It's been 30 years since the discovery of the AIDS virus in the United States, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the South includes the largest number of people in this country living with or dying from HIV/AIDS.

Four out of ten (40%) Americans living with AIDS reside in the South.

In Mecklenburg County, an average of seven new HIV/AIDS cases is reported daily, according to The Regional AIDS Interfaith Network, or RAIN. Most of those cases affect African Americans.

African Americans are disproportionately impacted by HIV. African Americans comprise 68% of all new reported HIV cases in 2007, despite representing only 28% of the county's total population

From 1999 to 2007 HIV cases increased by 57%

Mecklenburg County has the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases in North Carolina

North Carolina was ranked 8th out of the top 15 states with new AIDS cases among African Americans

• December 1

World AIDS Day Kick off: Reflection and Celebration
Uptown Charlotte’s Marshall Park
12 p.m. to 1 p.m.
Featuring…Gospel choir, Rock Band, Consumer and Provider guest speaker, spoken word, and our Red Balloon release
In honor of World AIDS Day we ask that you wear a red ribbon or red attire.

• Thursday

The VOICES Project
Actor’s Theater
650 E. Stonewall St.
Doors open at 6p.m., event starts at 7p.m.
Produced and hosted by RAIN, The Actor’s Theater of Charlotte, and the Mecklenburg County Health Department

The Red Pump Awards
7 p.m.
Award Honoree: Joanne Jenkins
Harvey B Gantt Center

The RED and REASONS Affair — Bar Crawl
The Belfast Mill and surrounding bars in the Courtyard
10p.m. until 2a.m.
Admission $5 donation all night with great drink specials
21 and older with proper I.D.
In honor of World AIDS Day we ask that you wear a red ribbon or red attire.

FREE and CONFIDENTIAL HIV testing
9 a.m. — until
5501 Executive Center Dr.

• Friday

FREE and CONFIDENTIAL HIV and Syphilis testing
8 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Carolinas CARE Partnership
7510 E. Independence Blvd. Suite 105
Rapid testing with 15 minute results

This video's message is funny when you've got a megaphone in your hand, but it's something I've said for years: Those in power want everyone to just settle down and stare at their screens and shiny things, because, according to them, everything's fine. It's fine! Go back to your regularly scheduled programming and don't ask any questions.

Check out more of cveitch's "Everything is OK" video series here.

Thanks to OccupyMyThoughts for sharing this video with us.

It seems Charlotte's Bank of America is on all of the wrong lists these days. First, the S&P drops the bank's credit rating and now an international coalition of civil society and environmental organizations lists the bank as one of the top three environmental killers.

Bank of America is turning into that dude you don't want to date — dirty with bad credit. CEO Brian Moynihan's week really must suck.

According to the study, which you can read in full at Banktrack.org, "coal financing as coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of man-made CO2 emissions and the major culprit in the drama of climate change."

Need proof the climate is changing? Think about that 70 degree Thanksgiving we just had.

More from the study:

The organizations examined the portfolios of 93 of the world's leading banks and looked into their support for 31 major coal-mining companies (representing 44% of global coal production) and 40 producers of coal-fired electricity (which together own over 50% of global coal-fired generation capacity). The total value of coal financing provided by these banks since 2005 (the year the Kyoto Protocol came into force) amounts to 232 billion Euro.

The study identifies the top twenty "climate killers" in the banking world. Among the top twenty are banks from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, China, Italy and Japan. The top three banks fueling climate change worldwide are JP Morgan Chase (EUR 16,5 bio.), Citi (EUR 13,7 bio.) and Bank of America (EUR 12,6 bio.).

Coal-fired power plants are not cheap to build. Typically, a 600 Megawatt plant will cost around US$ 2 billion. Power producers therefore rely heavily on banks to provide and mobilize the necessary capital for coal plants. "Our figures clearly show that coal financing is on the rise," notes Tristen Taylor of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg. "Between 2005 and 2010, coal financing almost doubled. If we don't take Banks to task now, coal financing will continue to grow," he warns.

Wells Fargo is ranked 19 on the list.

Activist Steven Navarro spoke in support of Occupy Charlotte at Monday's Charlotte City Council meeting. I've met him a few times down at Old City Hall, where the Occupiers are camping and where he's camped more than once. He's a Ron Paul supporter, a veteran and an interesting conversationalist full of hard facts and bright ideas.

Monday, Navarro urged Council to "... stay the course on how (they've) treated this spontaneous uprising ... and support them in every way ..."

Click here for a transcript of his speech and here to watch more of his Occupy Charlotte videos.

By the way, anyone can speak at a city council meeting. Click here to find out how to sign up, and here for meeting agendas, minutes and video from past meetings.

You only have three minutes to talk, which is why Navarro is talking fast, so keep that in mind if you decide to speak up, too.

Will the bad news from Camp Lejeune ever end? Now, it seems, an inordinately high rate of breast cancer among males who lived on the base may soon spike.

In case you're not clued in, here's the summary: The water at Camp Lejeune, "the largest Marine Corps Base on the East Coast," according to its website, was contaminated for decades, and that contamination made people sick.

The U.S. Environmental Protection agency alerted the base to its polluted drinking water problem back in the early 1980s. The problem started in the 1950s and stems from degreasers, dry cleaning solvents and an estimated 70 other chemicals being dumped near drinking water wells. Learn more at "The Few, The Proud, the Forgotten," a website created by Marines for Marines.

In 2009, the U.S. Government finally stopped denying that water pollution on the base has caused grave illnesses in service members, their families and for others exposed to the tainted water. Last year, the U.S. Navy agreed to fund a study, at the urging of a bipartisan group of senators including N.C. Republican Richard Burr and N.C. Democrat Kay Hagan — nearly 30 years after the EPA sounded the alarm.

Some of those health problems include — in children and adults — brain cancer, leukemia, lymphoma and the more than 70 instances of male breast cancer that, according to this report, may represent only a fraction of cases:

Mike Partain was startled two years ago when he tracked down nine former male residents of Camp Lejeune, N.C., who shared an exceedingly rare trait.

A breast cancer diagnosis.

Partain, who was born at the base in 1969 and is himself a breast cancer survivor, would eventually find 73 other men who lived at Lejeune, drank its polluted water and were diagnosed with the disease.

His list may soon get much, much longer.

Federal scientists at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry confirmed last week that 184 male Marine Corps veterans with a history of breast cancer have been identified in Department of Veterans Affairs records.

...

Researchers are not done combing VA records — about 38 percent of the veterans on a VA cancer registry must still be checked. So that tally of 184 male breast cancer cases could substantially increase.

In addition, VA records would not reflect civilians, such as the family members of Marines who lived at Camp Lejeune.

In fact, about a dozen of the 73 people on Partain's list never served in the Corps.

Read the entire St. Petersburg Times article, by William R. Levesque, here.