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A Florida police officer said Tuesday that he and a group of five of six other officers surrounded the bathroom where Omar Mateen was holed up, but were told to wait until a SWAT team arrived. Belle Isle, Fla. Police Officer Brandon Cornwell, 25, told The Washington Post that he and the officers entered Pulse Orlando as bullets flew and clubgoers screamed. He said his group aimed their rifles and waited about “15 or 20 minutes” because they were told not to engage the bathroom area. Cornwell said he never even saw Mateen. Federal authorities said Monday that police “engaged...

An Arizona woman slammed her car into her boyfriend after finding out he was HIV-positive, according to a report. Startling surveillance video shows Misty Lee Wilke’s boyfriend riding on a bicycle when a red Ford Mustang comes out of nowhere and hits him, sending him over the top of the car and to the ground. Wilke, 44, told cops she “recently become involved in a sexual relationship” with the man, and that the two argued after she learned of his HIV status, according to The Smoking Gun.

Full title: "Revised Recommendations for Reducing the Risk of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Transmission by Blood and Blood Products" My note: Some Democrats in Congress and the mainstream and left-wing media have been pushing for the FDA to lift its ban on sexually active gay men donating blood since the Orlando terrorist attack (the White House responded that the ban will stay). The dozens of "lift the ban" articles published everywhere from Time and the New York Times and Washington Post to Salon and Cosmopolitan have either twisted or omitted facts and issues. This is despite the fact that when the FDA...

...This week we faced a new challenge: mass violence in the very place we felt most comfortable, accepted and secure. After the attack, the city of Orlando and the state of Florida mobilized. Officials called on people in the area to donate blood for those who were injured in the shooting. Thousands of people have reportedly lined up to donate. But some of them — gay and bisexual men — are unable to. As a registered nurse, I know the importance of donated blood... (snip) But many of the people who felt the tragedy most closely can’t offer their help....

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Andrew Rodriguez was 15 years old when he smoked his first cigarette. He knows how addictive smoking can be and hopes a new California law raising the smoking age will discourage young people from taking up the habit. "I think it's better," said the 21-year-old chef-in-training from Los Angeles. "I just hope they don't raise the drinking age." Beginning Thursday, smokers have to be at least 21 to buy tobacco products in California. The nation's most populous state joins Hawaii and more than 100 municipalities in raising the legal smoking age from 18 to 21. Anyone...

President Barack Obama issued a proclamation on Tuesday declaring June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month, and in the proclamation noted that “gay and bisexual men and transgender women of color are at particularly high risk of HIV,” the virus that causes AIDS. […] Obama credits the LGBT community and its supporters for “sweeping progress by changing hearts and minds and by demanding equal treatment — under our laws, from our courts, and in our politics,” the proclamation states. “This month, we recognize all they have done to bring us to this point, and we recommit to bending...

(CNSNews.com) -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says HIV infection rates are high among transgender women in the United States, and particularly high among black transgender women, compared to other groups. On its website page “HIV Among Transgender People,” the CDC cites a systematic review of various studies which showed that 28% of all transgender women had HIV. (A transgender woman is a biological male who identifies as a female.) Also, “56% of black/African American transgender women had positive HIV test results compared to 17% of white or 16% of Hispanic/Latina transgender women,” said the CDC. Black...

An issue brief published on Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control claimed that that Southerners’ “racism,” and “homophobia” may be causing high HIV rates in the South that are disproportionately high among African-Americans and homosexuals. According to the issue brief, Southern states have 37 percent of the U.S. population and 44 percent of all HIV infected people living in America. HIV rates among gay men and African-Americans account for the lion’s share of those infected with HIV. “African Americans are severely affected by HIV in the South, accounting for 54 percent of new HIV diagnoses in 2014,” the...

A map documenting HIV rates for gay and bisexual men has revealed they are most at risk for becoming infected in multiple southern cities, according to a report being presented today by Emory University researchers. The cities with the highest rates included Columbia, South Carolina, El Paso, Texas, and Jackson, Mississippi. In these cities, more than 25 percent of men who have sex with men (MSM) had been diagnosed with HIV. “This is really the first time we’ve been able to examine the HIV infection burden ... at such fine levels of geography,” Eli Rosenberg, assistant professor of epidemiology at...

Sex roulette parties where one person is secretly HIV positive and nobody is allowed to use condoms are on the rise, warn doctors. The parties are usually attended by gay men, who are entertained by the 'thrill' of not knowing whether they will be infected or not. Spanish doctors have noted a rise in the sex roulette parties where attendees often take anti-viral drugs to reduce the risk of transmission.

A deadly disease is rampant in Metro Atlanta, and scientists are calling it an epidemic. Channel 2's Dave Huddleston spoke with researchers and doctors who said Atlanta is the epicenter of that epidemic, comparing some neighborhoods to developing African countries.

16 HIV-positive IS terrorists are ordered to become suicide bombers. AGHDAD (Web Desk) – At least 16 ‘Islamic State’ terrorists who contracted HIV after having unprotected sex with two Moroccan sex slaves have been ordered to carry out suicide attacks, a doctor forced to treated them has claimed. The men, most of whom are foreign fighters, were treated at an ISIS-run hospital in the east-Syrian city of Al-Mayadeen and then quarantined, the Daily Mail reported. ISIS beheaded a fighter who knowingly allowed his HIV-infected blood to be transfused to another terrorist this year. The fighters had sex with the women...

The rate of syphilis infection among homosexual men has increased to a level not seen since the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Capitol Hill Wednesday. “We’re concerned about our high levels of syphilis among men who have sex with men — really we’re back to the level of disease — burden of disease — in gay men that we were seeing before HIV in this country,” said Gail Bolan, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. She was speaking at an event held...

The Los Angeles Police Department launched a felony investigation into Charlie Sheen Tuesday after the actor allegedly made death threats against his former fiancée, porn star Brett Rossi, according to numerous reports. The reported investigation centers on allegations made by Rossi, whose legal name is Scottine Ross, during an interview with the LAPD last week. Ross is suing Sheen in civil court and claims he did not disclose his HIV-positive before they had unprotected sex. She filed a “criminal threats” report last week in California, and was awarded an emergency restraining order against Sheen. Police are reportedly working to obtain...

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 29, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – In a first-of-its-kind analysis, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have concluded that one in two black men who are gay or bisexual will contract HIV.In an infographic released last week, one in six men who have sex with men (MSM) will contract HIV in their lifetimes, with half of black MSM likely to contract. Black men are the most likely racial and gender demographic to contract HIV, with a five-percent chance of contraction.White women are the least likely to contract the disease of the demographics examined – blacks, Hispanics, and whites of...

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--An article in POZ Magazine today reported that for the first time, an individual on the HIV-prevention protocol pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, for over two years not only became infected with HIV, but became infected with a drug resistant strain of the virus. In a case presented at the 2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston, researchers found that a 43 year-old man whose blood serum levels suggested had been adherent to the medication portion of the HIV prevention regimen nevertheless became infected with HIV and that “… his drug resistance had been transmitted from...

Representatives of Health Ministry have told the Knesset Health Committee that they will soon begin to administer the PREP medication as a preventative measure to people who have a high risk of contracting the HIV virus. Thus, Israel will become only the fourth country in the world (following France, the U.S., and Holland) where this treatment is offered by the government. Currently, PREP is only included in the health benefits package after a person has contracted the HIV virus. The medication currently costs 2,500 shekels for those who purchase it on their own without medical coverage. Neta Harel, the National...

The administration has decided to let immigrants with three sexually transmitted diseases known for causing sores or lesions on genitalia to enter the United States, an expansion of a previous decision to let in those with HIV. The Department of Health and Human Services this month opened the borders to those with the STDs, deeming the communicable diseases not a big threat to the United States.

Russia's AIDS epidemic is at a dangerous tipping point after the number of people registered HIV-positive passed the 1 million mark, the country's top AIDS specialist said on Thursday, warning the rate of infection had reached record levels. Russia registered its millionth HIV-positive patient -- a 26-year-old woman in the south of the country -- on Wednesday, Vadim Pokrovsky, the head of the federal AIDS centre, told Reuters in a phone interview. But he said the real number of HIV-positive Russians could be as high as 1.5 million, or 1 percent of the population, based on his and other expert...

The Food and Drug Administration has lifted the ban on blood donations from men who have engaged in sexual relations with another man. Now, in order to donate blood, a man will have had to have been abstinent for the period of one year prior to donation. This new policy is similar to the deferral period for a woman who has engaged in sexual activity with a man who had previously sexual activity with another man, or for someone who has traveled to a country where malaria is prevalent. The Food and Drug Administration released final rules on Monday that...