Ticker Tape

Jet, June 26, 2000 by Simeon Booker

Confidential: As in Africa, AIDS also is striking hard in America's Black communities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns that AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black men and women aged 25 to 44. Although Blacks account for only 13 percent of the U.S. population, in 1998 they accounted for 45 percent of new AIDS eases and 49 percent of AIDS deaths.

In terms of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the CDC estimated that Black people are 57 percent of new cases of HIV and that one in 50 Black men and one in 160 Black women are living with the virus. On the scene is the Balm of Gilead, a Black church network to fight the spread of AIDS ... The surprise appearance of Dr. Neil de Grasso Tyson, the director of New York's Hayden Planetarium, brought acclaim to the White House Millennium Evening series. One of the country's noted space scientists, he is a Harlem native who earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard and then a Ph.D in astrophysics from Columbia University ... Pioneering civil rights photographer Ernest C. Withers Sr. of Memphis heads the list of awardees at the June 30 Exposure Group's fourth annual dinner in Washington. Others honored include Jason Miccolo Johnson, Leigh Mosley and Milton Williams ... When his father, Ambassador George Haley, visited home on leave from Gambia, son David Haley, a state legislator in Kansas City, KN, announced his candidacy for the state senate in the fall. He follows the political route of his father who served as a state senator.