A new highly-infectious and damaging strain of HIV, resulting from a mutation in the virus, has been discovered in the Netherlands.
Scientists working on the BEEHIVE project, a study of HIV genomics and virulence across Europe and Uganda, published their findings in the journal Science on Thursday (3 February).
According to UNAIDS, 38 million people around the world are currently living with the most prominent strain of the virus, HIV-1, and it has caused, to date, around 33 million deaths. HIV-2 is the other most prominent type of HIV, and is most commonly seen in West Africa.
The newly discovered mutation, a subtype of HIV-1, has been named “virulent subtype B” or the “VB variant”, and it showed “significant differences before antiretroviral treatment compared with individuals infected with other HIV variants”.
Measuring the viral load, or level of virus in the blood, of those with the VB variant, scientists found that it was between 3.5 and 5.5 times higher than those with other variants of HIV.
The new strain also damaged the immune system twice as fast, “placing them at risk of developing AIDS much more rapidly”, and those with the VB variant were at a higher risk of transmitting the virus to others.
Thankfully, scientists found that after starting treatment, “individuals with the VB variant had similar immune system recovery and survival to individuals with other HIV variants”.
But they emphasised the need to get tested often for early diagnosis, because of the rapid progression of the variant.
Lead study author Dr Chris Wymant, from the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Medicine, said: “Before this study, the genetics of the HIV virus were known to be relevant for virulence, implying that the evolution of a new variant could change its impact on health.
“Discovery of the VB variant demonstrated this, providing a rare example of the risk posed by viral virulence evolution.”
Senior author professor Christophe Fraser, of the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Medicine, added: “Our findings emphasise the importance of World Health Organization guidance that individuals at risk of acquiring HIV have access to regular testing to allow early diagnosis, followed by immediate treatment.
“This limits the amount of time HIV can damage an individual’s immune system and jeopardise their health.
“It also ensures that HIV is suppressed as quickly as possible, which prevents transmission to other individuals.”
According to the Terrence Higgins Trust, one in 20 people with HIV are unaware they have it, which increases the risk of damage to the immune system, and of passing it on to sexual partners.
LGBT+ people in Ukraine are afraid of what’s to come as tensions escalate between their country and Russia.
Ukraine and Russia have been at war with each other since 2014, but there are fears that conflict could spill over after Russia deployed tens of thousands of troops to its border with Ukraine in recent days.
Since then, the United States has put 8,500 of its own troops on alert to send to Ukraine if the war worsens, and NATO announced that it was sending ships and fighter jets to eastern Europe in preparation for a potential conflict.
A Russian attack, or potential invasion, would spell disaster for Ukraine’s LGBT+ community. Queer activists are worried about what could happen if the war escalates and if Russia was to ultimately seize additional Ukrainian territories. They fear that progress on LGBT+ rights would grind to a halt and that, in the event of a Russian invasion, they could see their freedoms restricted and rolled back.
Many are ready and willing to fight if they need to – they feel a patriotic sense of duty to their country – but they’re also painfully aware that the fight for LGBT+ rights could end up on the back burner.
Lenny Ensom, director of Kiev Pride, tells PinkNews that LGBT+ people, and wider Ukrainian society, is prepared to “step forward against the aggression” if the need arises.
“On this point we are united,” Ensom says. “It doesn’t matter what your gender identity is, your sexual orientation – all together, we are stepping forward.”
The effects of the conflict are far-reaching for queer people, Ensom says. Fear and aggression “accumulate” in society in times of war, and people inevitably look to minority groups to scapegoat. He is worried that LGBT+ people could end up bearing the brunt of aggression, and their movement for equal rights could ultimately be set back.
“On one hand the Ukrainian LGBT+ movement is very successful. We have a very successful Pride march, 7,000 people marched with us in September last year. We have Pride marches in a few other cities in Ukraine. We have over 30 LGBT+ organisations working in different regions of Ukraine. But the community is really threatened, and what we see now is that all members of the community are currently under threat, every day.”
LGBT+ people are already dealing with discrimination in Ukraine’s army
Edwards Reese, another LGBT+ rights activist working with Kiev Pride, says that queer Ukrainians are “ready to fight” if the war escalates – however, they’re also concerned about the potential for discrimination.
“There are a lot of LGBTQ people in the army right now, and also there is a problem that if the war gets bigger, then there will be more discrimination to LGBTQ people in the army, because there is discrimination – we know about it, but if there is a massive call to the army, there will be more queer people in the army and more discrimination,” they point out.
A defiant but still very much defeated Donald Trump vowed to ban trans athletes nationwide if elected to a new term as president.
Trump, the former firebrand Republican president, took to Conroe, Texas Saturday night (29 January) for his first Texan MAGA rally since 2019.
In a meandering speech that stretched more than an hour-long, Trump laid out a string of promises certain to roil his critics – LGBT+ people included – at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds.
“We will ban men from participating in women’s sports,” he told his toadying supporters dressed in “Trump 2024” t-shirts and hats. “So ridiculous.”
“Have you heard about the man who is on the swim team that I know well?” he said, misgendering Thomas and doing so as he mention how Thomas shattered two women’s records with a 38-second margin against her closest competitor.
Trump then took aim at trailblazing trans weightlifters such as Laurel Hubbard, who, like Thomas, saw their wish to compete in the sport they love turn them into walking targets for a snickering right-wing media.
“But the best is the weightlifting records – they’re going,” Trump said. “One guy walks in with one hand [and] he broke the record that held up for 20 years.”
“Take a look at the weightlifting record,” he told bystanders, “two ounces is unacceptable. They beat ’em by many, many, many, many, many, many pounds.”
Hubbard, who became the first openly trans woman to compete in the Olympics, raised alarm among right-wing weirdos for existing last year. She bowed out of the competition after failing to lift 125kg in the +87kg women’s weightlifting final.
Donald Trump promises to pardon 6 Jan rioters in roiling rally speech
To Trump, a second term in the White House would be a return to law and order. To squash undocumented migrants, criminals and, er, those not prosecuted for attacking the Capitol on 6 January last year.
“If I run, and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan 6 fairly,” he said near the end of his inflammatory and vastly incoherent speech. It’s Trump, after all.
“And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”
Speaking of unfair treatment, Trump singled out immigrants with a level of vitriol all too typical among populist leaders, saying they are “invading” the US and causing the death of “countless” Americans.
Thousands of onlookers cheered after.
In what amounted to a MAGA Reddit user bingo card, Trump rattled on about critical race theory, his controversial tax dealings, Joe Biden and his completely debased claims of electoral fraud.
“We will take back America and in 2024 we will take back this beautiful, beautiful home that is white,” Trump ended. “He’s so great. We all love him.”
A group of rowdy men told a gay man and a trans women they would stab them and demanded they leave a London takeaway all while filming them.
An alarming and since-deleted TikTok video shows the moment Valentino Kyriakou and Naya Martinez were targeted by a group of men in Wembley, west London.
According to the BBC, the pair said that as they waited for their food at Tasty Chicken along Bridge Road on Saturday (29 January), the group targeted them.
A Metropolitan Police Service spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that “inquiries are underway to identify those shown in the video”. PinkNews has also contacted the police for comment.
“They were calling us every name and then threatening to ‘shank’ us,” 20-year-old Kyriakou told the broadcaster, “which is obviously stab us in the shop, so we just had to leave without even getting all our food.”
Grabbing the food they’d been served so far, Kyriakou and Martinez fled from the shop – but the incident soon spilt out onto the street, as the men yelled: “Get the f**k out not. Get out now. Get out the shop now.
“You come back, I’ll shank you both. I’ll shank you up. Get out. Take your f**king bag and get out.”
“Don’t f**king come here again,” one of the hooded men added. “Don’t f**king come here again.”
“They were so, so angry, I don’t know why,” Martinez recounted. “They literally were so threatened by us – it was crazy. And all we were doing was standing there waiting to pick up our food.
“All I felt in that moment was: ‘Oh my God, I am going to get touched soon, this is going to be physical.’”
During the incident, the men brashly videoed themselves abusing the pair. The clip later went viral on Twitter and Facebook.
Seemingly comfortable enough to film himself hurling abuse at two people, the TikTok video, Kyriakou and Martinez said, shows the impunity homophobic people increasingly feel in Britain to openly hate.
“Stuff like this within London in the LGBT+ community happens every day,” Martinez said.
“I was surprised the video went that viral and it’s getting people’s attention.”
Hate crimes against LGBT+ people overall have soared by 210 per cent in the last five years. The greatest and most startling surge was seen with transphobic attacks that have quadrupled in the last six years.
Only 14 per cent of reported anti-LGBT+ hate crimes are actually resolved by the police, the investigative journalism unit Liberty Investigates found.
But Martinez, for one, refuses to feel defeated.
On Instagram Monday (31 January), she uploaded a bathroom mirror selfie wearing a breathtaking bodysuit in defiance of her attackers.
“I see why they wanted me out of the chicken shop,” she joked.
“We were made aware of this video on Saturday, 29 January which shows an incident at a takeaway restaurant in Bridge Road, Wembley,” a Met Police spokesperson told PinkNews. “The incident happened on Thursday, 20 January.
“Officers have now spoken to the victims and enquiries are ongoing to identify others in the video.
“The incident is being treated as a hate crime. No arrests have been made.
Two men have been executed in Iran after they were imprisoned for six years on anti-gay “sodomy” charges, according to human rights groups and reports.
Mehrdad Karimpou and Farid Mohammadi are said to have been killed in the Maragheh prison in northwestern Iran, according to the Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA).
According to HRANA, the two men were arrested six years ago on charges of “sodomy by force” and have been in prison ever since.
LGBT+ people in often face horrific violence and discrimination just for living their truth. Sex between people of the same gender is illegal in the country and can be punishable by death or imprisonment.
Iran currently criminalises sex between men with the death penalty or 100 lashes and sex between women with 100 lashes.
Karmel Melamed, a journalist covering Iran, wrote on Twitter that the “Ayatollah regime” in the country “just executed two gay men” by “hanging” for the “crime of sodomy”.
He also called out US secretary of state Antony Blinken, LGBT+ organisation GLAAD and “other LGBT groups” in the US for not being “outraged” by “this horrific crime”.
Human rights and LGBT+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told the Jerusalem Post that the execution of the two men “follows a long-standing regime” of “state-sanctioned murder of gay men”.
He added these executions often involve “disputed charges after unfair trials”.
According to Iran Human Rights, the executions have not been announced by state-run media.
The non-governmental organisation added that defended in cases involving “sodomy by force” are “usually tortured during detention to obtain a confession”; and in some cases, the case is “processed hastily without the presence of a lawyer or defence counsel”.
The Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network (6Rang) reported that Sareh was arrested by the IRGC in October while she was in the West Azerbaijan province of Iran. She was reportedly attempting to flee across the border into Turkey.
According to 6Rang, a news agency reported in November that the IRGC had arrested people in West Azerbaijan on charges of “forming a gang for trafficking girls and supporting homosexuality”. 6Rang suspected this could be related to Sareh’s arrest.
The UK has seen a sharp rise in an “extremely drug-resistant” strain of the STI shigella among gay and bisexual men, according to a government report.
Although not well-known, a shigella infection, from a bacterium that causes dysentery, can be very serious.
Shigella is transmitted through the accidental ingestion of faecal matter containing the bacteria, such as by licking skin, condoms, toys or fingers that have been contaminated during rimming, fisting, or giving oral sex after anal sex. Even a tiny amount can cause infection.
The infection affects the gut, and can cause severe and long-lasting diarrhoea, stomach cramps and a fever. Because of its symptoms, it is sometimes mistaken for food poisoning.
The symptoms of shigella usually subside within a week, but in some cases hospitalisation is required to administer intravenous antibiotics. Rarely, shigella can spread to the blood and become life-threatening.
On Thursday (27 January), the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) reported that cases have been on the rise among gay and bisexual men,
In the last four months, the agency has recorded 47 cases of the STI, while in the 17-month period between April 2020 and August 2021, there were just 16 cases.
The UKHSA said that “recent cases show resistance to antibiotics is increasing”.
Dr Gauri Godbole, a consultant medical microbiologist at UKHSA, said in a statement: “Practising good hygiene after sex is really important to keep you and your partners safe. Avoid oral sex immediately after anal sex, change condoms between anal or oral sex and wash your hands with soap after sexual contact.”
She said it was vital that men who have sex with men speak to a GP or sexual health clinic if they experience symptoms so they can be tested for shigella, which is usually done via a stool sample.
“Men with shigella may have been exposed to other STIs including HIV, so a sexual health screen at a clinic or ordering tests online is recommended,” Godbole continued.
“If you have been diagnosed with shigella, give yourself time to recover. Keep hydrated and get lots of rest.
“Don’t have sex until seven days after your last symptom and avoid spas, swimming, jacuzzis, hot tubs and sharing towels as well as preparing food for other people until a week after symptoms stop.”
The UK’s first ever national LGBT+ museum is set to open its doors in Kings Cross, London, later this year.
The museum – called Queer Britain – will explore the stories, people and places that are central to the LGBT+ community in the UK and beyond. It will be located at 2 Granary Square in Kings Cross, which is owned by Art Fund, the UK’s national charity for art.
Organisers have been putting plans in place to open an LGBT+ focused museum since 2018. They have promised that Queer Britain will be “an inclusive place that promises to welcome everyone regardless of sexuality or gender identity” .
The museum is expected to open its doors free of charge in the spring, according to Art Fund, although a firm date has not yet been specified.
Queer Britain museum will explore LGBT+ community’s ‘diverse histories’
Lisa Power, a trailblazing LGBT+ activist and trustee of Queer Britain, celebrated the news in a statement released by Art Fund.
“I’m really excited that Queer Britain is finally going to have a space to show what we can do and that we’re here for all the community, from old lesbian feminist warhorses like me to young queer folk of all genders and ethnicities. Queer Britain aims to tell our many and diverse histories, and now we have a home to do that from.”
Anjum Mouj, also a trustee of Queer Britain, said: “The UK is finally getting the LGBTQ+ museum it deserves, to reflect and celebrate all our exciting and wildly diverse communities, whatever their sexualities, gender identities, backgrounds, ability or heritage. Community lives in unity.”
Joseph Galliano, director and co-founder of the museum, said the time had come for the UK to have its own LGBT+ focused museum.
“We are delighted to have found our first home in beautiful Granary Square with Art Fund as our first landlord,” Galliano said. “It’s a prime location accessible to swathes of the country, and in a part of town with a rich queer heritage.”
Queer Britain will be made up of four galleries, a workshop, an education space, a gift shop, and it all also be home to offices for the team. Organisers have promised that it will be “fully accessible” with lifts and ramps and entry will “always” be free.
A great deal has changed for LGBT+ people in the United States since Joe Biden came into office one year ago today – but there’s still a long way to go.
The dark days of the Trump presidency aren’t quite as distant a memory as we might like. The far-right still holds a great deal of influence in the United States, and queer people continue to face disproportionate levels of violence and discrimination.
Since inauguration day on 20 January 2021, Joe Biden and Kamala Harrishave strengthened legal rights, they have rolled back Trump-era attacks, and they’ve created a more hospitable environment for LGBT+ people to exist in. The feeling among LGBT+ rights activists and advocacy groups is clear – it’s a good start, but there’s still plenty more to achieve.
One year on from inauguration day, we take a look at some of the issues Biden and Harris need to focus on over the next year to ensure that LGBT+ people’s lives are improving in tangible ways.
Joe Biden needs to end the epidemic of violence against trans women
Trans people, particularly trans women of colour, continue to face shocking levels of violence in the United States and across the world. We wish we could say things were getting better – but Biden’s first year in office was also the deadliest year on record for trans people in the United States.
One thing is clear – something needs to change, and it needs to change fast. The problem is that a political solution isn’t entirely clear or straightforward, according to Sarah Warbelow, legal director at the Human Rights Campaign.
It’s a regressive policy that is not based in science, and it’s a cruel hangover from the worst days of the AIDS epidemic.
“The American Red Cross just announced a blood donation crisis,” Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO and president of GLAAD, tells PinkNews. “Our nation’s blood supply is drastically, dangerously low. One way to alleviate the shortage and advance equality would be to urge the FDA to eliminate the discriminatory deferral period for gay and bisexual men to donate blood, and lead all agencies to revise donor screening processes to focus on current science rather than outdated notions and stigma.”
“We applaud the administration’s efforts to enforce nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ young people in schools, particularly transgender, nonbinary, and intersex students who are experiencing ongoing attacks and attempts to sanction discrimination in state legislatures across the country,” they say.
“GLSEN will continue to partner with the US Department of Education and other federal agencies to strengthen these protections and promote inclusive data collection practices that will help increase the effectiveness of programs and services.”
Over the next year, GLSEN would like to see the Biden administration expand on its current efforts to advance equality for LGBT+ people who face marginalisation in the education system. They would also like to see the administration “continue to se a tone that encourages classroom teachers, families, principals, administrators, state leaders and everyone who is part of K-12 learning communities to affirm and meet the needs of all students”.
The federal government must focus on LGBT+ mental health
Numerous studies have shown that LGBT+ people are more likely to experience mental health difficulties, and they’re also at a greater risk of suicide than their straight and cisgender peers.
Preston Mitchum is director of advocacy and government affairs at The Trevor Project, an organisation that works to prevent suicide among LGBT+ people. He says Biden “deserves credit” for prioritising LGBT+ representation in his cabinet and for reversing the trans military ban, among other measures.
However, more has to be done to protect the mental wellbeing of LGBT+ people in America.
“We will continue to push the administration to take action at the federal level to protect young people from the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy, to expand access to mental health care for all, to improve the collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data across federal agencies, and to allocate the resources necessary to make [crisis line] 988 a success come July, including specialised services for LGBTQ youth,” Mitchum says.
Adam Polaski, communications director with Southern Equality, says the Biden administration needs to challenge those laws. He notes that Biden “has followed through on many of his commitments related to LGBTQ+ equality”, but it’s now time to look towards the future.
“We’d like to see him continue to use the ‘bully pulpit’ now to call for passage of federal non-discrimination protections – and, what’s more, work specifically with legislators on both sides of the aisle to pass meaningful federal protections,” Polaski says.
“He and his Department of Justice can also dive into challenging anti-LGBTQ laws, including the anti-trans healthcare discrimination law in Arkansas and myriad anti-trans student athletics laws. And we’d like to see him continue nominating out LGBTQ+ people and allies to federal judgeships and other government positions.”
Giggle, a social media app designed for “females”, has come under fire for excluding trans women with its use of artificial intelligence.
The app is marketed as a female-only space that allows women to find roommates, engage in freelance work, find friendship groups and more.
The Verge reported that Giggle, which first launched in early 2020, uses facial recognition to determine if new users are male or female, however it has allegedly failed to properly recognise women of colour or transgender women.
Jenny, a 23-year-old trans woman from California, told The Verge: “The way the app works is when you install it, you have to take a picture of yourself and it uses AI to analyse your face.
“And if it decides you’re a woman, it will let you in. If it decides you’re a man, it will reject you. But if it rejects you, you can just submit another picture.”
Jenny said she first tried to sign up for Giggle two years ago, however she claims she was removed from the app without warning when she tweeted about joining. A Twitter user tagged Giggle’s founder and CEO Sall Grover, claiming that Jenny was “transgressing women’s boundaries” by using the app.
Grover told PinkNews: “Giggle is a social networking app for females. Males are excluded from the user base. There is no other specific demographic that is excluded from the app other than males.
“Like how Grindr is an app for gay men and therefore not for women, Giggle is an app for a specific demographic. In our case, females.
“Giggle is clearly stated as being for females. It would be lovely, however, if male people respected female spaces and left them alone.”
Taking to Twitter, Grover shared PinkNews‘ comment request pertaining to the exclusion of trans women, suggesting she considered trans women to be males, remarking: “In case anyone was wondering whether or not misogyny is alive and f**king well.”
When asked if trans women were encouraged to join Giggle, she replied: “No males are ‘encouraged’ to join Giggle.”
Grover also failed to acknowledge that Grindr is not just an app exclusively for gay men, but instead a space that’s welcoming of trans and non-binary people, as well as bisexual and questioning cis men.
PinkNews has contacted Grover for clarification.
Giggle has also been criticised for its use of AI to open an account; the app works with facial-recognition AI company Kairos, which was found to misgender women of colour in a 2019 report.
The way the app works is that a user sends off a selfie to Giggle. If the Kairos AI is 95 per cent certain the person is female, they are allowed to create an account.
In the 2019 report on Kairos, however, Joe Buolamwini, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, found that the technology misgendered darker-skinned women 22.5 per cent of the time.
Melissa Doval, then-CEO of Kairos, told the New York Times that it had since made changes to its algorithm to improve its accuracy.
Grover denied that the platform’s AI prevented women of colour from using it, saying “women of every race are not just welcome on Giggle, women of every race are on Giggle”.
The horrific spate of anti-LGBT+ killings that have fuelled fear in Jamaica is to be investigated as part of a new podcast series.
Ring The Alarm, an Apple Podcasts series that will explore what it’s like to be LGBT+ in the island country, will be hosted by Jasmyne Cannick, one of Los Angeles’ most recognisable Black political strategists and journalists.
Cannick helped capture national attention to the sordid killings by small-time American Democratic donor Ed Buck – now she’s training focus on the creeping homicide rates of LGBT+ people in Jamaica.
“I have always used my platform to elevate Black stories and issues I felt were being ignored and Ring the Alarm is no different,” Cannick told The Advocate.
“When I was asked to come to Jamaica to speak to the LGBTQ+ community and share their stories, I immediately said yes.
“I said yes because American’s have had so much to say about the plight of queer people in places like Iran and Afghanistan but for decades have ignored the murders of lesbian women, gay men, and trans men and women in Jamaica.
“Well not anymore.”
The world ‘can’t keep ignoring’ wave of LGBT+ murders in Jamaica
In Jamaica, it is illegal to be gay, punishable by up to a decade in prison with hard labour. Some take the law into their own hands, carrying out brutal torture and murders that capture the deepening homophobia in the country.
Many queer Jamaicans live in fear, with more than half saying they have been victims of some form of violence fuelled by hatred for their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to the Human Rights Watch.
Contempt towards LGBT+ people is entrenched in the Jamaican state, the group warned.
Queer youth rejected by their families remain among the most vulnerable in society and battle to survive as the public and police target them.
But described by Cannick as like a modern-day underground railroad, countless safehouses provide LGBT+ people with a place of safety, healing and camaraderie.
Cannick hopes to tell the stories behind the safehouses and those who run them while raising money for the organisers. Above all, she hopes to raise national attention once again to a pressing issue – the killing of the most vulnerable.
“Americans love vacationing in Jamaica,” she added, “but just beyond the carefully curated tourism corridor, people are being murdered for being queer.
“We can’t be okay with that. We can’t keep ignoring that.”
