Sizzla jailed
Antigay Jamaican dancehall singer Sizzla ( Miguel Collins ) was jailed in Jamaica Feb. 2 for swearing during a Dec. 25 concert.
The two-week sentence resulted from words Sizzla used on stage in St. Thomas parish, despite warnings from local police to watch his language.
He was charged under a law that bans indecent expression and clothing.
Last year, Sizzla's tour of the United Kingdom was canceled after gay activists objected to his 'kill queers' lyrics, which include 'Burn the man who rides a man from behind' ( 'Fire fi di man dem weh go ride man behind' ) .
'They've got to apologize to God because they break God's law,' Sizzla said of gays in an interview with BBC 1Xtra last November. 'I sing 'fire burn for homosexuals' and sometime in some street I walk, I see them and me no touch them. If I don't like what you're doing I don't come there, if you don't like what I'm doing or what I say, you don't come where I'm at.'
HIV rate climbs
in Norway
Officials blame the climbing HIV rate in Norway on gay men having unsafe sex.
Fifty-seven men were infected in 2003 compared to about 30 in other recent years, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said Jan. 17. Preliminary numbers for 2004 show 61 infections.
'The real number is probably much higher,' the institute's Øivind Nilsen told Dagsavisen, a daily newspaper. 'One of the most worrying reasons is that gays expose themselves to a risk of infection by having unsafe sex.'
In Oslo last year, one HIV-positive man transmitted the virus to eight other gay men, Nilsen said.
Norway has about 4.5 million residents.
Spanish Catholic Church OKs condom use, then backtracks
Spain's Roman Catholic Church broke with the Vatican Jan. 18 and said it's OK to use condoms to protect against HIV transmission.
Rigid Vatican teaching forbids any sex act that cannot lead to pregnancy and prohibits all sex outside of heterosexual marriage. The church maintains that masturbation, oral sex and use of birth-control methods are mortal sins.
But, after meeting with Spain's health minister, Spanish Bishops Conference spokesman Juan Antonio Martínez Camino told reporters, 'Condoms have a place in the global prevention of AIDS.'
A day later, however, the church seemed to backtrack. The Bishops Conference released a statement which said: ' [ Martínez Camino's ] statement must be understood in the context of Catholic doctrine which maintains the use of contraception is an immoral sexual conduct. The only truly recommendable practice is the responsible use of sexuality, in accordance with moral norms.'
