Bravo, Apple, Showtime, HBO, Absolut, and Levi's, are the gay-friendliest brands, while WalMart, Dunkin Donuts, Cracker Barrel, Exxon Mobil, and Samsung earn the lowest marks from gay and lesbian consumers, according to the 2008 Prime Access/PlanetOut Gay and Lesbian Consumer Study released today.

A bronze bust of the first openly gay man to hold a prominent elected office in the United States is going up in City Hall, more than 28 years after he was assassinated.

The statue to Harvey Milk will be unveiled at San Francisco City Hall on May 22 - on what would have been Milk’s 78th birthday.

Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 and shot to death a year later, along with Mayor George Moscone, by fellow supervisor Dan White.

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When Elizabeth Pisani began her career as an HIV epidemiologist, fewer than 1.5m cases of Aids had been reported across the world. Within a year, by the end of 1997, 30 million people were estimated to be infected with HIV. As Pisani wrote in her first report for World Aids Day, that meant one in every 100 sexually active adults aged between 15 and 49 worldwide.

Today, just over a decade later, the global figure is estimated to be closer to 40 million, with more than 1.5m new infections every year. Yet there is a widespread impression that the world is now winning the fight against the virus. The perception that it threatens only sex workers, heroin addicts and gay men has been replaced by the urgent consensus that this is a universal problem - backed by mind-boggling sums.

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The first national study of LGBT students in Canada has produced shocking results in a country that prides itself on diversity.

The survey of students from grades 8 through 12 was undertaken by Egale, Canada's national LGBT rights organization.

It found that more than two-thirds of LGBT students feel unsafe in their schools.

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Randi Shade was elected Saturday to become Austin, Texas' first openly gay elected city council member.

Shade beat incumbent Jennifer Kim with 64 percent of the vote to win the Place 3 seat. She was endorsed by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.

"I knew it would be an uphill battle to run against an incumbent," Shade, 41, told the American-Statesman newspaper Sunday. "But we built a broad coalition of support, and I think people are ready for a change."

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Despite being the flaming redhead, Miranda's love-life was never as red-hot or risque as that of her Sex And The City pals.

The single working mum was sassy but sensible, cool and collected - set against Samantha's sexy shenanigans, Carrie's eyebrow-raising escapades and Charlotte's madcap marriages.

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A gay Ball State University student said he and his friends were attacked in The Village early Friday morning because of their sexuality.

"I consider it a hate crime," said the student, Kyle Flood.

Flood, 21, Indianapolis, suffered a swollen eye, cuts and bruises and a scratched cornea that required treatment at Ball Memorial Hospital.

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Just over half of 88 hospitals got top marks under a new rating system created by two national gay-rights organizations which hope the standards will result in more compassionate treatment of gay and lesbian patients.

Policies addressed in the ratings include patient nondiscrimination, visitation and decision-making rights for partners, diversity training for staff, and nondiscriminatory employment practices.

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