The incoming president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, withdrew his 25 commission nominees Oct. 27 because of a gay-related controversy.

The European Parliament, which must approve or reject the nominees as a group, was set to reject them all because justice commissioner nominee Rocco Buttiglione had said he believes homosexuality is a “sin.”

The justice commissioner oversees antidiscrimination and civil-liberties issues.

On Oct. 30, Buttiglione withdrew himself from consideration for the job.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is expected to choose a new nominee.

The European arm of the International Lesbian and Gay Association hailed the development.

Taiwan is tracking 15 HIV-positive gay men and their sexual partners after the seropositive men attended a gay-sex party at a private home, the Department of Health said Oct. 20.

Officials said that if the men are found to have engaged in unprotected sex, they could be jailed for seven years.

HIV diagnoses jumped 40 percent in Taiwan during the first 10 months of 2004 compared with 2003, the China Post said.

Last January, Taipei police raided a “gay orgy” at a private apartment, detained 92 men, and force-tested them for sexually transmitted diseases. Twenty-eight tested HIV-positive and 46 had syphilis, officials said.

The seropositive men were added to the government’s official list of people with HIV.

Uzbek gay journalist Ruslan Sharipov, 26, has been granted asylum in the United States, the World Association of Newspapers reported Oct. 25.

Sharipov was imprisoned in Uzbekistan in 2003 for 5 1/2 years for sodomy and for what he and international human-rights organizations said were trumped-up charges of sex with minors. He had written extensively about alleged human-rights abuses by Uzbek authorities.

This past June, Sharipov’s sentence was changed to two years of community service in the city of Bukhara, 345 miles from his home in Tashkent. He fled the country before his transfer to Bukhara took place.

In a 2003 letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Sharipov said he was coerced into pleading guilty via harsh torture and threats that his mother would be harmed.

“They put a gas mask on my head and sprayed an unknown substance into my throat, after which I could hardly breathe,” he wrote. “They also injected an unknown substance into my veins and warned me that if I did not follow their instructions they would give me an injection of the AIDS virus. I could not withstand such excesses.”

In its announcement, the newspaper association said: “We are relieved that Mr. Sharipov is beyond the reach of the Uzbek authorities, and we hope that he can one day return to a free and democratic Uzbekistan.”

Sharipov is now in Sacramento and is planning to write about his prison experience.

South Africa’s constitution may have been the first one in the world to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, but the people of South Africa still overwhelmingly disapprove of same-sex relationships, Afrol News reported Oct. 21.

Seventy-eight percent of 5,000 people surveyed by the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa said homosexual relationships are “always wrong.”

Less than 7 percent said they are “not wrong at all.”

The results varied by race. Eighty-one percent of blacks said gay sex is always wrong, compared with 76 percent of Indians, 70 percent of whites, and 64 percent of mixed-race people.

Geography is also a factor. Disapproval was highest in Limpopo and Eastern Cape provinces, around 90 percent, and lowest in the Free State and Western Cape, around 75 percent. Cape Town, South Africa’s gay capital, is in the Western Cape province.

The African nation of Eritrea expelled three foreign InterContinental hotel workers in October over “a question of immorality,” Information Minister Ali Abdu Ahmed told the Agence France-Presse news wire.

At least one of the hotel workers was said to be openly gay.

“They exercised immoral activities, which invade our tradition and culture,” Ahmed said.

An InterContinental spokesperson said the employees were re-assigned to hotels in other nations.

AFP said homosexuality is not illegal in Eritrea.

Australian gay advocates Oct. 22 hailed the elevation of South Australian Senator Penny Wong to the Labor Shadow Cabinet, declaring her to be the first openly gay member of an Australian parliamentary front-bench team.

In certain parliamentary systems, a duplicate cabinet is set up by the party that is not presently in power and those shadow-cabinet members join the party’s “front bench” – its group of spokespersons.

“At a time when sexual minorities are increasingly under attack in Australian politics, it’s refreshing to see champions of diversity succeeding in the political arena,” said national activist Rodney Croome of the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group.

There are three openly gay members of Australia’s Parliament: Sen. Bob Brown of Tasmania, Sen. Brian Greig of Western Australia, and Wong.

Wong came out this year during caucus debate on Prime Minister John Howard’s proposed ban on same-sex marriage, which passed and became law.