■ United States
City launching AIDS initiative
The city of Washington will this week launch an unprecedented campaign to test every resident aged between 14 and 84 for HIV. The initiative, believed to be the most comprehensive in the history of the AIDS epidemic, is part of a plan to make HIV testing as routine as getting a blood-pressure check in the city that has the US' worst rate of new infections. Clinics and doctors' surgeries will receive hundreds of thousands of free oral testing kits, which can indicate a person's HIV status within 20 minutes. The aim of the program -- which uses the motto "Come Together DC, Get Screened for HIV" -- is to ensure that "all Washington DC residents know their HIV status by December 31 2006".
■ United States
University head falls to death
Community leaders were shocked to learn of the apparent suicide of the University of California, Santa Cruz chancellor on Saturday. "Everybody's stunned," Santa Cruz Mayor Cynthia Mathews said of the death of Denice Dee Denton, 46. Denton apparently jumped from a 43-story luxury apartment building in downtown San Francisco, police and university officials said. Running the University of California campus can be a pressure-cooker, Mathews said. "This is a community that puts everybody in a spotlight," she said. "That can create a lot of pressure. I'm not sure she was prepared for that." Denton's mother, Carolyn Mabee reportedly told investigators that her daughter was "very depressed."
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