(Editor’s note: The Rev. Canon Albert Ogle is en route to a UNAIDS meeting in Geneva where the difficulties of proving prevention and health services to men who have sex with men (MSM) will be the focus of the two-day consultation. Given that he criminalization of homosexuality in 76 countries makes it so much more difficult to reach and support these vulnerable populations, he describes how the work is being hampered in Zambia by religious zealots who have targeted one of the leading HIV activists there.)

NEW YORK -- Hundreds of New Yorkers who lived during the worst devastation of the AIDS years, joined by leading educators and scientists, will come together in a free panel discussion and town-hall meeting to discuss the unique challenges they face as a group.

Titled "Is This My Beautiful Life? Perspectives From Survivors of the AIDS Generation," this first-ever community forum will take place on Thursday, May 9, from 7-9 pm, in Mason Hall at Baruch College, 17 Lexington Ave. (enter on 23rd Street). The space is wheelchair accessible.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, will stop administering injections in its HVTN 505 clinical trial of an investigational HIV vaccine regimen because an independent data and safety monitoring board (DSMB) found during a scheduled interim review that the vaccine regimen did not prevent HIV infection nor reduce viral load (the amount of HIV in the blood) among vaccine recipients who became infected with HIV.

(Editor’s note: As the World Bank announces a landmark research project on the economic costs of homophobia, the Rev. Canon Albert Ogle reflects on what it feels like to be on the first-ever LGBT panel at the world Bank’s Spring Civil Society meetings this week.)

Five-hundred civil society organizations are gathering from all over the world this weekend at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. to engage in discourse with the World Bank staff.