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Australian trampolinist and silver medal winner at the Sydney Olympics, Ji Wallace has come out as HIV positive via a letter to the Star Observer newspaper today. Wallace made the announcement while in London as a spectator at the Olympic Games.

After seven years under consideration by the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA), at-home HIV saliva test, OraQuick, has been approved for distribution in over 30,000 US pharmacies. AIDS researchers and activists in Canada largely support Health Canada approving at-home tests here, but some remain wary…

The prosecution is asking for 2 years of prison time for an American living in Montréal convicted of sexual assault for failing to disclose his HIV status to a partner. The conviction comes as the Supreme Court is reviewing two cases which will determine whether the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure is a violation of the Charter of Human Rights.

The last time I visited Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco, he was hosting a dinner party at his house. There were seven of us at sitting around the table, engaging in an impassioned discussion about the role of divas in gay male culture. The usual archetypes were invoked, from Madonna to Cher, Tina Turner to Annie Lennox. Suddenly, a text message interrupted the diva dialogue: Whitney Houston was dead. Ibáñez-Carrasco and I spent the rest of the weekend sporadically breaking out into numbers from The Bodyguard. However, we managed to take a break from our mourning theatrics to discuss his work with Universities Without Walls, HIV research, and the difference between mystique and caché.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for member states of the African Union to respect the human rights of LGBT people. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a promise to all people in all places at all times,” said Mr Ban at the 18th annual meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

As any gay person who reads or watches GLBT media knows by now, this year has marked the 30th anniversary of the first reported cases of HIV and AIDS. As we begin to close out 2011, there is one final event to mark the significance of this anniversary. December 1st is World AIDS Day. Since 1988, World AIDS Day has been an opportunity for people to unite globally in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died.

A new initiative was implemented this summer to help prevent the transmission of STIs in some of Montréal’s saunas. The Chartre OK, a voluntary set of guidelines that sauna owners were invited to adhere to, had to undergo a few adjustments after its first few months of operation, but its organisers remain very optimistic about the project.

After weeks of lobbying by EGALE and the Peter Tatchell Foundation, the NDP took up the cause of the decriminalization of homosexuality today in the House of Commons. Lagging behind the UK and Australia, Baird avoided answering the MPs, while global pressure mounts on Commonwealth leaders.

As the first lecture in the Concordia Community Lecture Series in HIV/AIDS, the Los Angeles media artist and theorist Dr. Alex Juhasz will be presenting at the University in the Hall Building auditorium’s H110 at 6pm today. Her topic, “Remembering AIDS Online: Networking, Viruses, Virality, and Arteries” will address the pun of “virus” and “going viral,” and the idea of images as contagious.

Montréal’s Farha Foundation has been doing the city’s massive AIDSWalk, known as Ça Marche for 19 years already. Thirty years after the advent of AIDS, the issues have become less about life and death, and more about stigma, quality of life, and community. This Sunday, the Ça Marche charity walk-a-thon will lead a march of thousands of people who have received pledges of support from all over Québec, in one of the highlights of the city’s community calendar.