in San Francisco in 2002, once in London in 2004 and then in New York in 2006.

Richie Whyte, Tournament Director said: "Paddy Power have an innovative and risk taking approach to the market. We are delighted that they see the Bingham Cup as a good fit for them both in terms of its sporting potential and public profile.

"The Bingham Cup Dublin will be both the largest amateur XVs rugby tournament held in the country in 15 years and the biggest international gay-oriented event ever held in Ireland.

"Having an international brand such as such as Paddy Power throwing their weight behind it represents a huge development for the tournament particularly in terms of developing mainstream interest. We expect our partnership to enhance an already great tournament and help to make it the biggest and best tournament yet."

Lesbian couple admit murder of 16-year-old

A lesbian couple in Australia face 15 years imprisonment for murdering a British teenager because she irritated them, according to The Sun.

Jessica Stasinowsky, 20, and Valerie Parashumti, 19, confessed to beating 16-year-old Stacey Mitchell to death with a concrete block before dumping her body in a wheelie bin.

She was found by police in a shed after her parents had reported her missing in December last year.

Ms Mitchell, whose family had emigrated from West Moors, Dorset, was staying with the couple.

The pair, who admitted that they had thought about hacking Ms Mitchel up with a chainsaw, will appear in court in Perth, Western Australia next month.

Welsh minister to launch Stonewall report

The largest ever survey of Wales' lesbian, bisexual and gay population will be unveiled today at the Senedd, the Welsh Assembly building.

Dr Brian Gibbons, Minister for Social Justice and Local Government, will deliver the keynote speech at the launch of Counted In! which was commissioned by Stonewall Cymru.

The report recommends that the Welsh Assembly provide support and guidance about policies and procedures for organisations looking to embrace equality of opportunity in the workplace.

Counted In! also demonstrates the important contribution lesbian, gay and bisexual people make to the Welsh society, culture and economy but highlights areas where further improvements are needed.

Liz Morgan, director of Stonewall Cymru, said:

"Homophobic hate crime is still under reported. Of those who have experienced hate crime only half have reported it.

"We need to work with the police to ensure gay people feel confident enough to report hate crime.

"It is absolutely crucial that we have this data about Wales' lesbian and gay population, given the paucity of research into LGB issues and the absence of any question on sexual orientation in the National Census.

"We hope this report and its recommendations will be adopted by the Welsh Assembly and will be used to ensure even greater inclusion for lesbian and gay people in Wales."

The report revealed that highly-qualified gay job-seekers are taking their skills to employers who show a commitment to workplace diversity.

Nearly one third of lesbian and gay people said they would be attracted to jobs where there was a good record on equality and diversity and more than 50% stated that having an equal opportunities policy would influence their choice of employer.

Ms Morgan commented:

"In our experience gay and straight people don't want to work for an employer that permits any kind of discrimination and are choosing to take their skills and talents to organisations that promote an inclusive workplace.

"Staff who feel comfortable and supported in work are more likely to be happier and therefore more productive."

Catholic adoption agencies seek ways round gay rules

Claims by the Roman Catholic Church that the government would be offering money to help them avoid new regulations in their adoption agencies have been dismissed by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

In a statement issued last week on the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales website, they claim the government will "pay for further work to be done to explore whether within the law there might yet be ways found which will enable the adoption work to carry on and for our agencies to continue."

Earlier this year the Sexual Orientation Regulations came into force, making it illegal to discriminate against gay, lesbian and bisexual people when providing goods and services, including adoption agencies.

The Roman Catholic Church tried to get an opt-out from the regulations for their adoption agencies, but after a Cabinet row they were unsuccessful.

The Church was given 18 months to adjust its practices so that it can allow gay couples to adopt from its agencies or close them down.

A spokesperson from the DCSF told PinkNews.co.uk: "We don't provide money to get around government regulations.

"The funding is being made available for grants to all voluntary adoption agencies in England and Wales.

"It is being made available for a specific purpose: to enable voluntary adoption agencies to access the legal, financial and/or human resource advice they need to maintain and/or develop their family-finding services for `difficult to place' children, including as a result of changes to the legislative context within which they work."

Reverand Martin Reynolds, from the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and himself an adoptive parent, thinks that the agencies should be honest and acknowlede that they have been "allowing gay couples to adopt for years but with only one of the partners registering as the parent.

"The great work that they do should be preserved," he added.

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall said: "We are delighted that the adoption agencies are required to comply with the law.

"We trust that agencies, that are already in financial difficulty, will not use the cloak of compliance with the law as an excuse for closure."

MP Chris Bryant, a former Anglican priest, said that he thought the "dogmatic position of the Catholic Church is unnecessary.

"Some very difficult children have found loving homes in gay couples," he added.

Man sues police over hammer attack

A Brighton man is suing Sussex Police after he claims they did not protect him from the violence of his former partner.

Stephen Smith, 38, was attacked with a hammer by a man he had met on the internet after he made it clear he did not want a committed relationship.

Gareth Jeffrey had bombarded him with text messages threatening to kill him, which Mr Smith said he reported to officers before the attack took place in March 2003.

Among the texts Jeffrey sent was one saying he had lain in wait for Mr Smith in a pub while carrying a carving knife.

The attack, which took place outside of Smith's home when he was on his way to work, left him with three depressed fractures of the skull.

Jeffrey is now serving a ten year sentence after pleading guilty at Lewes Crown Court for causing GBH with intent and threats to kill.

Heather Williams, Mr Smith's lawyer, told Brighton paper The Argus that the Sussex force had failed to adhere to its policy on domestic violence and had breached its duty under the Human Rights Act.

Edward Faulks, the chief constable of Sussex Police, said the introduction of the Human Rights Act had not altered the law on the "duty of care."

Mr Smith's lawyers said he would receive "substantial" damages should he win the case.

Fallout from failed HIV vaccine trial continues

Just a few short months ago, a spirit of cautious optimism surrounded the prospects for a viable HIV vaccine.

As pharmaceutical company Merck began testing its highly anticipated V520 vaccine, which it had reportedly been developing over a ten year period, there was an undercurrent of excitement among researchers in the HIV community about the radical new approach, which was expected to attack, seek out, and destroy infected cells.

There was a sense of promise: For the first time in years, the study might yield a significant breakthrough in the ongoing fight to contain the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Two months into the study, those hopes were dashed and the HIV community sent reeling as the international Merck trials were shut down after preliminary results demonstrated that the vaccine appeared to be doing more damage than good.

With researchers collectively scratching their heads in confusion, the Merck failure has created some serious impediments for future HIV vaccine trials, forcing the HIV research community to rethink its science, priorities and goals.

The Merck HIV vaccine trials included 3,000 participants, mostly male, in North and South America, the Caribbean and Australia, all of whom were considered to be at high risk of exposure to the virus because of their sexual activity or drug use.

Unlike previous experimental HIV vaccines that attempted to stimulate the body to produce antibodies that would ward off infection, Merck's V520 focused on T-cells that attack and kill cells that HIV had already infected.

But rather than stimulate an immune response to ward off HIV invasion, the vaccine, which employs a few synthetic fragments of HIV loaded onto a genetically modified cold virus (called an adenovirus) may well have altered the immune system to facilitate infection of study participants.

Moreover, the vaccine did not reduce viral loads in volunteers who became infected with HIV during the trial.

Despite this disappointing initial data, there are those in the HIV research community who insist that all hope is not lost.

The first piece of good news. Though the V520 vaccine may have increased the chance of infection, Merck along with the majority of HIV experts agree that the vaccine itself did not and cannot cause HIV infection.

The other piece of good news to come out of the Merck HIV vaccine trials is that there are valuable lessons to be learned from its failure.

According to Dr. Stephen J. Brown, Medical Director for AIDS Research Alliance, which was the only Los Angeles site conducting clinical trials for the Merck vaccine, "The closing of the Merck vaccine study may have an important impact as to the future of most HIV vaccines candidates currently in clinical trials because, like the Merck vaccine, many are designed to similarly stimulate strong cell-mediated immune responses."

Further, in a published statement, AIDS Research Alliance was quick to not discount the outcome of the Merck experiment.

"The results of this study may also provide valuable information as to the future direction of HIV vaccine research.

"Since all vaccine candidates in the pipeline are designed to stimulate only one arm of the immune system, maybe an efficient vaccine against HIV will need to stimulate both arms (including neutralising antibodies, or other cells such as natural killer cells) of the immune system in humans," the statement said.

Despite these arguably positive, if unanticipated, results, there remains substantial concern about the long-term perception that the high profile failure of the Merck trial might have on future studies.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Hildegund C.J. Ertl, an immunologist at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, who is preparing to test another HIV vaccine based on a chimpanzee cold virus next year, has said that the Merck effort will likely alter her study.

Gary J. Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Centre of the National Institutes of Health, has postponed until at least mid-2008 his group’s PAVE 100 HIV-vaccine trial.

That trial uses three shots of DNA followed by a cold-virus booster, albeit one with different components from the Merck product.

Meanwhile, according to various news reports, The National Institutes of Health, which helped sponsor Merck's aborted clinical trial, recently halted recruitment for vaccine trials involving several diseases, including Ebola, because those vaccines, like the failed Merck one, are made with an adenovirus.

Perhaps the greatest problem that lies ahead for future HIV vaccine studies may not be the science or the trials themselves but the recruitment of now skittish volunteers to take part in them.

"I can tell you that as a volunteer in the study, and as someone who worked on the last phase III clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine, I'm less disappointed than I am scared by the early results of this trial," says Jim Key, Chief Public Affairs Officer for the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Centre.

"What scares me, of course, is the indication that study volunteers who received the product, and not the placebo, may be at greater risk of HIV-infection than those who didn’t receive it.

"This is a scary concern not just for volunteers in the study, but for the success of future studies. It's already difficult to recruit volunteers for vaccine studies.

"The results of this trial are likely to make recruitment for future studies considerably more difficult.

"I don't believe hopes were high for the Merck vaccine, so I'm not overly surprised it didn’t prove efficacious," Key added.

"What's important to remember, however, is that every clinical trial of a vaccine helps advance the science and if we don't continue to develop and test promising vaccines we'll never stop AIDS."

Still others like Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, seem to believe that the implosion of the Merck trial is only more indicative of the need to balance the quest for a vaccine with developing long-term treatment options and the availability thereof.

"Development of a safe and effective AIDS vaccine is clearly a noble and worthy goal; however, the sad truth remains that more than 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS today, yet barely two million of them have access to lifesaving antiretroviral AIDS treatments," Weinstein said in a statement.

"Treatments that actually do work and help keep those fortunate enough to have access to them alive and well, and which also have also been around, and continually improved, for over a decade.

"These recent failures in vaccine development underscore just how tenuous the quest for an AIDS vaccine remains, and reminds us of what effective, but underused tools, including antiretroviral treatment, we already have available to us today.

"While we long for the day when there is an effective preventive AIDS vaccine, we also call for a re-evaluation of the distribution of limited government resources in the battle against AIDS, and renew our call for a greatly stepped-up commitment to bringing antiretroviral treatment to many, many more of those people still in need worldwide."

The final effects of the collapse of the Merck HIV vaccine trials may not be seen for quite some time to come.

Whether the results of the study will ultimately help or hinder HIV research is debatable, but one thing is for certain.

Though hope for a vaccine may spring eternal, its prospects have, for the moment, most certainly been dealt a short-term setback at minimum.

Howard loses his seat as Australia votes for change

John Howard has admitted that he's lost the Australian general election to the the Labour leader Kevin Rudd. Mr Howard became only the second Prime Minister in Australian history to lose his own Parliamentary seat.

He said he had telephoned Mr Rudd "to congratulate him on an emphatic victory".

Mr Rudd said the country had "looked to the future" he said he will be a Prime Minister "for all Australians."

"I want to put aside the old battles of the past, the old battles between business and unions, the old battles between growth and the environment...," he said. "It's time for a new chapter in our nation's history to begin."

Liberal Party Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull successfully defended the Sydney seat of Wentworth, which after boundary changes now includes gay districts such as Darlinghurst and Kings Cross.

Gay rights have been a theme in this race.

The announcement of a general election prompted evangelical groups in the country to begin campaigning against gay equality.

The Labour party took the line that marriage is for heterosexuals only, and would grant legal concessions to homosexuals, but not the legal status of marriage.

"On the institution of marriage itself, our view is between a man and woman and it's just been our traditional, continuing view," Mr Rudd said in October.

When asked if in the future this position would look as closed-minded as racist beliefs of the past, Mr Rudd said it was what he believed in.

However, Labour will support changes to the law to remove inequities in the tax and benefits system that discriminate against same-sex couples.

A report in June by Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) recommended that 58 laws need to be changed to grant gay, bisexual and lesbian Australians equal rights.