(Jakarta, Indonesia)  The world continues to lose an ugly battle to HIV/AIDS that shows no sign of letting up after 25 million people have died a quarter-century into the epidemic, the head of the U.N.'s HIV/AIDS joint program said.

"I think we will see a further globalization of the epidemic spreading to every single corner of the planet," UNAIDS head Peter Piot told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Geneva.

UNAIDS on Tuesday was scheduled to launch a 630-page report that takes stock of where the world currently stands with nearly 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS. It documents countries' progress and failures, and projects what must happen to keep some regions from experiencing disaster. The report was set to be released a day ahead of a High Level Meeting on AIDS in New York, a week prior to the 25th anniversary of the first documented AIDS cases on June 5, 1981.

"It won't go away one fine day, and then we wake up and say, 'Oh, AIDS is gone,'" Piot said. "I think we have to start thinking about looking at the next generations. There's an increasing diversity in how the epidemic looks."

Piot said that there is still time to stop it from worsening, but action is needed now on a number of fronts.

"Ultimately, it depends on how the leadership reacts, how the international community will continue to respond and how ready communities are to face the problem," Piot said. "Intervention is very low ... for many critical populations in many countries. We need to really intensify the response to AIDS."

Piot said the picture is not hopeless, with examples of progress in nearly every part of the world. He said Thailand and Uganda were two of the only previous examples where exploding epidemics were curbed, but a handful of other countries, including Kenya and Zimbabwe, are also starting to show promise.

Epidemics are diversifying, Piot said, with some driven by unprotected sex, others by dirty needles and some a combination of the two overlapping each other. Those trends must be identified and targeted.

Currently, about 1.3 million people in poor countries have access to antiretroviral treatment, but about 80 percent still are not receiving drugs.

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the epicenter of the virus, Piot said. The overall percentage of adults infected in some of the hardest-hit countries continues to climb, with several rates reaching double digits.

"In think in Africa, it is only comparable in demographic terms to the slave trade regarding the impact it has had on the population," Piot said. "In southern Africa, HIV prevalence continues to go up, and they're already the world record."

Piot said that the sheer population of Asia, home to most of the world's population, makes it a potential problem because even small gains in overall per capita infections equal huge numbers -- especially in countries like China and India, with over 1 billion people each. More than 5 million people are infected in India alone.

The Asia-Pacific region has 8.3 million people living with the virus, the second-highest after sub-Saharan Africa.

Papua New Guinea, which shares an island north of Australia with Indonesia's easternmost Papua province, has one of the region's worst epidemics in a country plagued by political instability, poverty and rampant sexual violence against women. Piot said it's the only place in the region that resembles an Africa-style epidemic.

Piot said Eastern Europe and Central Asia have become a new front where infections have expanded as people have access to more money and started buying injecting drugs -- instead of just shipping them through -- from countries like Afghanistan.

"Absolute numbers are still low, but when you look at the spread of the disease, we know from experience where that leads," Piot said. "The Middle East is the last part of the world where HIV is not spreading rapidly."

©365Gay.com 2006

 I personally am excited that Mariah (aka 'Mimi') is going on tour this summer. Mariah, who has not gone on tour since 2003, has officially announced a tour title: 'The Adventures of Mimi'. The tour starts in August in Miami, FL going all over North America and ending up in Phoenix in October.

I have already ordered my tickets for the last date of the tour in Phoenix. I am sitting in row 18 in section 101. If you are going you need to let me know because I have a section that I am developing for my site dedicated to Mariah. (http://www.clubmimi.net). I am going to work on the layout tonight and you need let me know what you think. Right now there is a link up to sign up to join the Club.Mimi Adventures team. If you're interested, we'd love to hear from you.

I am still doing the 'Say Somethin'' gig but it doesn't look like it's going too well. If you have the effort to try.. let's vote for Mariah's song every way possible.

Kneeling on my knees to ask for forgiveness.

I am asking that you give me every chance that you can
I am asking that you let me start all over with you and learn from what we've been through
And don't push me away because that's what it feels that you are doing

Kneel on your knees and realize that you can be wrong.

That this time you were wrong
And that you need to realize that love is too strong for me to let you go
And that this love is too strong for you to even think about leaving.

I think I lost my mind
I think that I am tried of being nice
I am tired of living life as the cool guy

That everyone seems to take advantage of and
Run through and not leave anything for me
Leaving me lonely

I think that I've lost my mind and will leave
Gossip and drama for the rest of you that are all caught in it.

I am tried of getting worried about the things I can't fix
I know that people like to take advantage of me and I am building a village
and I am not letting you in motherfucker cos you hurt me once and I am not doing it again.

 I haven't written in awhile someone has made it clear that I do need to write more often. Plus, I said that I will include you on my journey through my growing and learning journey called uh.. Life. Please comment and let me know what you think. I am sorry there is a lot of I-usage in this but it's all part of the process.

I am strong. I am willing. I am not afraid to admit that I am scared that I will get abused for who I am. I've gotten abused so much in the past two years that I am paranoid when I have found something real. I am afraid of losing my boyfriend, who I love so much. It's because I've been damaged by numerous people that I can't see that the goodness is the goodness right in front of me. I have set myself up for automatic defense. I've set myself for the cheating and the tears along with the fears. It really shouldn't be that way but that's the way I feel.

I am afraid of losing this good thing that looks me right in the eye. But still it's love that I feel. I should stop overlooking and appreciate what is that I have. For right now, I have this feeling of being lost and possibly forgotten because I sort of slowed my life down to realize what else is going on. To learn about me and only me.. and found out what is and what was that bothering me.

I realize that I am a smart young man that has not even began to reach his full potential and somewhere the rest of it is hidden. It's waiting for me to unleash it. All this time, I have been sitting around thinking that it was going to come and find me. It's not going to come find me and make me successful. I have work and earn what I want to get the success. I realize that I am a man of different talents. Many different talents that sometime needs to take it slow and try use these to make myself better. I have to learn to put myself before anyone else before I can help them. I have to have the basics of knowing how I function and how I work before I know what's going on with someone's life. I have stop trying to fix other people's problems when mine are just as bad and sometime worse. I have to focus on eliminating the fears and tears and all the anger that lies inside me. I have to stop being afraid of who I am and how people might not like me if I change. I have to realize that I can be better and achieve more if I stop worrying about how it affects everyone else before it affects me. I have to stop letting people walk on me when they feel like it. I have stand tall and firm and let them know that what they are doing to me is painful, wrong and never to be done again.

Break me if you want.. but we all break down to build and rise up into stronger people. I am not afraid to say that I have been blessed and that I believe in a God. I shall never be afraid that I kneel down on my knees and ask for forgiveness for any sin that I might have done or shoved into the face of others. I am at a point where I am growing and those that don't like how I change and develop need to gracefully walk away.

by Richard N. Ostling, Associated Press

(New York City)  A line from Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" tells you why it's easily the most disputed religious novel of all time: "Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false."

With 46 million copies in print, "Da Vinci" has long been a headache for Christian scholars and historians, who are worried about the influence on the faith from a single source they regard as wrong-headed.

Now the controversy seems headed for a crescendo with the release of the movie version of "Da Vinci" May 17-19 around the world. Believers have released an extraordinary flood of material criticizing the story — books, tracts, lectures and Internet sites among them. The conservative Roman Catholic group Opus Dei, portrayed as villainous in the story, is among those asking Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). to issue a disclaimer with the film.

Bart Ehrman, religion chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, likens the phenomenon to the excitement in the 19th century when deluded masses thought Jesus would return in 1844.

The novel's impact on religious ideas in popular culture, he says, is "quite unlike anything we've experienced in our lifetimes."

To give just one example, Ben Witherington III of Asbury Theological Seminary is following up the criticisms of the novel in "The Gospel Code" with lectures in Singapore, Turkey and 30 U.S. cities. He's given 55 broadcast interviews.

Assaults on "Da Vinci" don't just come from evangelicals like Witherington, or from Roman Catholic leaders such as Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, who says Brown is waging "an attack on the Catholic Church" through preposterous historical claims.

Among more liberal thinkers, Harold Attridge, dean of Yale's Divinity School, says Brown has "wildly misinterpreted" early Christianity. Ehrman details Brown's "numerous mistakes" in "Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code" and asks: "Why didn't he simply get his facts straight?"

The problem is that "Da Vinci" is billed as more than mere fiction.

Brown's opening page begins with the word "FACT" and asserts that all descriptions of documents "are accurate."

"It's a book about big ideas, you can love them or you can hate them," Brown said in a speech last week. "But we're all talking about them, and that's really the point."

Brown told National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" during a 2003 publicity tour — he declines interviews now — that his characters and action are fictional but "the ancient history, the secret documents, the rituals, all of this is factual." Around the same time, on CNN he said that "the background is all true."

Christian scholars beg to differ. Among the key issues:

Jesus' divinity.

Brown's version in "Da Vinci": Christians viewed Jesus as a mere mortal until A.D. 325 when the Emperor Constantine "turned Jesus into a deity" by getting the Council of Nicaea to endorse divine status by "a relatively close vote."

His critics' version: Larry Hurtado of Scotland's University of Edinburgh, whose "Lord Jesus Christ" examines first century belief in Jesus' divinity, says that "on chronology, issues, developments, and all the matters asserted, Brown strikes out; he doesn't even get on base."

He and others cite the worship of Jesus in epistles that Paul wrote in the 50s A.D. One passage teaches that Jesus, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" and became a man (Philippians 2:6).

Historians also say the bishops summoned to Nicaea by Constantine never questioned the long-held belief in Jesus' divinity. Rather, they debated technicalities of how he could be both divine and human and approved a new formulation by a lopsided vote, not a close one.

The New Testament.

Brown's version: "More than 80 gospels were considered for the New Testament" but Constantine chose only four. His new Bible "omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up and burned." The Dead Sea Scrolls and manuscripts from Nag Hammadi, Egypt, were "the earliest Christian records," not the four Gospels.

Critics: Historians say Christians reached consensus on the authority of the first century's four Gospels and letters of Paul during the second century. But some of the 27 New Testament books weren't universally accepted until after Constantine's day. Constantine himself had nothing to do with these decisions.

Some rejected writings are called gospels, though they lack the narrative histories that characterize the New Testament's four. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were earlier and won wide consensus as memories and beliefs from Jesus' apostles and their successors.

The rejected books often portrayed an ethereal Jesus lacking the human qualities depicted in the New Testament Gospels — the exact opposite of Brown's scenario. Gnostic gospels purported to contain secret spiritual knowledge from Jesus as the means by which an elite could escape the material world, which they saw as corrupt. They often spurned Judaism's creator God and the Old Testament.

On the question of mass burning of texts deemed heretical, Ehrman of North Carolina says there's little evidence to support that claim. Rejected books simply disappeared because people stopped using them, and nobody bothered to make new copies in an age long before the printing press.

The Dead Sea Scrolls? These were Jewish documents, not Christian ones. The Nag Hammadi manuscripts? With one possible exception, these came considerably later than the New Testament Gospels.

Jesus as married.

Brown's version: Jesus must have wed because Jewish decorum would "virtually forbid" an unmarried man. His spouse was Mary Magdalene and their daughter inaugurated a royal bloodline in France.

Critics: First century Jewish historian Josephus said most Jews married but Essene holy men did not. The Magdalene myth only emerged in medieval times.

Brown cites the Nag Hammadi "Gospel of Philip" as evidence of a marriage, but words are missing from a critical passage in the tattered manuscript: "Mary Magdalene (missing) her more than (missing) the disciples (missing) kiss her (missing) on her (missing)."

Did Jesus kiss Mary on the lips, or cheek or forehead? Whatever, Gnostics would have seen the relationship as platonic and spiritual, scholars say.

James M. Robinson of Claremont (Calif.) Graduate School, a leading specialist, thinks the current popularity of Mary Magdalene "says more about the sex life (or lack of same) of those who participate in this fantasy than it does about Mary Magdalene or Jesus."

The whole "Da Vinci" hubbub, Witherington says, shows "we are a Jesus-haunted culture that's biblically illiterate" and harbors general "disaffection from traditional answers."

But he and others also see a chance to inform people about the beliefs of Christianity through the "Da Vinci" controversy.

"If people are intrigued by the historical questions, there are plenty of materials out there," Yale's Attridge says.

British Justice Peter Smith, who recently backed Brown against plagiarism charges, perhaps best summed up the situation in his decision:

"Merely because an author describes matters as being factually correct does not mean that they are factually correct. It is a way of blending fact and fiction together to create that well known model 'faction.' The lure of apparent genuineness makes the books and the films more receptive to the readers/audiences. The danger of course is that the faction is all that large parts of the audience read, and they accept it as truth."

©365Gay.com 2006

 I am now one of the team leads for Arizona's Mariah Daily.com's "Say Somethin'" Team. Can we say that I am excited. Yes I am. Uberly. It's all good. If anyone has any like ideas on how I can help promote Mariah than just let me know. Send me a comment... let me know. I am excited for this opportuniity.

Sadly, inside I do wish that it was Mariah's 'Fly Like a Bird' that we were promoting. I think I would be much more satisified if they had went through with a video for it.

On the other hand, I am happy for the opportunity to help promote my girl. To the fullest. So if you are interested in joining the Arizona team then go to Mariah Daily.com and sign up. You can join for your team it's uber fine. I won't be offended, truly. It's all for the same cause. Mariah on top!

Kneel down upon your knees
And ask to be forgive for all the sins
That you have placed upon yourself

I am not asking in a sense that you ask a God or higher being of spirituality
I am asking you to ask yourself forgiveness.
To take in that deep breath and let it go and realize

The wrongs.
The rights.
The things that you could have done better and just let them go.

Consider it done.

Kneel.
And say..
"I do my best everyday and the best is all that I have to give
We learn from the mistakes from our past and the present day
I've got to move on to learn more about me and others around me
I've got to learn to not hold so many grudges and discomforts of those
That are involved in my everyday life. I will push all the burdens that they place on me
Back on them by acting as if I am perfectly fine with the discomfort and loathe that
They make or want me to feel."

Take in the deep breath and let it go.
Forgive you and the rest is good and ready to go.

Kneel down upon your knees
And ask to be forgive for all the sins
That you have placed upon yourself

I am not asking in a sense that you ask a God or higher being of spirituality
I am asking you to ask yourself forgiveness.
To take in that deep breath and let it go and realize

The wrongs.
The rights.
The things that you could have done better and just let them go.

Consider it done.

Kneel.
And say..
"I do my best everyday and the best is all that I have to give
We learn from the mistakes from our past and the present day
I've got to move on to learn more about me and others around me
I've got to learn to not hold so many grudges and discomforts of those
That are involved in my everyday life. I will push all the burdens that they place on me
Back on them by acting as if I am perfectly fine with the discomfort and loathe that
They make or want me to feel."

Take in the deep breath and let it go.
Forgive you and the rest is good and ready to go.

I cry no more tears
I feel no more pain

As I look back and look at the regrets that I had
The regrets that I regret having
Plus the regrets of doing the things that I regret

I, today, have finally let it all go
I've stopped stratching myself
With knives and scissors for the wrong doing that
I realize wasn't my fault at all.

For I've been taught that everything's my fault
Yeah it's not. Really it's not.

So I bleed no more
I share no more crimson for the people that
Share nothing with me

I cry no more tears
I feel no more pain.